FAIRNESS and inclusivity throughout Vietnam's urban and rural regions in terms of their English language assessment practices is being brought to the fore following an international research collaboration, funded by the British Council, between the University of Huddersfield and one of Vietnam's leading higher educational institutions.
Project lead Dr Susan Sheehan from the University's Centre for Research in Education and Society (HudCRES) is being assisted by Dr Thuy Thai from Vietnam's University of Languages and International Studies (ULIS), a prestigious research oriented university in language education, linguistics, international studies, related social sciences and humanities, to investigate the experience of online English language assessment practices across the country.
Dr Quynh Nguyen, ULIS's Director of the Department of Research, Science and Technology will lead Vietnam's expert research team. Dr Nguyen also directs ULIS's Centre for Testing and Assessment and is co-Vice President of the Asian Association for Language Assessment.
Improving student outcomes
Dr Sheehan is Course Leader of the University's undergraduate TESOL courses whose research interests include assessment, language assessment literacy and teacher cognition. Together with Dr Thai, who completed her PhD at the University of Huddersfield in 2021, Dr Sheehan will examine the data gathered from both countries.
"Once complete," she said, "we aim to have resources available in terms of an online toolkit - an online community of practice - so teachers can develop and improve upon their assessment practices which will therefore improve student outcomes across Vietnam."
Language assessment and TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages) has become an important area of research growth for HudCRES, which is located within the University's School of Education and Professional Development.
Over the last seven years Huddersfield researchers have been awarded numerous British Council research grants for projects relating to language assessment and can be seen regularly presenting their research at conferences around the world including the 'Language Testing Research Colloquium', one the most prestigious international conferences in the field.
Dr Sheehan co-wrote an article on what language assessment literacy means to teachers in the English Language Teaching Journal. You can follow Dr Sheehan's work via twitter @HuddsTESOL.
