Testing four skills in Japan

This paper considers arguments for the testing of spoken language skills in Japan and the contribution the use of such tests might make to language education. The Japanese government, recognising the importance of spontaneous social interaction in English to participation in regional and global communities, mandates the development of all ‘four skills’ (Reading, Writing, Listening and Speaking) in schools. However, university entrance tests continue to emphasize the written language. Because they control access to opportunities, entrance tests tend to dominate teaching and learning. They are widely believed to encourage traditional forms of teaching and to inhibit speaking and listening activities in the classroom. Comprehensive testing of spoken language skills should, in contrast, encourage (or at least not discourage) the teaching and learning of these skills. On the other hand, testing spoken language skills also represents a substantial challenge. New organisational structures are needed to support new testing formats and these will be unfamiliar to all involved, resulting in an increased risk of system failures. Introducing radical change to any educational system is likely to provoke a reaction from those who benefit most from the status quo. For this reason, critics will be ready to exploit any perceived shortcomings to reverse innovative policies. Experience suggests that radical changes in approaches to testing are unlikely to deliver benefits for the education system unless they are well supported by teacher training, new materials and public relations initiatives. The introduction of spoken language tests is no doubt essential to the success of Japan’s language policies, but is not without risk and needs to be carefully integrated with other aspects of the education system

Learning-oriented language test preparation materials: a contradiction in terms?

The impact of the use of assessment on teaching and learning is increasingly regarded as a key concern in evaluating assessment use. Realising intended forms of impact relies on more than the design of an assessment: account must also be taken of the ways in which teachers, learners and others understand the demands of the assessment and incorporate these into their practice. The measures that testing agencies take to present and explicate their tests to teachers and other stakeholders therefore play an important role in promoting intended impact and mitigating unintended, negative impact. Materials that support teachers in preparing learners to take tests (such as descriptions of the test, preparation materials and teacher training resources) play an important role in communicating the test providers’ intentions. In this study, these support materials are analysed. The selected materials, provided to teachers by Cambridge English Language Assessment, go with the Speaking component of a major international test of general English proficiency: Cambridge English: First. The study addresses how these materials might embody or reflect learning-oriented assessment principles of task authenticity, learner engagement and feedback within a coherent systemic theory of action, reconciling formative and summative assessment functions to the benefit of learning

Isothermal models of combustion chamber flows

Imperial Users onl

Induced characters of the projective general linear group over a finite field

Using a general result of Lusztig, we find the decomposition into irreducibles of certain induced characters of the projective general linear group over a finite field of odd characteristic.Comment: 17 page

The private Navy of the United States: The effects of Privateers on the War of 1812

The declaration of war in June of 1812 brought more questions than it did answers for the United States. Economically, the government was not prepared to fund a war with multiple fronts. To make matters worse, the government’s primary source of income was through import duties, which they expected to decrease drastically as the war progressed. Militaristically, the United States Navy was too small to offer the protection that was needed from Britain, who possessed the world’s strongest navy at the time. Luckily for the United States, Congress in conjunction with President James Madison authorized privately owned ships to participate in the war effort. These ships worked to supplement the United States Navy, while working primarily to disrupt the British shipping industry. While this was their primary objective, privateers provided much more through their involvement in the War of 1812. This thesis looks at the contributions of American privateers during the War of 1812. The first chapter will look at the ways in which privateers negatively affected British shipping and the British Royal Navy. The second chapter focuses on the ways in which privateers were able to provide economic support to the United States, while simultaneously hurting the British economy. Finally, the third chapter focuses on the social aspect of privateering. This last chapter demonstrates the ways in which the men aboard these ships viewed their actions as patriotic, as well the way writers and newspaper editors viewed the actions at home

Design and evolution of enzymes with non-canonical catalytic mechanisms

Enzyme design and evolution strategies rely exclusively on Nature’s standard amino acid alphabet of twenty canonical residues which contain limited functionality. Here we demonstrate that incorporation of non-canonical amino acids into enzyme active sites provides a fruitful avenue to probe complex biological mechanisms and can lead to the creation of designed enzymes with wholly new catalytic functions. Significantly, optimization of enzyme activity can be achieved using directed evolution workflows adapted to an expanded genetic code. We are optimistic that this integration of enzyme design, genetic code expansion and laboratory evolution can provide a versatile strategy for creating enzymes with catalytic functions not accessible to Nature

Design and evolution of enzymes with non-canonical catalytic mechanisms

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