11/01/2017
An English teacher from Villa Nueva, Argentina has been awarded a scholarship from a department of Cambridge University to attend a top conference held in Scotland. Erica Sofía Carignano will be funded to go to the IATEFL conference in Glasgow, Scotland, which is attended by thousands of language teaching professionals from around the world. Erica won the scholarship by writing an essay on the effectiveness of English language tests. Her ideas caught the eyes of an expert judging panel and she was chosen from over 500 English language teaching and assessment professionals who applied for the Cambridge English Scholarships last summer.
She has been awarded the Cambridge English John Trim Scholarship. John Trim was the co-ordinating author of the CEFR and founder of the linguistics department at the University of Cambridge.
Erica explains: ‘Of course English language tests are really important, but whether they favour learning depends on a huge number of factors. Students are often made to sit tests as part of large-scale, centralised decisions. This can have a really positive impact but it’s important to remember that learning is a lifelong journey, as well as an individual process, and this needs to be reflected in how tests are developed and administered’.
The judging panel was made up of experts from Cambridge Assessment English, which is a department of Cambridge University.
Dr Nick Saville, who heads up the Research and Thought Leadership team at Cambridge English, said: ‘The judging panel thought Erica’s entry dealt with the relationship between learning and assessment in a thoughtful way. She related the question to her own context, giving examples from both the classroom and education policy in her country. As a result she provided a clear picture of how learning and assessment can go hand in hand in a well-designed learning context’.