STANDARDISATION OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING IN HIGHER EDUCATION: INTENTIONS AND REALITY

The paper addresses some key issues of standardisation within the field of foreign language teaching at the tertiary level in the Czech educational context. It draws on the experience accumulated in the area of foreign language assessment and evaluation at the Language Centre of the University of Pardubice within the long-term project funded by the European Union. The case study of the standardisation procedures at a medium sized university presents the innovative efforts of the particular language teaching department and focuses especially on the role of the electronic placement tests which are administered to large numbers of students at the beginning of their university studies. Besides, the principles of differentiated teaching are discussed both in terms of specifying the content of foreign language courses and developing effective final language tests. The research data are analysed from the perspective of measuring the students' language achievement, as well as by means of identifying the students' subjective perceptions of foreign language education.