engleski

Constructive Alignment in Assessing Vocabulary in Business English Study Courses

One of the main foci in teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP) in professional higher education study programmes in Croatia is the acquisition of specialised vocabulary. A large part of the concern for educators of these courses is the teaching and assessment methods that would enable students to acquire vocabulary. There are various methods of teaching, practising and assessing knowledge and use of vocabulary in ESP. In this paper the authors focus on some of the examples of these methods to see which are preferred by teachers in higher education institutions and how they can be constructively aligned with the intended learning outcomes (ILOs) set out in the course syllabi. The proposition of constructive alignment used is the one set forth by John Biggs in Teaching for Quality Learning at University. His principles are used to determine which of the used teaching methods, practice tests and assessment tests can be used to achieve different learning outcome levels related to vocabulary acquisition. The authors conducted a questionnaire with 34 teachers of ESP in higher education institutions in Croatia and collected a corpus of used written tests during the academic year 2013 - 2014 in the undergraduate study courses of Business English taught at the Business Economics study programme, at Tourism and Hotel Management study programme, at the Faculty of Food Technology and Biotechnology and at the Marketing and Communication study programme. The results show that teachers employ an array of methods in teaching and assessing vocabulary ; however, some of the methods do not encourage deep approach to learning. The discussion is focused on the methods that encourage deep approach to learning and can be aligned with ILOs focusing on relational and functioning knowledge.

constructive alignment, functioning vocabulary knowledge, vocabulary assessment, intended learning outcomes.

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