Do tests measure what they are supposed to? On validity of listening comprehension tests

Trafność jest jednym z najważniejszych kryteriów poprawności testu. Jak stwierdza Bolesław Niemierko, trafność gwarantuje, że „zmierzono wszystko to i tylko to, co należało zmierzyć” (1999: 178), a więc test nie sprawdza ani za dużo, ani za mało. Celem artykułu jest przybliżenie pojęcia trafności testu językowego zarówno z teoretycznej, jak i praktycznej perspektywy. Artykuł ma za zadanie odpowiedzieć na następujące pytania: Na czym polega trafność testu? Jak można rozpoznać, czy dany test sprawdzający rozumienie ze słuchu jest trafny? Jak wygląda realizacja kryterium trafności w praktyce, na przykładzie testowania umiejętności rozumienia ze słuchu na egzaminie maturalnym z języka niemieckiego?Validity is considered the most important criterion for the quality of a language test. As Bolesław Niemierko (1999: 179) states, validity guarantees that “everything and only what was supposed to be measured was measured”. The aim of this article is to present the validity notion from the theoretical as well as from the practical point of view. The paper should answer the following questions: What does test validity mean in practice? How can it be recognized that a listening comprehension test is valid? Do school leaving exams in German fulfill the validity criteria

Comparison of smoothing filters in analysis of EEG data for the medical diagnostics purposes

This paper covers a brief review of both the advantages and disadvantages of the implementation of various smoothing filters in the analysis of electroencephalography (EEG) data for the purpose of potential medical diagnostics. The EEG data are very prone to the occurrence of various internal and external artifacts and signal distortions. In this paper, three types of smoothing filters were compared: smooth filter, median filter and Savitzky-Golay filter. The authors of this paper compared those filters and proved their usefulness, as they made the analyzed data more legible for diagnostic purposes. The obtained results were promising, however, the studies on finding perfect filtering methods are still in progress.Web of Science203art. no. 80

Święty socjalistycznej Palestyny: Józef Chaim Brenner po polsku

This article analyses the Polish translation of Yosef Haim Brenner’s short story The Way Out, carried out by Polish Zionist Józef Szofman and published in 1925 in Warsaw. It discusses the story’s origin and its reception, especially its writer’s status and his work with the Zionist discourse and imagery. Referring to interwar Polish-Jewish press, the article points to Szofman’s role in creating a mythological narrative about Brenner in the local Jewish milieus. The analysis of Szofman’s translation strategies raises the question about the intentions of the translator and the premises of his work

Was meinst du damit?. Ein paar Bemerkungen über die Bedeutung und Entwicklung pragmatischer Kompetenz in der Fremdsprache

The proper identification of a function/goal of an utterance in a particular interaction (speech act) plays an important role in comprehension. The main aim of the article is therefore to investigate if and to what extent the reading and listening tasks offered in some secondary school English textbooks develop the skill to understand communicative intentions. The paper also gives a brief insight into the speech-act theory and the content of some important curricular documents, ending up with a few suggestions for classroom exercises.Die richtige Identifikation des Ziels einer Aussage in der kommunikativen Interaktion (Sprechakt) spielt in der fremdsprachigen Kommunikation eine bedeutende Rolle. Ziel des Beitrags ist es zu untersuchen, ob und inwieweit Lese- und Höraufgaben, die in modernen Englisch-Lehrwerken für die Oberstufe angeboten werden, entwickeln diese Fähigkeit. Der Artikel gibt also einen Einblick in die Sprechakttheorie und den Inhalt curricularer Dokumente. Abschließend werden auch ein paar Unterrichtsaufgaben zur Entwicklung der pragmatischen Kompetenz präsentiert

Adaptacja i formy udostępniania materiałów dydaktycznych dla czytelników z niepełnosprawnością wzroku w Bibliotece Głównej Akademii Podlaskiej w Siedlcach

People with sight disablilities have a very limited access to visual information, notable printed materials. This results in dramatically low prospects of them getting higher education. Academic books in Braille’s alphabet or with larger fonts are not published, audiobooks are mainly fiction. Even publications in Braille’s frequently do not take into account the complexity of graphic elementsOsoby z niesprawnością wzroku mają bardzo ograniczony dostęp do informacji wizualnej. Szczególnie dotkliwy dla nich jest znikomy dostęp do słowa drukowanego, co skutkuje drastycznym zmniejszeniem możliwości kształcenia się. Podręczniki akademickie w druku brajla lub z powiększoną czcionką w ogóle nie ukazują się. Tak zwana „książka mówiona” to przeważnie beletrystyka. Nawet w publikacjach wydawanych systemem brajla elementy graficzne nie zawsze są uwzględniane w wystarczającym stopni

