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READING SKILLS AS AN OBJECT OF TESTING PROCEDURES IN INTERNATIONAL ENGLISH EXAMS AT THE UNIVERSITY // Pedagogical Review. 2019. Issue 3 (25). P. 136-150

The dynamic and multitasking character of the educational process in a tertiary institution implies the development and refinement of a knowledge quality evaluation system, which is based primarily on the school-leaving, entrance, or midterm examinations, as well as other assessment procedures being in practice in various educational institutions. In particular, the class of such procedures includes test checks, which, on the one hand, act as an effective tool, which expedites learning activities of foreign language students, and, on the other hand, reveals the level of their foreign-language competence. Testing results allow constructing a rating scale, which would demonstrate vividly students’ achievements in learning a foreign language. This paper presents a detailed description of the reading skill testing procedure used at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in the international English language examinations in the CAE (C1), TOEFL, and IELTS formats, comparative analysis of the results demonstrated by students, and general and special recommendations, which are based on the choice of this or that reading strategy for successful passing of an international exam. The authors believe that monitoring of reading skills in the testing format proves to be rather successful from the viewpoint of evaluation of linguistic competence, since a test contributes to maximum intensification of a student’s intellectual activity and is a perfect tool for verification of other linguistic skills, which is demonstrated by the results shown by the students who pass the international exams. The paper includes generalized data about test duration, volume, structure, and contents of the tests, analysis of the structure and types of the tests in the above-mentioned examination formats, and a description of the tasks to be fulfilled by the testee in the testing process, which are correlated with the three modes (regimes) of reading and the specific features of information processing that are typical of each of such reading modes. The authors give special attention to reading for specific information and scanning, reading for gist or skimming, and reading for detail, since the skills in reading for specific information and scanning and in reading for gist or skimming should be formed by students with allowance for the foreign language teaching practice accepted at HSE, and the skills of reading for detail should be upgraded. A significant factor in the testing process is the time spent by students on the quality test performance. The novelty of the approach lies in the maturity level of reading skills of first- and secondyear students, found in the process of an examination based on the international testing methods. Such a way of assessment and monitoring is a significant step forward in the development of the methods used to monitor students’ academic progress and retention of educational materials.

Keywords: testing, international exams, reading strategies, types of reading, assessment