Understanding the perspective of plurilingual assessment in teaching English at tertiary level in Ukraine

Considering the need for improving assessment instruments that measure language proficiency of plurilingual learners in the foreign language classroom, this article investigates the potential of plurilingual assessment in language education in the Ukrainian context. For this purpose, a developmental project has been carried out engaging several universities. The CEFR and its Companion Volume (CEFR/CV) were used as foundational documents to understand goals of language education and approaches to teaching, learning and assessment. The project was implemented in three phases. During phase 1, a focus was put on the analysis of contributed samples of tests (14 tests comprising 70 assessment tasks) to identify prevailing approaches to language assessment at tertiary level in the Ukrainian context. Most of the contributed assessment tasks (87%) were in English, with a smaller portion (12.8%) both in Ukrainian and English, with 11% out of 12.8% being translation tasks. No assessment tasks were in or more (2+) languages. Phase 2 aimed at empowering the teachers (n=16) with the procedures and assessment instruments to facilitate the implementation of plurilingual assessment in teaching English. Phase 3 collected teacher feedback on proposed changes to language assessment in teaching English using a questionnaire and reflection logs. The outcome of the workshops suggested that plurilingual assessment reflects real-life and professional situations that students can find themselves in but does not seem to represent common practice in the teaching context. In addition, participating teachers indicated that plurilingual assessment is of great relevance to the learning goals of their courses.