Testowanie sprawności receptywnych w standaryzowanych testach języka angielskiego i niemieckiego : próba analizy porównawczej

According to the psycholinguistic theory, reading and listening comprehension are active processes of seeking and creating a text meaning which take part in a reader’s and a listener’s cognitive systems, and involve different types of knowledge. The aim of this doctoral dissertation is to examine if and to what extent this theoretically and empirically grounded definition is reflected in teaching and testing of receptive skills. Furthermore, the thesis presents the issue of measuring comprehension in standardized language tests. Chapter One opens with a review of past and current psycholinguistic theories of comprehension. Reading and listening are presented as multilevel text processes which involve inferring and anticipating, and which are determined by schemas, memory and attention. The project also presents the differences between the auditory and the written texts comprehension, both in a native and a foreign language. The chapter ends with a list of practical implications for testing receptive skills. Chapter Two aims to indicate some important issues with regards to evaluation of reading and listening comprehension skills. It begins with the presentation of qualities of language tests, followed by the discussion of possibilities and limitations of testing comprehension abilities. Next, various testing factors are presented which may affect the comprehension process and its outcome in a testing situation. Chapter Third investigates the aims of developing and assessing receptive skills enumerated in a variety of important Polish and German language documents such as; Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, secondary school curricula, testing standards and teaching programs. Based on the fourth-level concept of comprehension which includes; 1) decoding, 2) understanding of explicitly stated information, 3) understanding of implicitly stated information, 4) critical understanding – evaluation, the analysis shows significant qualitative and quantitative differences between them and considerable lacks in their content. A great number of analyzed aims are not based on any psycholinguistics theory and do not provide any information about the achieved level (degree) of comprehension. The following major part of the dissertation (Chapter Four and Five) explores testing constructs and techniques on the basis of a broad spectrum of reading and listening tests. Chapter Four presents tests developed within such research projects and programmes as PISA, PIRLS, DESI, French and English as the first foreign language at the lower secondary level, run by Institute for Educational Progress in Berlin. In the analyzed reading and listening constructs, comprehension is perceived as a complex process of graded depth. Native-language reading tests (PISA, PIRLS, and DESI) assess four-level comprehension consisting of interpretation and evaluation of the text, whilst testing receptive skills in a foreign language is reduced to three levels of comprehension. The analysis of certificate tests in English and German on the B1-B2 level in Chapter Five reveals that tests in English measure a broader range of skills using more varied testing methods than equivalent tests in German. The third level of comprehension, i.e. interpretation is tested only to a certain degree, depending on the test (English/German) and its level (B1/B2), whereas evaluation is not tested at all. Chapter Six is devoted to a more detailed analysis of Polish school leaving reading and listening tests in English and German (2011), followed by the analysis of school leaving tests in English from the Thuringia and the Bavaria regions in Chapter Seven. It includes texts, test items and test methods, as well as recorded speech. The most important conclusions drawn from the analysis presented in the last two chapters are as follows: – Polish school leaving tests measuring receptive skills in English and German lack in construct and curricular validity. – There are significant qualitative differences between Polish school leaving tests in English and in German. Many of the examined reading and listening test items in German are wrongly constructed and some texts have been unskillfully adapted. – In Polish tests, close tasks are used exclusively, which in many cases demand only localization and recognition of the information, whereas the analyzed German tests include a variety of different tasks. Applied open techniques of testing allow a learner to present their own product of comprehension, such as text interpretation and their personal opinions. – Polish school leaving tests focus on the lowest levels of comprehension: decoding and understanding of explicitly stated information. None of the interpretation skills mentioned in the Polish examinations standards is tested. The reading tests from Thuringia and Bavaria measure full comprehension involving interpretation and evaluation of the text. Listening tests, however, evaluate only two (Thuringia) or three levels of comprehension (Bavaria). The recordings used at the Polish school leaving examination present unnatural sounding speech resembling written rather than spoken language, whereas in Thuringia and Bavaria learners listen to more realistic, spoken language. The requirements of Polish school leaving tests are evidently decreased in relation to the real needs and abilities of the learners. The dissertation ends with a list of conclusions, proposals and demands which could improve validity und usefulness of the Polish school leaving tests in reading and listening, and whose implementation seems to be necessary in the near future

