| Summary: | 博士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 英語學系 === 99 === In 2005, the Ministry of Education (MOE) adopted the Common European Framework (CEF) as the benchmark for all standardized tests and assessments of English proficiency in Taiwan. Since that time, the CEF has become a very important document, as well as a hotly-discussed issue, in English teaching circles. Another hotly discussed issue about English instruction was how to make use of online test practices. NETPAW, the first language assessment system created in Taiwan, was initially funded by the Ministry of Education. It was adopted in this research to explore whether online test practices could improve subjects’ English learning. Equally important was the further investigation on what metacogniton strategies of the CEF global descriptors the English learners could apply to enhance their English performance.
This research aimed to study five questions: (a) whether adult English learners can accurately interpret the CEF global descriptors, (b) what metacognition effect the CEF global descriptors have on adult English learning, (c) to what extent the online test practice effect influences adult English learning, (d) whether the gender difference affects adult English learning, and (e) whether the difference among academic majors affects adult English learning.
Through a quantitative approach, it was concluded that the CEF global proficiency descriptors can be consistently and accurately interpreted by adult English learners in Taiwan. Those subjects who took the online practices did show significantly better performances than those who did not, and that those subjects who were introduced to the CEF global descriptors did show significantly better performances than those who were not.
In terms of gender difference, the result showed that there was no significant difference between the female subjects and the male subjects in their test performances. That is, genders played no crucial role in adults’ test performance. As for the factor of academic majors, the result showed that there was a significant difference among the subjects from different departments in their test performances. In general, unsurprisingly, English majors showed better test performances than other majors. Japanese majors showed worse test performances while the test performances of the majors in Business Administration Department and Communication Arts Department were in-between.
The findings in this research indicated that the CEF could be appropriately utilized to improve the English proficiency of the learners in Taiwan. English teachers and school administrators need to be familiar with the contents of the CEF so that they can effectively help their students to improve their English proficiency. In addition, the finding that the online test practices could improve learners’ English learning efficacy indicated that the online assessment has become the mainstream. It was suggested that universities and schools make use of NETPAW, the reliable standardized test recognized by the Academia Sinica in Taiwan as well as many universities around the world.
|
|---|
