Some thoughts about ODA testing

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luke
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Re: Some thoughts about ODA testing

Postby luke » Wed Dec 07, 2022 12:27 am

Le Baron wrote:Was it Monty Python or Fry & Laurie? Or perhaps The Two Ronnies?

I could also be considered the 'administrator' who can't do. I have no talents, but for needling. I should probably go into politics, but it's bad enough already.

I was thinking Fry & Laurie.

Don't misunderstand. I wasn't criticizing your analysis. I think you're right that "reverted" and "enacted" were not good word choices in those contexts. We would expect above average language usage in a test like ODA, but what you revealed is that it is sub-par. From that, I extrapolated that the test writers were 'administrator' types. The other George Bernard Shaw quote was just to give some context for anyone who hadn't heard it before. You, as a native speaker with a rich background, I assumed knew that quote, and the Woody Allen joke quote, 'those who can't teach, teach gym'.
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Re: Some thoughts about ODA testing

Postby Le Baron » Wed Dec 07, 2022 2:49 pm

luke wrote:I was thinking Fry & Laurie.

Was it this one? :

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Re: Some thoughts about ODA testing

Postby Spaceman » Wed Dec 07, 2022 6:14 pm

You're definitely making a lot out of my light-hearted explanation of what I stated multiple times is an obvious error on their part.
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Re: Some thoughts about ODA testing

Postby Aloyse » Thu Dec 08, 2022 4:11 pm

Isn't the ODA supposed to be based on "real life" documents? And those are not necessarily "perfect". For instance the voices are sometimes slurred, the audio has poor quality etc.
So I'm not exceedingly surprised that the language itself is not perfect...
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Re: Some thoughts about ODA testing

Postby Le Baron » Thu Dec 08, 2022 11:06 pm

Aloyse wrote:Isn't the ODA supposed to be based on "real life" documents? And those are not necessarily "perfect". For instance the voices are sometimes slurred, the audio has poor quality etc.
So I'm not exceedingly surprised that the language itself is not perfect...

Interesting. That's not great news though. It's not very good to be 'tested' on something flawed, since it may mislead you into the wrong answer and affect your output score.

I'd expect the audio to have difficulties, that's one of the 'good' things, even if it makes it harder. Though they ought to filter these things for really far-out content. I heard one snippet of audio in the French using obscure words which might cause the listener to fixate on it and worry about missing something essential (though it wasn't). In general I find the open questions, i.e. that you can write into a box, pretty random. I wonder how they are judged, since it could be very wide-ranging and still completely correct/incorrect.

I did a second English test and wrote opinionated things and disagreed with things and wrote long answers. It seems to have little effect. I gained good scores on answers where I was essentially pointing out something different, but related to the actual question. I'm not convinced by the reading tests.

The listening is probably better Though maybe not for ordinary language learners because the subject matter is fixated on things like rebels taking villages, detailing the rebel group names. Clearly because it was intended for military use.
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Re: Some thoughts about ODA testing

Postby PeterMollenburg » Fri Dec 09, 2022 11:54 am

Generally I feel it's good practise to provide the full title of an acronym with the first use. ie "——— — ———" (ODA).

However, it's fairly safe to assume that acronyms such as FL, TL, IDK etc are widely understood, some being specific to the language learning sphere, others just general, but widespread. It seems it has been assumed that "ODA" fits into one of these two categories.

And yet, despite me clearly not knowing what it means, I really don't want to read lengthy posts to try to find out exactly what "ODA" stands for either. I'd rather just whinge and whine about it in a lengthy, arrogant post (I could've just asked), so please enlighten me, what does "ODA" mean?
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Re: Some thoughts about ODA testing

Postby luke » Fri Dec 09, 2022 12:36 pm

PeterMollenburg wrote:Generally I feel it's good practise to provide the full title of an acronym with the first use. ie "——— — ———" (ODA).

I agree.

I'm thinking this is the Online Diagnostic Assessment of the DLI ;) (Defense Language Institute).
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Re: Some thoughts about ODA testing

Postby Le Baron » Fri Dec 09, 2022 3:54 pm

It's Old Doddering Australians.

Well, maybe not. :lol: I thought a lot of people on here used the ODA tests.
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Re: Some thoughts about ODA testing

Postby Aloyse » Sat Dec 10, 2022 5:00 pm

Le Baron wrote:Clearly because it was intended for military use.


Additionally, for military/intelligence purposes, the goal is to decipher the military or intelligence (or gang/cartel/...) reports and orders (or phone calls, social media messages, reddit posts etc) of the enemy,
and the enemy grunts and spies or bad guys are unlikely to speak or write perfect language (since they are not teachers).

The ODA is geared towards practical understanding of those texts or utterances that may contain errors that could be made by uneducated native speakers. And with English in particular, the range of such errors is enormous what with the wide range of countries and local dialects.

So yeah it's not an academic language test.
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Re: Some thoughts about ODA testing

Postby IronMike » Sat Dec 10, 2022 11:12 pm

Aloyse wrote:Isn't the ODA supposed to be based on "real life" documents? And those are not necessarily "perfect". For instance the voices are sometimes slurred, the audio has poor quality etc.
So I'm not exceedingly surprised that the language itself is not perfect...

This explains the DLPT. (my bold)
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