Language Testing: Approaches and Techniques
Table of Contents
I.
II.
III.
IV.
Overview
Discussion Paper
A. Language Testing Approaches
B. Language Testing Techniques
Researches
Bibliography
Overview
I.
Language Testing : Approaches and Techniques
A. Approaches to Language Testing
1. The Essay – Translation Approaches
a. Characteristics and Types of Test in Essay-Translation Approach (ETA)
b. Strengths of ETA
c. Weaknesses of ETA
2. The Structuralist Approach
a. Characteristics and Types of Test of the Structuralist Approach (SA)
b. Strengths of SA
c. Weaknesses of Essay
3. The Integrative Approach
a. Characteristics and Types of Test of Integrative Approach (IA)
b. Strengths of IA
c. Weaknesses of IA
4. The Communicative Approach
a. Characteristics and Types of Test of Communicative Approach (CA)
b. Strengths of CA
c. Weaknesses of CA
B. Test Techniques
1. Direct vs. Indirect Testing
2. Discrete Point vs. Integrative Testing
3. Norm- Referenced vs. Criterion- Referenced Testing
4. Objective vs. Subjective
Discussion Paper
LANGUAGE TESTING: Approaches & Techniques
I. Approaches to Language Testing
A. The Essay-Translation Approach
1. Characteristics and Types of Tests
a. This is commonly referred to as the pre-scientific stage of language testing.
b. No special skill or expertise in testing is required.
c. Tests usually consist of essay writing, translation and grammatical analysis.
d. Tests have a heavy literary and cultural bias.
e. Public examinations resulting from the tests using this approach sometimes have an oral
component at the upper intermediate and advance levels
2. Strengths of Essay-Translation Approach
a. This approach is easy to follow because teachers will simply use their subjective
judgement.
b. The essay-translation approach may be used for testing any level of examinees.
c. The model of tester can easily be modified based on the essentials of the tests.
3. Weaknesses of Essay-Translation Approach
a. Subjective judgment of teachers tends to be biased.
b. As mentioned, the tests have a heavy literary and cultural bias.
B.
The Structuralist Approach
1. Characteristics and Types of Tests
a. This approach views that language learning is chiefly concerned with systematic
acquisition of a set of habits.
b. The structuralist 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 such as phonology, vocabulary and
grammar.
c. Testing the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing is separate from another
as much as possible.
d. The psychometric approach to measurement with its emphasis on reliability and
objectivity forms an integral part of structuralist testing.
2. Strengths of Structuralist Approach
a. In testing students’ capability, this approach may objectively and surely be used by
testers.
b. Many forms of tests can be covered in the test in a short time.
c. Using this approach in testing will help students find their strengths and weaknesses in
every skill they study.
3. Weaknesses of Structuralist Approach
a. It tends to be a complicated job for teachers to prepare questionnaires using this
approach.
b. This approach considers measuring non-integrated skills more than integrated skills.
C. The Integrative Approach
1. Characteristics and Types of Tests a. This approach involves the testing of language in context and is thus concerned
primarily with meaning and the total communicative effect of discourse.
b. Integrative tests are concerned with a global view of proficiency
c. Integrative testing involves functional language but not the use of functional language.
d. The use of cloze test, dictation, oral interview, translation and essay writing are
included in many integrative tests.
2. Strengths of Integrative Approach
a. The approach to meaning and the total communicative effect of discourse will be very
useful for students in testing.
b. This approach can view students’ proficiency with a global view.
c. A model cloze test used in this approach measures the reader’s ability to decode
‘interrupted’ and ‘mutilated’ messages by making the most acceptable substitutions
from all the contextual clues available.
d. Dictation, another type using this approach, was regarded solely as a means of
measuring students’ skills of listening comprehension
3. Weakness of Integrative Approach
a. Even if many think that measuring integrated skills is better, sometimes there is a need
to consider the importance of measuring skills based on students’ need, such as writing
only, speaking only, etc.
D. Communicative Approach
-
lays more emphasis on the notion and function, like agreeing, persuading,
or inviting, that language means in communication.
-
used to measure language learners’ ability to use the target language in
authentic situations.
