Ergonomics factors in English as a foreign language testing: The case of Plevalex
Authors
García Laborda, Jesús; Magal Royo, Teresa; Da Rocha Siqueira, Jose Macario; Fernandez Alvarez, MiguelDate
2010-01-01Funders
Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia
Bibliographic citation
Computers and Education, 2010, v. 2, n. 54, p. 384-391
Keywords
Ergonomics
English assessment
English as a foreign language
Oral Written
Description / Notes
JCR 2011: 7 de 203
Project
info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/MEC/HUM2007-66479-C02-01/ES/ESTUDIO DE LOS PROCESOS DE CAMBIO Y AUTOMATIZACION DE LAS PRUEBAS DE ACCESO A LA UNIVERSIDAD EN MATERIA DE LENGUAS EXTRANJERAS A PARTIR DEL DESARROLLO DE HERRAMIENTAS ESPECIFICAS A TRAVES DE INTERNET
Document type
info:eu-repo/semantics/article
Version
info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Access rights
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Abstract
Although much has been said about ergonomics in interface and in computer tools and interface design, very few articles in major journals have addressed this topic in relation to language testing. This article describes an experiment carried out at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, in which 27 Media and Communication students provided support to design and experiment an internet based oral and written English as a foreign language test platform called PLEVALEX (García Laborda, 2007b). These students then responded to a questionnaire about their feelings, acquired experience and ergonomics based on their results in both development stages. According to their opinions, language test interfaces are different from those of other e-learning platforms and websites. These differences have been previously mentioned by authors such as Fulcher (2003) or García Laborda and Magal Royo (2007). This research concludes that the features described by García Laborda and Magal Royo which are applied to the PLEVALEX platform, although tending to simplify interfaces, are to be met if students are to be tested in their knowledge of English as a foreign language as opposed to being tested on their skills and performance as computer users. The findings of this paper have valuable implications for the scientific community, given that more and more standardized high-stakes language tests are beginning to use internet and computer based versions (García Laborda, 2007a).
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