Reforms in assessment systems in ELT: Pakistani experience

Mian Khurram Shahzad Azam
Higher Education Commission, Pakistan

Keywords: assessment; language skills; online initiatives

Research has shown that the present assessment system in ELT in higher education in Pakistan is not evaluating the learners' proficiency in the language skills. There is a growing complaint that graduates of public sector institutions of higher education are unable to meet the demands of professional higher studies and a competitive job market. The present assessment system is inefficient, outdated and leads to rote learning and memorization of the texts rather than assessing the language skills of the students. In most higher education institutions there is no mechanism of continuous assessment contributing to the final grades of students and students are assessed only in their final exams. Interestingly the research shows that the majority of teachers and students agree that the evaluation system is fit for the purpose. It is possible that most of them take higher grades as justification since they also agree that the present system does not assess their language skills. The focus in the examination is more on content type questions rather than assessing the competencies required to face the challenges both inside and outside the university.

The presenter intends to focus on the initiatives taken by the Higher Education Commission, Pakistan, to improve the assessment and evaluation of English language in the institutions of higher education in Pakistan. HEC conducted a series of workshops on the modern techniques of assessment in ELT for English language teachers. The presentation highlights the growing interest in online assessment. HEC is focusing on using Information Communication Technology for standardizing the assessment techniques used for evaluating language competencies.