Approaches to Language Testing
- 1. Language Testing/Assessment Approaches to Language Testing Reported by: Ann Liza D. Sanchez
- 2. • Approaches to Language Testing There has always been a close relationship between testing and teaching. A look at the state of the art in language testing reveals that different testing methods have been developed in accordance with various teaching methods. The history of language testing shows that it is almost impossible to work in the field of testing without being constantly concerned with teaching.
- 3. • Spolsky (1978) maintains: It is useful, though an overgeneralization, to divide language testing into three major trends which I will call the prescientific, the psychometric structuralist, and the integrative sociolinguistic. The trends follow in order but overlap in time and approach. The third picks up many elements of the first, and the second and the third coexist and compete
- 4. Madsen (1983) classifies the testing history into three stages of intuitive, scientific, and communicative. Heaton (1990) is the other scholar who classifies the testing history into four main eras. They are the essay translation, the structuralist, the integrative, and the communicative approaches. Farhady (1980) also divides the history into four periods of translation, discrete point, integrative, and functional.
- 5. The Essay- Translation Approach • This is commonly referred to as the pre-scientific stage of language testing. • No special skills or expertise in testing is required. • Test usually consist of essay writing, translation and grammatical analysis.
- 6. • Public examinations resulting from the test using this approach sometimes have an oral component at the upper intermediate and advance levels.
- 7. Strengths • This approach is easy to follow because teachers will simply use their subjective judgement • It may be used for testing any level of examinees. • The model of tester can easily be modified based on the essentials of the test.
- 8. Weaknesses • Subjective judgement of teachers tends to be biased. • The tests have a heavy literary and cultural bias
- 9. The Structuralism Approach • The structural approach to English views the language as being divided into several components; these components interact with each other and form the rules of language.
- 10. • The structural approach involves structural linguistics which stresses the importance of constructive analysis and the need to identify and measure the learners’ mastery of the separate elements of the target language.
- 11. • Grammar translation is another structuralist method of teaching English language. • Structualism in the classroom relies heavily on repetition and trial-and – error. • Teaching in this manner is often tedious.
- 12. The Integrative Approach • This involves the testing of language in context and is thus concerned primarily with meaning and total communicative effect of discourse. • This approach stated that communicative competence is so global that requires the integration of all linguistic abilities.
- 13. • According to Oller (1983), if discrete items take language skill apart, integrative test put it back together.
- 14. The Communicative Approach • Communicative language testing is intended to provide the teacher with information about the learners’ ability to perform in the target language in a certain context- specific task.
- 15. The principles of testing in the communicative language testing can be describe as the following (Anon, 1990): • Task in the test should be resemble as far as possible to the ones as would be found in real life in terms of communicative use of language
- 16. • There is a call for test items contextualization • There is a need to make test items that address a definite audience for a purposeful communicative intent to be envisioned
- 17. • Test instructions and scoring plans should touch on effective, communication of meaning rather than on grammatical accuracy.
- 18. Requirements of Communicative Testing • Brown (2005) identifies five requirements that make up what is to be called a communicative test. 1. Meaningful communication 2. Authentic situation 3. Unpredictable language input 4. Creative language output 5. Integrated language skills
- 19. The Performance Approach • Performance- based assessment believes that the students will learn best when they are given a chance to perform and show what they know according to their own plan, collect data, infer pattern, draw conclusion, take a stand or deliver presentation.
- 20. • According to Brown (2004), in developing performance-based assessment, should consider the following principle: state the overall goal of the performance specify the objectives of the performance in details
- 21. prepare the student in stepwise progressions use a reliable evaluation form, checklist or rating sheet treat performances as opportunities for giving feedback and provide that feedback systematically
- 22. Strengths Increasing learning motivation Meaningful Authentic Challenge high order thinking of students Weaknesses • Time consuming • Expensive • Challenge the teacher to match performance assessment to classroom goals and learning objectives.
- 23. References: • Corpuz, B. & Salandanan, G., (n.d.), Principles Of Teaching 2, Lorimar Publishing, Q.C.. • Angeles, M. (2013, January 25). Language Testing: Approaches and Techniques. • Mantra, I. (2013, October 13). Communicative Language Testing. • Rhalmi, M. (2012, June 12). Language Testing. • http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/1 0603/144425/11/10_chapter%20ii.pdf