-
beliefs that someone/ a student is considered successful in learning the
target language if she/he can communicate or use knowledge and skills by
way of authentic listening, speaking, reading and writing.
The principles of testing in the communicative language testing can be describe as the
following (Anon,1990):
−
Tasks in the test should resemble as far as possible to the ones as would be found in
real life in terms of communicative use of language
−
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 (goal) to be envisioned (might happen).
−
Test instructions and scoring plans should touch on effective, communication of
meaning rather than on grammatical accuracy
1. Characteristics and Types of Tests
a. Communicative tests are concerned primarily with how language is used in
communication.
b. Language use is often emphasized to the exclusion of language usage.
c. The attempt to measure different language skills in communicative tests is based on a
view of language referred to as divisibility hypothesis.
d. The test content should totally be relevant for a particular group of examinees and the
tasks set should relate to real-life situation.
e. Communicative testing introduces the concept of qualitative modes of assessment in
preference to quantitative modes of assessment.
2. Strengths of Communicative Approach
a. Communicative tests are able to measure all integrated skills of students.
b. The tests using this approach face students in real life so it will be very useful for them.
c. Because a communicative test can measure all language skills, it can help students in
getting the score. Consider students who have a poor ability in using spoken language
but may score quite highly on tests of reading.
d. Detailed statements of each performance level serve to increase the reliability of the
scoring by enabling the examiner to make decisions according to carefully drawn-up
and well-established criteria.
3. Weaknesses of Communicative Approach
a. Unlike the structuralist approach, this approach does not emphasize learning structural
grammar, yet it may be difficult to achieve communicative competence without a
considerable mastery of the grammar of a language.
b. It is possible for cultural bias to affect the reliability of the tests being administered.
II. Test Techniques
A. Direct versus Indirect Testing
Direct Testing
1. Characteristic/s:
a. This test requires the candidate to demonstrate ability in the skill being sampled.
b. It is a performance test.
c. Assessment and interpretation are quite straightforward.
2. Advantages
a. Easier to carry out when it is intended to measure speaking and writing skills.
b. Require the candidate to perform precisely the skill that the test wishes to
measure.
c. Relatively straightforward to create conditions.
Indirect Testing
1. Characteristic/s
a. Measures the abilities that underlie the skills in which the test is interested.
2. Advantages
a. Ask student to reflect on their own learning.
3. Disadvantages
a. Provide only impressions and opinions, not hard evidences.
b. It takes time to carry out.
c. It does not give any direct indication of the candidates’ oral proficiency,
accuracy, or appropriateness of pronunciation.
d. An indirect approach involves the testing of enabling skills at a micro-level.
B. Discrete Point versus Integrative Testing
Discrete-point Testing Approach
1. Characteristic/s:
a. It is constructed on the assumption that language can be divided into its component
parts, and those parts can be tested successfully.
b. The components are the skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing, and various
unit of language of phonology, morphology, lexicon, and syntax.
c. It aims to achieve a high reliability factor by testing a large number of discrete
items, but each question tests only one linguistic point.
2. Strength of Discrete point test
a. The test of this approach can cover a wide range of scope of materials to be put in
the tests.
b. The test allows quantification on the students’ responses.
c. In the term of scoring, the test is also reliable because of its objectivity; the scoring
is efficient, even it can be performed by machine.
3. Weaknesses of Discrete point test
a. Constructing discrete point test items is potentially energy and time consuming.
b. The test do not include social context where verbal communication normally take
place.
c. Success in doing the test is not readily inferable to the ability of the test taker to
communicate in real life circumstances.
4. Example/s:
a. Phoneme recognition
b. Yes/No, True/ False answers
c. Spelling
d. Word completion
e. Grammar items
f. Multiple choice tests
Integrative Testing Approach
1. Characteristic/s:
a. It involves the testing of language in context and is thus concerned primarily with
meaning and the total communicative effect of discourse.
b. This approach stated that communicative competence is so global that it requires
the integration of all linguistic abilities. 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.
