News

English as a Foreign Language Teachers Conference

ETS, ETS Global Speakers Contribute to Success of EFL Teachers Conference.

When the annual International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) Testing and Assessment Special Interest Group (TEASIG) convened their annual meeting in London, staff from ETS and ETS Global were a visible, brand-building presence. The conference programme included sessions about assessment led by ETS and ETS Global speakers.

Conference participants included professionals involved in various high-stakes English Language assessments from testing organisations and universities from countries that included the UK, Turkey, Finland, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Italy and Russia.

Larry Davis, Managing Research Scientist, Centre for English Language and Assessment, presented a plenary titled: “Assessing Spoken Interaction: How Can Technology Help?” Joanna Wrzesinska, Academic Relations and ELT Manager, ETS Global, led a workshop titled: “Assessing Speaking Skills Using Human Raters In An Internet-Based Environment.”

Davis’s presentation addressed how new technologies could make the assessment of dialogic speech more convenient, robust and practical, a topic of great interest to attendees.  

Wrzesinska’s interactive session explored examples of independent and integrated speaking tasks included in the TOEFL iBT® test, explained how raters are trained and gave participants an opportunity to score real test taker speaking responses using the TOEFL iBT® Scoring Rubric.

It is good for our brand recognition that ETS, with its world-class expertise, contributes to the programme of this important conference. We are looking forward to returning next year.

Joanna Wrzesinska (Academic Relations and ELT Manger, ETS Global)