有效的外语教学与评估手段(1)(3)
2015-09-11 01:07
导读：During the 1970s there was much excitement in the world of language testing about what was called the ‘Unitary Competence Hypothesis’. In brief, this was the suggestion that the nature of language
During the 1970s there was much excitement in the world of language testing about what was called the ‘Unitary Competence Hypothesis’. In brief, this was the suggestion that the nature of language ability was such that it was impossible to break it down into component parts. Although the hypothesis was eventually shown to be false, the notion of overall ability can, in some circumstances, be a useful concept. “One reason why various studies provided statistical support for the Unitary Competence Hypothesis was that they were concerned with the performance of groups rather than of individuals. Where people have had training in both speaking and writing, the better someone writes, the better they are likely to speak. So the way of measuring overall ability would of course not be to measure a variety of separate abilities and then to combine scores, but put each specific skill together.” [3] Dictation recommended in this paper has its advantage of being relatively easy to prepare, administer and score. It has also been the subjects of quite considerable research, and for that reason it also showed more advantages than many other tests.
“Dictation is a good old fashioned way to get students listening carefully, it needs no description.”[4] Dictation forms a testing item in the foreign language testing. Perhaps it is affirmed that dictation exercise is an effective testing and teaching device. However, in order that students can perform better on dictations in these proficiency tests, many teachers use dictation practice as an additional exercise. Dictation is largely confined to its use as a testing rather than a teaching device. The controversy whether dictation is a useful practice is existed recently. Therefore this paper is inclined to investigate that systematic dictation practice has a great deal of effect on students’ language skills, such as listening skills, grammatical and lexical knowledge, writing abilities, the abilities in taking dictations and so on.
2 Theoretical Reviews
（科教论文网 lw.nseaC.Com编辑发布） In this part, the mechanism of dictation works in the foreign language learning including information processing system is reviewed in detail. And then the cognitive process of dictation will be described, followed by various types of dictation as a means of language teaching and a language teaching evaluation. Application of dictation in some national tests in China is also discussed.
2.1 Information processing system
This paper relies on the theories in psycholinguistics, which focus on the study of how individuals comprehend, produce, and acquire language. In this period, the psychological mechanisms, which are involved in using language, will be discussed. These mechanisms provide the basis for an integrated understanding of language use. As language processing is a joint product of linguistic principles and psychological mechanisms, some knowledge of the psychological mechanisms in language acquisition is very essential and will become the theoretical background of the paper.
“The acts of language comprehension are performed within the constraints of our information processing system that move information from one structure to the next. Such a system consists of three mental structural components, that is, sensory memory, working memory and permanent memory. Besides, there is a set of control processes that govern the flow of information. A general model of information processing system is presented as follows in Figure. ” [5]