2. Advantage/s of Integrative Test
a. The approach to meaning and the total communicative effect of discourse will be
very useful for pupils in testing
b. This approach can view pupils’ proficiency with a global view.
c. The strength of the test such as dictation, writing, and cloze test is that relatively
cheap and easy to make
3. Weaknesses of Integrative Test
a. Even if measuring integrated skills are better but sometimes teacher should
consider the importance of measuring skills based on particular need, such as
writing only, speaking only.
b. The scoring is not efficient and not reliable.
4. Examples of integrative test are:
a. Cloze tests
b. Dictation
c. Translation
d. Essays and other coherent writing tasks.
e. Oral interviews and conversation.
f. Reading or other extended samples of real text.
Example:
2. Cloze Test
- It measures the reader’s ability to decode interrupted or mutilated messages
by making the most acceptable substitutions from all the contextual clues.
- Cloze procedure is considered a very good teaching device.
- Filling in a gap in a cloze exercise is not just a matter of perceiving local
redundancy but rather involves an awareness of the flow of discourse across
sentences. In fact, to complete a cloze passage correctly requires the learners
to have linguistic, textual and sometimes world knowledge.
Fill-in-the-blank tests that work at the sentential level and do not require the
processing of long stretches of discourse and are disjointed cannot be
considered as integrative. Take for example the following question which is taken
from the mid-year examination of one of the best intermediate schools in Baghdad*.
The rubric of the question reads, Fill in the blanks with the words from the list
below. [Fertile, supply, cash, experiments, dams, stops, safely].
1.Could you —— this traveler’s cheque, please?
2.———— are used to store water and control its flow.
3.The pilot made many ———— during the journey.
4. Iraq is a ————— country.
5.The aeroplane landed ————— at the airport.
Types of cloze Tests:
There are five major types of cloze tests:
a.
Standard cloze tests: In this type of cloze tests, the deletion rate is mechanically set.
It is between every 5th and 10lh word. The examinee has to fill each blank with the
word which he she thinks have been deleted at standard intervals and replaced by a
standard blank space.
b. Modified cloze tests: This type of cloze tests is used to monitor the progress of a
class or an individual by concentrating on items of grammar or vocabulary. A
rational system of deletion is followed, i.e., the deletion is decided by the examiner
according to the purpose of the test. If the purpose is to test grammar, then function
words, verb tenses and the like grammatical aspects are deleted. It has been argued
that a modified cloze test has the advantages of being more practical as it would not
take extra time to produce; the results would be easier to interpret since they yield
themselves to quantification and certain weak deletions which have been mentioned
earlier in this study could be avoided and replaced by more meaningful
grammatical and lexical items.
Below is an example of a modified cloze test with rational deletion:
My brother and I sometimes go to a football match. Last Friday, we saw
a match————we greatly enjoyed.———— two teams———fast and skilful. The
forwards maneuvered———shot hard and straight ———.
c. Multiple-choice cloze tests: Multiple-choice cloze tests are a compromise between
modern and post-modern testing methods. This compromise does inevitably change
the nature of the test and let it fall squarely into the psychometric domain. It is objective
and reliable but does not necessarily test the overall language abilities of the examinee
( Weir, 1988).
Consider the following example of a multiple-choice cloze test:
While I was standing——1——a red light at the corner, a yellow car 2—the light
and hit a blue car which was —3——— through the intersection. Obviously, the
driver of the yellow 4——— was at fault
Space 1: a. in
b. with c. at
d. from
Space 2: a. ran
b. put out c. left
d. put on
Space 3: a. racing b. going c. driving d. stopping
Space 4: a. lorry b. car
c. bike
d. van
d. C Test: According to Alderson (1995), a c-test involves mechanical deletion of
every second word and half of each deleted word remain in the texts so as to
give the examinee a clue as to what is missing. Consider the following
example taken from Alderson et al., (1995:56).
