Approaches to Language Testing: From Classical to Performance-Based

MARWA & ERLIK WIDIYANI STYATI

Assessment Instrument Development

Summary of Approaches to Language Testing: From Classical to Performance-Based

The History of Language Testing

Clearly the history of language testing can be seen in the investigating of different movements in the realm of language teaching and testing from the onset of its appearance. Spolsky (1978) and Hinofotis (1981) both have pointed out that language testing can be broken into periods, or trends, of development. Hinofotis (1981) for instance, has labeled the testing trend into the pre-scientific period, the psychometric/structuralist period, and the integrative sociolinguistic period.

1. Pre-scientific Movement

Language testing has its roots in pre-scientific stage in which no special skill or expertise in testing is required. This is characterized by lack of concern for statistical considerations or for such notions as objectivity and reliability (Heaton 1988, Weir 1990; Farhady et al., 1994). In its simplest form, this trend assumes that one can and must rely completely on the subjective judgment of an experienced teacher, who can identify after a few minutes of conversation, or after reading a student’s essay, what mark to give him/her in order to specify the related language ability. The pre-scientific movement is characterized by translation tests developed exclusively by the classroom teachers. One problem that arises with these types of tests is that they are relatively difficult to score objectively; thus, subjectivity becomes an important factor in the scoring of such tests (Brown, 1996).

2. Psychometric Structuralist Movement

With the onset of the psychometric-structuralist movement of language testing, language tests became increasingly scientific, reliable, and precise. In this era, the testers and psychologists, being responsible for the development of modern theories and techniques of educational measurement, were trying to provide objective measures, using various statistical techniques to assure reliability and certain kind of validity. According to Carrol (1972), psychometric-structuralist tests typically set out to measure the discrete structural elements of language being taught in audio-lingual and related teaching methods of the time. The standard tests, constructed according to discrete point approach, were easy to administer and score and were carefully constructed to be objective, reliable and valid. Therefore, they were considered as an improvement on the testing practices of the pre-scientific movement (Brown, 1996).

The psychometric-structuralist movement was important because for the first time language test development followed scientific principles. In addition, Brown (1996) maintains that psychometric-structuralist movement could be easily handled by trained linguists and language testers. As a result, statistical analyses were used for the first time. Interestingly, psychometric-structuralist tests are still very much in evidence around the world, but they have been supplemented by what Carrol (1972) called integrative tests.

 3. Integrative- Sociolinguistic Movement to Communicative Language Testing

Language professionals began to believe that language is more than the sum of the discrete elements being tested during the psychometric-structuralist movement (Brown, 1996; Heaton 1991; Oller, 1979). The criticism came largely from Oller (1979) who argued that competence is a unified set of interacting abilities that cannot be tested apart and tested adequately. The claim was that communicative competence is so global that it requires the integration of all linguistic abilities. Such global nature cannot be captured in additive tests of grammar, reading, vocabulary, and other discrete points of language. According to Oller (1983), if discrete items take language skill apart, integrative tests put it back together; whereas discrete items attempt to test knowledge of language a bit at a time, integrative tests attempt to assess a learner’s capacity to use many bits all at the same time.

This movement has certainly its roots in the argument that language is creative. Beginning with the work of sociolinguists like Hymes (1967), it was felt that the development of communicative competence depended on more than simple grammatical control of the language; communicative competence also hinges on the knowledge of the language appropriate for different situations. Tests typical of this movement were the cloze test and dictation, both of which assess the students’ ability to manipulate language within a context of extended text rather than in a collection of discrete-point questions. The possibility of testing language in context led to further arguments that linguistic and extralinguistic elements of language are interrelated and relevant to human experience.

Consequently, the broader views of language, language use, language teaching, and language acquisition have broadened the scope of language testing, and this brought about a challenge that was articulated by Canale (1984) as the shift in emphasis from language form to language use. This shift of focus placed new demands on language as well as language testing. Evaluation within a communicative approach must necessarily address, for example, new content areas such as sociolinguistic appropriateness rules, new testing formats to permit and encourage creative, open-ended language use, new test administration procedures to emphasize interpersonal interaction in authentic situations, and new scoring procedures of a manual and judgmental nature (Canale 1984, p. 79, cited in Bachman, 1995). For both theory and practice, the challenge is thus to develop tests that reflect current views of language and language use, in that they are capable of measuring a wide range of abilities generally associated with ‘communicative competence’ and include tasks that themselves embody the essential features of communicative language use (Bachman 1995).

 REFERENCES

Bachman, L. F. (1995). Fundamental Consideration in language testing. Oxford: OUP.

Brown, J. D. (1996). Testing in language programs. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Canale, M. (1984). Testing in a communicative approach. In G.A. Jarvis (Ed.), The challenge for excellence in foreign language education (pp. 79-92). Middlebury, VT: The northeast conference organization.

Carroll, J. B. (1972). Fundamental considerations in testing for English language proficiency of foreign students. In H. B. Allen, & R. N. Campbell (Eds.), Teaching English as a second language: A book of readings (2^nd Ed.). New York: Mc Graw-Hill. 

Hymes, D. H. (1967). Models of interaction of language and social setting. Journal of Social Issues, 33, 8-28.

Oller, J. W., Jr. (1979). Language tests at school: A pragmatic approach. London: Longman.

Oller, J. W., Jr. (Ed.), (1983). Issues in language testing research. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.

Spolsky, B. (1978). Introduction: Linguistics and language testers. In B. Spolsky (Ed.), Advances in language testing series: 2. Arlington, VA: Center for Applied Linguistics.

Weir, C. J. (1990). Communicative language testing. Prentice-Hall, Inc.

Widdowson, H. G. (1983). Learning purpose and language use. Oxford: OUP.

Hughes, A. 2003. Testing for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.