Language Symposium (29 June, 2006)

Sponsored by Wall Street International

Dr Tony Lee, Academic Director of Wall Street Institute

Dr Ardeshir Geranpayeh, Senior Research & Validation Co-ordinator of Cambridge ESOL

Professor David Coniam, Dept. of Curriculum & Instruction, School of Education, CUHK

Thursday 29 June, 11:00 – 12:30, D-LP-08

Contents

The Language Symposium provides examples of applications of Rasch model in language assessment.

Dr. Geranpaveh will outline the procedure for aligning courses and examinations to the Common European Framework for Languages (CEFR). Dr. Lee will present the result of Phase One of a two-year study to align the Wall Street Institute (WSI) courses and assessment to the CEFR. Prof. Coniam will present a study on assessing English language speaking ability in Hong Kong. Various approaches in the application of the Rasch model to language assessment will be illustrated by the papers in the symposium.

The speakers

Dr. Tony Lee has been involved with language assessment research for over 25 years in Hong Kong and Australia. His more notable projects include the academic management of the ACCESS test of the Australian Federal Government, the English Language & Literacy Assessment (ELLA) of the New South Wales Government, the Hong Kong Workplace English Benchmarks of the HK SAR Government.

Dr Ardeshir Geranpaveh has extensive experience of test validation and has served as consultant on language proficiency tests in Iran and Hong Kong. He has many years of experience as an EFL teacher, in addition to having a strong background in computing and information technology.

Prof. David Coniam taught English in United Kingdom, Spain, Iran and Saudi Arabia; conducted teacher training in Hong Kong British Council and language testing in Hong Kong Examinations Authority. Current courses taught include English Language Teaching Methodology, Evaluation and Test Design, Computer Assisted Language Learning.