Each blank in the test below must be filled by the second half of a word. If the
whole word has an even number of letters then exactly half are missing:
to = t———, that = th——If the whole word has an uneven number of letters, one more than half are missing:
the = th————; their = the————; letters = let
Have you heard about camera that can peer into the ground and see a buried city
? or another th———can he——scientists est—when a vol——— will er——?
still ano——that c——— show—— h————deep a bu——has go——into fl—
—— ?.
e. Cloze elide: Judging by its name, this type of cloze test requires the testee to elide
words which are inserted in the passage of the test and do not belong to it. This technique
is not new and it has been used much earlier. Davies (1965) has used the technique and
call it (intrusive word techniques) consider the following example:
Instructions: In the following passage there are words that are inserted deliberately where
they do not belong. Read the passage and delete these words:
When I was being standing at a red light, a yellow car ran over the light and hit
a blue car is going through the intersection. The driver of the yellow car he was at
fault.............
3. Dictation
-
it ensures attentive listening; it trains pupils to distinguish sounds; it helps
fix concepts of punctuation; it enables pupils to learn to transfer oral sounds
to written symbols; it helps to develop aural comprehension; and it assists
in self-evaluation.
Benefits of Dictation:
Dictation makes the students and the teacher aware of the students'
comprehension errors--phonological, grammatical, or both. In English, typical errors
include the frequent omissions of bound morphemes such as:
1.
The -s plural
2.
The -'s possessive
3.
The -s third person singular
4.
The -ed ending for regular past participles.
C. Norm-Referenced versus Criterion-Referenced Testing
Norm-Referenced Test
1. Characteristics:
a. designed to measure global language abilities:
▪ overall English language proficiency,
▪ academic listening comprehension,
▪ reading comprehension
2. Advantages:
a. The idea is to spread the students out on a continuum of knowledge
3. Disadvantages:
a. students’ scores are interpreted relative to the scores of all other students
who took the test
Criterion-Referenced Test
1. Characteristic/s:
a. Measures students’ ability against the predetermined standard
b. designed to measure well-defined and fairly specific objectives.
c. objectives can be specific to a particular course, program, school district,
or state.
2. Advantage/s:
a. Interpretation of scores is absolute and may be representational
b. The students’ scores are interpreted absolutely in the sense that each
student’s score is meaningful without reference to the other students.
c. A student’s score on a particular objective shows the percentage of the
knowledge or skill in that objective that the student has learned.
3. Disadvantage/s:
D. Objective versus Subjective Testing
Objective Testing
1. Characteristics
a. If no judgement is required on the part of a scorer.
b. Objective in the sense that there is only one answer.
c. Measures an individual’s characteristics independent on rater’s bias.
d. Tend to have more validity.
2. Advantages
a. Surveys wide variety of material, in very little time.
b. Answer key is unambiguous.
c. Not bias; no judgement on the part of scorer is needed
d. Very easy to mark.
e. Test takers cannot create alternative answers.
3.Disadvantages
a.
It promotes guessing.
b.
Time consuming to construct.
c.
Do not reveal thinking process.
4.
Examples of Objective Test
a.
Multiple Choice test
Example:
As societies increases complexities from folk to industrial, social
control is most likely to be invested in the
a. Family
b. School
c. State
d. Peer group
e. Religious structure
b.
True Or False
A poem with a following rhyme scheme could be
correctly referred to as an English sonnet: abab, cdcd, efef , gg.
c.
Matching Type
The first column is list of words; match it with their correct meaning
presented in second column.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Blind
Red
Reject
Liver
Show
a. not able to see
b. body organ
c. reveal
d. disapprove
e. scarlet
Subjective Test
1. Characteristics
a. If judgement is called for.
b. If the scorer is not looking for any one right answer.
c. Based on opinion and involves personal feelings.
d. Depends on the condition of mind to make logical claims.
e. Test requires the examinee in free composition
2. Advantages
a. Able to measure language skills naturally, almost the way English was used in
real life.
b. Able to evaluate clearly if the student understood the subject matter.
c. Subjective test is easy to construct.
d. It is time rewarded when it comes to test construction.
e. Evidences are visible why the test taker comes up with the answer.
3. Disadvantages
a. Answers are not specific.
b. Judgment for the answer is influenced by the taste, preferences, and impression
of the rater.
c. The rater could be biased in rating the answer.
d. Marking/ or scoring subjective answer is very time consuming.
4. Sample test
a.
b.
c.
d.
Essays
Definition
Scenario question
Opinion question
Bibliography
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Lorimar Publishing Inc, 2010.
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