The Centre for Testing & Evaluation (CT&E), one of the main R & D units of the Institute, has been actively functioning since 1984. The objective of this centre is to undertake fundamental research on this multidisciplinary area, develop basic reference materials, and to coordinate activities that are required for measurement & evaluation in general, and language & literature evaluation in particular.
The CT&E, has so far produced more than 100 volumes of academic materials ranging from ‘basic references' to the 'advanced concepts' in testing & evaluation. Many of them have already been published by the Institute, in English and in 14 major Indian languages.
The present one, the second edition of the ‘Evaluation & Testing : A Descriptive Bibliography’ comes out with an addition of more than 150 new entries. This revised and updated version could be seen as a reflection of the holistic picture of assessment, accreditation, examination, and evaluation. It would help to meet the demands of the organisers of various training programmes covering various branches of this highly specialised area, particularly of those in the RFUs of NTS. This book has been included in the UGC Model Curriculum: Linguistics, 2001, New Delhi under 'Teacher References’ (p.28).
I congratulate Prof. Pon Subbiah who took up this venture of updating this voluminous work which has added value to the academic publications of the Institute.
When modern linguistics came to the educational scene in India after Independence, one of the promises was that it would help improve teaching of the Indian languages and thus the linguistic skills of the students for building the new nation. After about half a century of educational planning and innovations, there is a sad realization that the promise has not been fulfilled. It is based on subjective evaluation of the performance of the students after school and on the examination results in the school. Though this evaluation is true if not totally reliable and objective, tools are necessary to scientifically establish this observation.
Acquisition of language skills in formal education depends on the methodology of teaching and the materials used for teaching. Language teaching in India has been content teaching and information dissemination and not skill development. The Central Institute of Indian Languages in the last quarter of a century has tried to change this fundamental misperception of the goals of language teaching through orientation to language teachers and material producers and through preparation of model materials. The change is perceptible in the curriculum and learning materials to some extent and in the teaching methodology to a lesser extent. The examination system, however, still by and large remains a test for information acquisition and recall. This nullifies whatever little gain has been made in methods and materials, because, as it is well known, Indian education is examination oriented.
It is necessary to provide access to language teachers, text book writers, developers of tests, teacher educators and planners of language education to the philosophy, theory and methodology of language testing and evaluation in all their aspects through the wide spectrum of research and experiments on them carried out all over the world. This is particularly necessary for those in the field of Indian language teaching.
With this objective in mind, the Institute planned a series of publications in addition to series of workshops and training programmes. This bibliography follows the terminological introduction already published, which was preceded by introductory books on language evaluation. This bibliography will be followed by a bank of tests together with theoretical and practical guidelines for the construction of tests and also a model syllabus for Indian languages at the college level.
It is hoped that this bibliography will imprint on the minds of the Indian language teachers that language testing and evaluation is an important and well developed component of Janguage teaching and that they will benefit themselves and benefit the students by reading them even selectively. It will make an impact to improve the teaching of Indian languages in the country.
My interaction with the teachers who participated in the programmes organized by CIIL from time to time on preparing test and restructuring syllabi, etc., n different languages, has made me to believe that the teachers are not adequately equipped with the knowledge of testing & evaluation although it is an essential component for every teacher. It is in this context, a need was felt to provide all the basic information on evaluation that are required to the teachers for their day to day class room testing and subsequent studies. Accordingly, the process of developing a series of reference materials was initiated by adopting the principle of simple to complex: starting from the terminology introduction. A sequence of productions was planned in such a way that the content of the first one is conceptually interlinked to understand the second one better, and similarly the second one would be useful to the third, and so on.
It may be seen that the above plan is reflected in the following sequence of production: (i) Evaluation and Testing: An Introduction to Terminology (in English). It was published during 1990. (ii) Evaluation and Testing: A descriptive bibliography (in English) is the present one, originally published in 1997. (iii) It is being followed by Systematic approach for assessment in language and literature: a) a conceptual framework (in English), b) practical realization of the conceptual framework (in Indian languages). Materials which are in different stages of production are: (iv) Concept based continuum of graded syllabi : language and literature (bilingual - Hindi, Tamil, & Urdu with English) for all the 7 levels of general education (v) Conceptual framework for assessing aptitude, achievement and proficiency (vi) Graded tests in language and literature (bilingual - Tamil with English) (vii) An Introduction to Evaluation Terminology (in Hindi, Tamil, & Urdu each).
