Creating the DIS Speaking Test for Placement: Considering Validity, Reliability, and Practicality

Placement testing presents a number of challenges for university language programs. Although there are a variety of benefits for creating one in-house, for practical purposes, commercial assessment tools are often chosen to accomplish the task of dividing students into groups of similar abilities. The goals and objectives for each program should inform the types of testing involved and appropriately delineating student abilities should typically be achieved through measuring all or a combination of several skills: reading, writing, speaking, listening, grammar and vocabulary. This paper details the steps used in the Department of International Studies (DIS) when creating the DIS Speaking Test for Placement, a speaking component integrated into the existing placement structure. This procedure is described and evaluated to show how developers tried to adhere to principles of reliability and validity in concert with practical issues. This paper does not purport that the test is in fact valid or reliable as further research will need to be conducted to better establish the degree to which those principles were achieved; however, the researchers do hope that this study can serve as an example of one department’s attempt, highlight their efforts to identify where immediate improvements can be made to benefit the test’s raters, and contribute to further dialogue about speaking placement test creation.論

Reflective Practice : Utilizing Surveys in Professional Development

Effective teachers should reflect on their own classroom practices in order to achieve keener insight into the quality of education they provide. There exist a variety of tools to assist in this reflective endeavor. This paper illustrates how survey instruments administered to students throughout the academic year can aid the in-service practitioner in developing, modifying or improving learning goals and classroom activities. By allowing students a prominent voice in this process, educators gain a more holistic perspective on the learning environment. The ideas discussed in this paper contribute to the ongoing examination of reflective practice in teacher development and the tools to accomplish this analysis

Narratives from an Excursion to Grapesyard School in Korogocho Slum, Nairobi: Reflections and Perspectives on Education, Community Spirit and Resilience

In March 2016, a delegation of English instructors from Japanese universities attended an international conference in Nairobi, Kenya and visited a local school in the outlying slum neighborhood of Korogocho to observe students in their classrooms, visit homes and explore the local community. They also delivered donated laptop computers to help establish a digital textbook computer laboratory to enhance the children’s learning opportunities. This report is a compilation of narratives of the trip from the delegation and offers individual perspectives and reflections on education, resilience and the spirit of the school and surrounding community

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead