English 418
Second Language Acquisition
Session Twenty Five Notes
Goals/Objectives:
1) To gain an understanding of the Purposes of language testing
2) To gain an understanding of which directions (back, right now, into the future) a test can look
3) To gain an understanding of the Methodologies of language tests
Questions/Main Ideas (Please Notes:
write these down as you think
 Testing/Assessment
of them)
 Purposes of testing in Second Language Acquisition
 Aptitude: Intended to predict future language learning success
 Is concerned with predicting future achievement, not in language for any specific purpose,
but in language for its own sake
 Testing/Assessment
 Design is problematic since there is no body of skill or knowledge on which to draw
 Typically, aptitude tests draw on such abilities as first-language verbal knowledge, ability
to codify unfamiliar phonemic features, and motivation
 Testing/Assessment
 Examples:
 GRE (verbal part)
 Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT)
 Testing/Assessment
 Placement Tests:
 A placement test is designed to sort new students into teaching groups, so that they can
start a course at approximately the same level as the other students in the class
 It is concerned with the student’s present standing, so it relates to general ability rather
than specific points of learning
 Testing/Assessment
 As a rule, the results are needed quickly so that teaching can begin, which puts a constraint
upon the type of test that may be given
 At the same time, a variety of tests is necessary because a range of different activities is
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more likely to give an accurate overall picture of the student’s ability
Testing/Assessment
Usually all four skill areas are tested:
Listening
Speaking
Reading
Writing
Sometimes Grammar
Testing/Assessment
The language of the test will usually consist of a variety of everyday vocabulary and
structures
Subjects:
Student’s own experience
Common human experience that attempts to avoid cultural bias
Testing/Assessment
They should be relatively formal, yet presented in a relaxed way
Often advisable for one member of the staff to see each student individually, even if only
for a few minutes, before the final class allocation is made
Can gauge the student’s personality, character, etc.
Testing/Assessment
Achievement Tests:
Refers back to previous learning and is concerned only with that
Achievement tests are typically used at the end of a period of learning, such as a school
year or a whole school or college career
The content is a sample of what has been in the syllabus during the time period under
scrutiny
Testing/Assessment
It is intended to show the standard which the students have now reached in relation to
other students at the same stage
This standard may be worldwide (such as TOEIC) or countrywide (like in China) or it may
simply relate to a school (GWAR) or program (such as an intensive English program)
Testing/Assessment
The important point about an achievement test is that the standard remains consistent as far
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as possible from course to course and from year to year
Relates to long-term rather than short-term objectives and covers a wide range of materials
Testing/Assessment
This brings up a problem of sampling, since all that has been learned in a year (for example)
cannot be assessed in one day, yet the test must reflect the content of the whole course (a
problem of validity)
Reliability is also important here, especially if the student has been taught by more than
one teacher during the time period
Testing/Assessment
Proficiency Tests:
The aim of the proficiency test is to assess the student’s ability to apply in actual situations
what s/he has learned
It seeks to answer the question:
“Having learned this much, what can the student do with it?”
Testing/Assessment
It is not, however, generally related to any particular course because it is concerned with the
student’s current standing in relation to future needs
The TOEFL test is an example of a proficiency test
The proficiency test is also interested in what has been learned, but in a much more vague
way
Testing/Assessment
Unlike the achievement test, the proficiency test exhibits no control over previous learning
Instead, it establishes generalizations on the basis of typical syllabuses leading to entry
Is more directly related to what it attempts to predict, namely performance in the language
under test on some future activity
Testing/Assessment
Validity is important:
Are you actually testing what a student needs to know? Such as taking notes, listening to
lectures, writing papers, etc.