The present volume consists of more than 750 entries of which about two thirds are concerned with research articles, study reports, experiments, etc. The rest are on books as well as the chapters drawn from books. Various components of evaluation, which this bibliography attempts to project, are: instruments of evaluation (tools eg., questions/items, questionnaires, and scales eg., tests, examinations), objects of evaluation (physical eg., text book or conceptual eg., aptitude); contents (subject matter, human traits, and societal values); methods (procedures, techniques, item & test analysis); and nature of coverage (eg., partial or comprehensive). Though comprehensive coverage in this kind of work, is not always possible in every respect, the scope has been widened in such a way that all the available articles/books published up to the year 2008 are accommodated for the benefit of every teacher irrespective of his/ her discipline of study.
While initiating the preparation of this volume, the following objectives were kept in mind: (i) to disseminate information and encourage users of this volume to have cross -fertilization of ideas. (11) to create an awareness and motivate the teachers and researchers of Indian languages to undertake similar studies/experiments in different branches of evaluation and (iii) to help to arrive at a wide range of topics / problems / situations / experiences and to acquire methodologies with adequate insights and up-to-date knowledge.
The descriptions included, here, are mostly abstracted from the published originals. However, in some cases they could be obtained only through secondary sources, as the originals were not immediately available for reference. Wherever the experimental procedures and research outcomes are highly technical, there the descriptions are made with the same technical flavour by adopting the languages of the respective authors with necessary modifications to suit our objectives. Each of the entry included here, is intended to convey the following: the aim of the work, the approach or strategy adopted, and the evidences or conclusions or results drawn / obtained, empirically. It would, thus, facilitate the users to get an overall idea about the work being described in a quick glance.
Reference particulars on the material being described are provided in the following sequential order: name of the author, title of the book or work (article/ chapter or section) information source book or journal, place and name of the publishers, year of publication, volume number (in case of Journals) and the number of pages. Where there are several works by the same author during the same year, they are shown in a chronological order with suffixes like a, b, c. In order to distinguish various categories of entries, all the titles except those of chapters / sections, are presented in italic style. Those with double quotation marks are the books and the single quotation marks the articles / chapters or sections. In case of the latter, the particulars of the sources are also provided.
All the entries in the main text have been presented as per author index. The idea of classifying them under different branches of evaluation has been purposely avoided becauue many of them deal with more than one branch of evaluation which the readers may overlook.
For the benefit of readers, the abbreviations used in the text have been provided in the preliminary part itself. Details of other related information have been classified and provided as appendices of which the first one is the author index (along with their contributions); the second one is the subject index (along with their corresonding authors); they are followed by indeces of books, articles, chapters, journals, and publishers. All these would facilitate the readers to get an easy access to the information of their choice, for example, a particular procedure being adopted or the skil] being tested or any other topic pertaining to various branches of evaluation and so on. If a reader wants to refer to the entries on communicative language testing, he or she should just look for such topics in the second list appended which will provide all reference particulars; in case of the requirement is about a particular author, the first list appended is to be referred to. In this way, specific information required for reference can be easily located with lesser effort.
On glancing through the whole work, it may be observed that (a) certain methods such as cloze procedure, oral testing, etc., appear to have been | emphasized throughout the world during the period between 1960 and 1990; (b) similar emphasis can also be seen on the communicative language in the L; and L, contexts; (c) further observation reveals that the area of testing & evaluation has not drawn adequate attention in India. Under such circumstances, it is believed that this work would serve as an eye-opener to all those involved in pedagogy by providing adequate insights to explore this extensive and fascinating terrain.
For privacy concerns, please view our Privacy Policy
Send as free online greeting card
Email a Friend
Manage Wishlist