Role of small and medium-sized enterprises in economies of Poland and Slovakia - comparative analysis

The SME sector is one of the factors that contribute to economic growth in every country on the national and regional level, and it holds true to Poland and Slovakia. Although this sector grew most rapidly during the beginning transition period, it still retains its significant role in the economic growth in both countries - Poland and Slovakia. The aim of paper is to present the role and importance of small and medium-sized enterprises in two selected countries, that is Poland and Slovakia. The main focus of the article is to put on the role of small and medium-sized enterprises in Polish and Slovak economies. The authors use and examine available statistical data concerning SMEs in Poland and Slovakia. The aim of the paper is to investigate the impact of small and medium-sized enterprises on the Polish and Slovak economies. The paper analyses the state of the sector of small and medium-sized enterprises in both countries, seeking to understand the causes of its relative strength and weakness. In particular, the authors examine the question of whether the development of SMEs along the current lines would positively contribution to the sustainable development of the Polish and Slovak economies.entrepreneurship, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), Slovakia, Poland

Doing business support on the part of the towns: case study Slovakia

The paper deals with doing business support on the part of all the towns (138) in the Slovak Republic. It analyses the ways how Slovak towns currently support doing business in their territories. A special attention is paid to the instruments used in a practice on the part of the towns and also a place of doing business support in the strategic documents of the towns. It results from the strategic documents (mainly from the strategies of economic and social development of the towns), but also from own empirical investigations done in the period 2008 – 2010 within solving some projects in which the author was involved.

Comparing public support for wildlife protection and climate protection

Hlavním cílem této studie je srovnat postoje veřejnosti k ochraně klimatu a ochraně přírody, neboť v této oblasti výzkumu existuje – nejen v České republice – stále výzkumné bílé místo. V této studii přinášíme podrobnou analýzu a srovnání podpory reprezentativního vzorku české veřejnosti k ochraně klimatu a ochraně divoké přírody. Výsledky regresních analýz ukázaly, že podpora v obou oblastech významně roste s rostoucím proenvironmentálním přesvědčením, volným časem tráveným v přírodě a altruismem. Podpora ochrany klimatu u respondentů také roste společně s vyšší volební účastí, levicovou politickou orientací a nižším věkem. Podpora ochrany přírody roste s vyšší důvěrou v neziskové organizace, a na druhé straně klesá s rostoucí důvěrou ve vědecké a výzkumné instituce. Srovnání skupin vymezených podle míry jejich souhlasu s ochranou klimatu a ochranou divoké přírody ukázalo, že podporu ochrany divoké přírody lze charakterizovat jako inkluzivnější environmentální postoj než podporu ochrany klimatu. Článek diskutuje důsledky těchto zjištění pro tvorbu environmentálních politik a způsoby práce s veřejností v této oblasti.In this study we provide a detailed analysis and comparison of the public support for climate protection and wildlife protection using nationally representative data from the Czech Republic. The results of regression analyses have shown that support for both protections is significantly increasing with growing pro-environmental beliefs of people, leisure time they spent in nature and their altruism. Support for climate protection also rises with higher election participation, left-wing political orientation and younger age. Support for wildlife protection increases with growing trust in non-profit organizations while decreases with growing trust in science & research institutions. The comparison of groups defined according to their consent with climate protection and wildlife protection showed that support for wildlife protection can be characterized as a more inclusive environmental attitude than support for climate protection. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for protagonists of environmental politics and ways how they approach the public

International migration and new mobility trends

World migration community covers 3% of the world population, in Europe it is around 7% and 4% in the Czech Republic. Europe is an important target for migration stimulated by the work offer but also by wars and natural disasters. In Western Europe at the end of the 20th century there were 20 millions of foreign migrants and also probably 3-5 million illegal migrants. Recently, we have faced new trends in international mobility which are different from traditional migration flows. They include mobility of multinational firms employees, mobility of students, pensioners but also mobility of professionals. Specific group under study is foreign migration or mobility of scientists and researchers. There is another phenomena connected with the development of modern technologies which stimulates the mobility in virtual space. Virtual mobility is another form of mobility which is using virtual space for communication, study, work and other aspects of life. The aim of this paper is to introduce the main trends in international migration including the traditional ones but stressing the new types of international mobility. The focus will be on the current situation in the Czech Republic related to migration.migration, international mobility, foreigners, high skilled professionals, brain drain, virtual mobility