Resumen de Strategies of Evaluation at an Engineering School
Ana Roldán Riejos, Joana Pierce McMahon
In our view, evaluation is a fundamental stage in the language learning process, independently of its function as an institutional requirement in a LSP course. Evaluation should mainly be a reliable instrument to validate the appropriateness of the objectives and methodology applied, allowing learners the possibility of self-monitoring their own progress. This paper reviews different types of evaluation according to their validity, reliability and adaptation to our type of learner. In this sense, different learning styles are taken into account, as well as the students’ levels in the design of various testing procedures. The importance of needs analysis to identify the linguistic skills that our students ought to practice is also highlighted. We are aware of the fact that in Languages for Specific Purposes academic context, it is not always easy to apply a fair discrimination between students’ communicative ability and subject ability (Ferguson 1989); hence special attention is given to syllabus design. On the other hand, we also have to consider the type and the sequencing of input our learners receive, in order to successfully integrate motivational and professional factors. Various practical examples of input selection, the methodology applied and the assessment of evaluation cases are finally presented.
