The English language assessment competition grew out of our work with teacher educators, both pre and in -service, in the state sector in Sri Lanka. In 2017 the British Council and the Ministry of Education joined forces to run the Improving Teacher Education in Sri Lanka (iTESL) Project. A current focus in this project is training teachers in the development and assessment of speaking and listening skills. In November 2020, over 200 English language teachers and teacher educators took part in the British Council English Language Assessment MOOC. After this, they were invited to take part in a competition to develop listening and speaking assessments at secondary level. The winners were awarded at a virtual event.
The British Council and the Ministry of Education then decided to open up this competition to all secondary English language teachers and teacher educators. The competition had two aims: (1) to give teachers and teacher educators practice in developing speaking and listening assessment tasks and (2) to develop a bank of speaking and listening test items that can be used in secondary schools in Sri Lanka. The competition was open to all secondary English language teachers from government or government assisted schools and all government sector English language teacher educators.
Teachers and teacher educators had to write an assessment task for both a speaking and listening assessment for a specific grade at school. The assessments were evaluated by a team consisting of representatives from the British Council and the Ministry of Education. All participants received a certificate of participation. There were three winners
- First prize of a Samsung tablet went to Naaraayani Thavarajah
- Second prize of a smart phone went to Mayuri Sooriyampola
- Third prize of a British Council e-library membership went to Cinthuja Gowsigan
Congratulations to all our winners!