Testing/Assessment
Diagnostic Tests:
The diagnostic test is the reverse side of achievement tests in the sense that while the
interest in the achievement test is in success, the interest in the diagnostic test is in failure,
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what has gone wrong, in order to develop remedies
Testing/Assessment
The content of a diagnostic test is quite specific, referring back to recent class work
It is intended to have positive results for the student by encouraging him or her with success
or pointing out exactly what he or she needs to do to improve
Testing/Assessment
Validity is fairly easy to establish, since there is a direct link with known content
In general, diagnostic tests should look like extensions of teaching materials
In this sense, it relates to short-term objectives
Testing/Assessment
Methodology of testing in Second Language Acquisition
Discrete Point Testing: constructed on the assumption that language can be broken down
into its component parts and those parts can be adequately tested
Testing/Assessment
Those components are basically the “four skills” – (listening, speaking, reading, and
writing) or the various hierarchical units of language (phonology, morphology, lexicon,
syntax), etc.
The assumption of discrete point testing is that adequate sampling of these units will
achieve validity
Testing/Assessment
This has met with criticism, primarily by John Oller (1976, 1979)
Oller argued that language competence is a unified set of interacting abilities that cannot
be separated apart and tested adequately
Testing/Assessment
The claim is that communicative competence is so global and requires such integration of
skills that it cannot be captured in additive tests of grammar and reading and vocabulary and
other discrete points of language
Thus, he called for integrative testing: integrative tests attempt to assess a learner’s
capacity to use many bits of language all at the same time
Testing/Assessment
Two types of tests have been held up as prime examples of integrative tests:
First is called a cloze test: a reading passage (often between 150 and 300 words) where
every nth word (usually every sixth or seventh) has been deleted
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The testee is required to supply words that fit into those blanks
Testing/Assessment
Here is an example:
A thesaurus is another useful reference (1) ________ people interested in words. It’s what
(2) _______ reach for when you’re writing and (3) _______ can’t think of the right word.
Thesauruses (4)_______ synonyms (words with similar meanings), antonyms ((5)_______
with opposite meanings), and other related (6)_______.
Testing/Assessment
Do not use your thesaurus for definitions, pronunciation, (7)_______ other information that
requires dictionary reference. (8)_______, like dictionaries, thesauruses are available in
(9)_______ or paperback as well as on (10)_______ Internet or on CD or other word
processing software.
Testing/Assessment
Oller claims that close tests results are good measures of overall proficiency
According to theoretical constructs underlying this claim, the ability to supply appropriate
words in blanks requires a number of abilities that lie at the very heart of competence in a
language:
Testing/Assessment
Knowledge of vocabulary, grammatical structure, and discourse structure
Reading skills and strategies
An internalized “expectancy grammar” (IOW, the ability to predict what should come
next)
It is argued that successful completion of a cloze test taps into all of those abilities, which
are the center of language proficiency
Testing/Assessment
The second is called a dictation test: a relatively short passage (100 to 200 words) is read
by the teacher to the students
Usually read three times
The first time is at normal speed while students just listen
The second time the passage is broken up into chunks or phrases long enough to challenge
the listener
Testing/Assessment
At this point, the students should be writing down what they hear
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The third time the passage is read at normal speed again
At this point, students should check their renditions for accuracy
The argument, again, is that it taps into certain grammatical and discourse competencies
Testing/Assessment
Successful completion requires careful listening, reproduction in writing of what is heard,
efficient short term memory, and some expectancy rules to aid the short-term memory
In the last 15 years or so, there has been a strong move toward communicative testing:
tests for grammatical, discourse, and sociolinguistic competence
Testing/Assessment
It has to be pragmatic in that it requires the learner to use language naturally for genuine
communication and to relate to thoughts and feelings
In short, it puts authentic language to use within a context
And it should test the learner in a variety of language functions
Testing/Assessment
Essentially you do this by creating an “information gap” that the student has to fill
Communicative tests require students to process complementary information through the
use of multiple sources of input
They build off of content from earlier sections of the test
Testing/Assessment
Attempts to measure a much broader range of language abilities than did earlier tests, which
focus on the formal aspects of language (that is, language as a system)
Testing/Assessment
One final thing to think about:
Tests have “washback” or “backwash”
IOW, tests have effects on teaching and learning in the classroom
We should not teach toward the test, but tests can be used as teaching tools
Testing/Assessment
Tests become feedback devices where a student perceives elements of communicative
performance that need to be improved
Formal tests must therefore be learning devices through which students can receive
diagnosis or areas of strength and weakness
Summary/Minute Paper: