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Language Proficiency Assessment: a Competence-Based Approach
The aim of the Research: Nowadays all components of University undergraduate education must be revised due to the changes in the educational anthropocentric paradigm. These transformations leads to revision of the procedures for assessment of proficiency level of the students’ competences. The existing assessment procedures do not give evidence of the dynamics of personal transformation of students; do not allow to identify the learners’ level of compliance with the requirements of the educational standards. The authors propose how to develop assessment procedures to identify the competencies necessary for students to conduct an intercultural dialogue. Materials and Methods: The article exemplifies the parameters of assessment, which are aimed at identifying students’ competencies. The parameters are as follows: precision of the objects of assessment, professional validity of assessment, integrated content of assessment procedures, consideration of manifestation of personal characteristics of students in the process of assessment, ’embeddability’ of assessment in educational technologies, transparency of assessment for the learners, transparency of procedures for all the participants of the educational process and consumers of educational products, implementation of user-friendly technique of self-assessment. Results: Validity check of various forms of assessment, applied experimentally in the process of English language teaching (One-on-One Interviews, Professionally Oriented Debate, Task-Based Assessment, Business Game) has proved that the Professionally Oriented Debate format is the most appropriate for given parameters. Conclusion: Given in the article trend of improvement of the forms of assessment will increase the quality of identification of the planned educational outcomes - professionally significant competences of students.