- The
essay-translation approach
b. The
structuralist approach
c. The
integrative approach
d. The
communicative approach
A
useful test will generally incorporate features of several of these approaches.
Indeed, a test may have certain inherent weaknesses simply because it is
limited to one approaches, however, attractive that approach may appear.
a.
The essay-translation approach
This
approach is commonly referred to as the pre-scientific stage of language
testing. No special skill or expertise in testing is required; the subjective
judgment of the teacher is considered to be of paramount importance. Tests
usually consist of essay writing, translation and grammatical analysis (often
in the form of comments about the language being learnt). Resulting from the
essay translation approach sometimes have an aural/oral component at the upper
intermediate and advanced levels – though this has sometimes been regarded in
the past as something additional and in no way.
This
approach is characterized by the view that language learning is chiefly
concerned with the systematic acquisition of a set of habits. It draws on the
work of structural linguistics, in particular the importance of contrastive
analysis and the need to identify and measure the learner’s mastery of the
separate elements of the target language ; phonology, vocabulary and grammar.
These skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing are also separated
from one another as much as possible because it is considered essential to test
one thing at a time.
b. The
structuralist approach
Such features of the
structuralist approach are, of course still valid for certain types of test and
for certain purposes. For example, the desire to concentrate on the tastes
ability to write by attempting to separate a composition test from reading
(i.e. by making it wholly independent of the ability to read long and
complicated instructions or verbal stimuli) is commendable in certain respects.
The psychometric approach to
measurement with its emphasis on reliability and objectivity forms an integral
part of structuralist testing. At this point, however, the danger of confusing
methods of testing with approaches to testing should be stressed. The issue is
not basically a question of multiple – choice testing versus communicative
testing. There still a limited use for multiple-choice items in many
communicative tests especially for reading and listening comprehension
purposes. Exactly the same argument can be applied to the use of several other
item types.
c. The
integrative approach
This approach involves the
testing of language in context and is thus concerned primarily with meaning and
total communicative effect of discourse. Consequently, integrative test do not
seek to separate language skills into neat divisions in order to improve test
reliability; instead, they are often designed to assess the learner’s ability
to use two or more skills simultaneously. Thus integrative tests are concerned
with a global view proficiency – an underlying language competence or grammar
of expectancy, which it is argued every leaner possesses regardless of the
purpose for which the language is being learnt. Integrative testing involves
functional language but not the use of functional language. Integrative tests
are best characterized by the use of cloze testing and of dictation. Oral
interviews, translation and essay writing are also included in many integrative
tests – a point frequently overlooked by those who take too narrow a view of
integrative testing.
There are two methods of
scoring a cloze test: one mark may be awarded for each acceptable answer or
else one mark may be awarded for each exact answer. Both methods have been
found reliable: some argue that the former method is very little better than
the latter and doesn’t really justify the additional work entailed in defining
what constitutes an acceptable answer for each item. Nevertheless, it appears a
fairer test for the students if any reasonable equivalent is accepted. In
addition, no student should be penalized for misspellings unless a word is so
badly spelt that it cannot be understood. Grammatical errors, however, should
be penalized in those cloze tests which are designed to measure familiarity
with the grammar of the language rather than reading.
Cloze procedure as a measure of
reading difficulty and reading comprehension will be treated briefly in the
relevant section of the chapter on testing reading comprehension. Research
studies, however, have shown that performance on cloze tests correlates highly
with the listening, writing and speaking abilities. In other words, cloze
testing is a good indicator of general
linguistic ability, including the ability to use language appropriately
according to particular linguistic and situational contexts. It is argued that
three types of knowledge are required in order to perform successfully on a
cloze test: linguistic knowledge, textual knowledge and knowledge of the world.
The following is an extract from an advance
level cloze passage in which every fifth word has been deleted.
Dictation, another major type
of integrative test, was previously regarded solely as means of measuring
students’ skills of listening comprehension. The integrated skills involved in
tests of dictation include auditory discrimination, the auditory memory span,
spelling, the recognition of sounds segments, a familiarity with the
grammatical and lexical patterning of the language and overall textual comprehension.
Dictation tests can prove good predictors of global language ability even
though some recent research has found that dictation tends to measure
lower-order language skills such as straightforward comprehension rather than
the higher – order skills such as inference. The dictation of longer pieces of
discourse (i.e. 7 to 10 words at a time) is recommended as being preferable to
the dictation of shorter word of groups (i.e. three to five words at a time) as
in traditional dictations of the past.
The following is an example of
part of dictation passage, suitable for use at an intermediate or fairly
advanced level. The oblique strokes denote the units which the examiner must
observe when dictating.
d. The
communicative approach
The communicative approach to
language testing is sometimes linked to the integrative approach. However,
although both approaches emphasize the importance of the meaning of utterances
rather than their form and structure, there are nevertheless fundamental
differences between the two approaches. Communicative test are concerned
primarily with how language used in communication. Consequently, most aim to
incorporate task, which approximate as closely as possible to those facing the
students in real life. Success is judged in terms of the effectiveness of the
communication which takes place rather than formal linguistic accuracy.
Language ‘use’ is often emphasized to the exclusion of language ‘usage’. ‘Use’
is concerned with how people actually use language for a multitude of different
purposes while ‘usage’ concerns the formal patterns of language. The
communicative approach would argue that communicative competence could ever be
archived without a considerable mastery of the grammar of a language.
The attempt to measure
different language skills in communicative test is based on a view of language
referred to as the divisibility hypothesis. Communicative testing results in an
attempt to obtain different profiles of a learner’s performance in the
language. Communicative testing draws heavily on the recent work on aptitude
testing. The score obtained on a communicative test will thus result in several
measures of proficiency rather than simply one overall measure. The degrre of
detail in the various profiles listed will depend largely on the type of test
and the purpose for which it is being constructed.
Unlike the separate testing of
skills in the structuralist approach, moreover, it is felt in communicative
testing that sometimes the assessment of language skills in isolation may have
only a very limited relevant to real life. Since language is decontextualised
in psychometric-structural tests, it is often a simple matter for the same test
to be used globally for any country in the world. Communicative test on the
other hand, must of necessity reflect the culture of a particular country
because of their emphasis on context and the use of the authentic materials. It
is not only should test content be totally relevant for a particular group
testees but the tasks set should relate to real life situations, usually
specific to a particular country or culture.
The most criterion for
communicative test is that they should be based on precise and detailed
specification