English-Russian translation at the National Testing Center

This time I worked in the National Testing Center providing English-Russian translation at a series of lectures on evaluation in education.

The lecturer, Dr. Shonau, who came from the Netherlands, gave an overall view on the education system in the Netherlands, on the role of examinations and test in education. He explained different types of taxonomy models: that of Bloom and Romiszowsky, that are the basis for test constructing.  Lectures touched upon test types: multiple choice tests, open end tests, written and practical tasks and the ways how to best evaluate each of them. The whole day was dedicated to the final examination and its administration and evaluation criteria as it as done in the Netherlands. Participants: those who develop test items, put them together in a test and later assess the results, took great interest in that part since the final exam that combines both school leaving and university entrance exam in Kazakhstan will no longer exist. The discussions are held as to how change the format of the exam and what is the best practice in the world.

It is obvious that there are differences between the education system in the Netherlands and that in Kazakhstan but still there are similarities, too, and both countries win from learning from each other’s experience.

Posted on March 2nd, 2012