LANGUAGE TESTING AND

ASSESSMENT
Attitudes to Testing and Assessment
What do teachers think What do students think
about testing and about testing and
assessment? assessment?
Test, Assessment and Teaching

Teaching

Assessment

Tests
 Assessment and Tests
• Assessment: any evaluation of a student’s
work
• All tests are assessments – but not all
assessments are tests
 Test:
 Takes place at identifiable times, under time constraints
 Uses prepared administrative procedures
 Must be able to be measured and evaluated and
reported
 A definition: a method of measuring a person’s ability,
knowledge, or performance in a given domain
Method
Measure
Individual
Performance
Domain
 Non-test assessment:
• Gives feedback to help students increase
competence
• Is an ongoing process
– Informal: e.g. impromptu feedback, marginal
comments on drafts
• Does not make fixed judgment or record results
– Formal: e.g. review of journal writing or student’s
portfolio
• May result in a recorded score, but it cannot be called a test
since it typically encompasses a wide, open domain and
takes place over an extended period of time
Types of Tests
 Formative vs. Summative
 Formative assessment aims to evaluate
students in the process of “forming” their
competencies and skills with the goal of
helping them to continue that growth process.

 Summative assessment aims to measure, or

summarize, what a student has grasped, and
typically occurs at the end of a course or unit
of instruction.
 Norm-referenced vs. Criterion-
Referenced Tests
• Norm-referenced: each score interpreted in
relation to a mean (average score), median
(middle score), standard deviation (extent of
variance in scores), and/or percentile rank
• Especially Standardized Tests, e.g. TOEFL

• Criterion-referenced: designed to give test-takers

feedback, on specific course or lesson objectives
• Especially classroom based tests
 Types of tests (purposes)
• Proficiency tests
• Diagnostic tests
• Placement tests
• Achievement tests
• Aptitude tests
• Admission tests
• Progress tests
• Language dominance tests
 Proficiency tests
• Measure general ability in a language
• Regardless of previous training
 Diagnostic tests
• Identify students’ strengths and weaknesses
• To benefit future instruction
• Difficult to construct. Lack of good ones.
 Placement tests
• To assign students to classes/programs
appropriate to their level of proficiency
• Define characteristics of each level of
proficiency
 Achievement tests
• Measure how successful students are in achieving
objectives of a lesson/course/curriculum
• Closely related to the content of a particular
lesson/course/ curriculum
• Syllabus content approach OR course objectives
approach?
• Final achievement tests / progress achievement tests
(formative assessment)
• Frequency?
 Aptitude tests
• To predict a person’s future success in learning
a (any) foreign language
• Taken before actual learning
 Admission tests
• to provide information about whether a
candidate is likely to succeed
 Progress tests
• tests—to assess students’ mastery of the
course material (during the course)
 Language dominance tests
• to assess bilingual learners’ relative strength
of the 2 languages
 Direct vs. indirect testing
• Direct testing:
-Requires Ss to perform the skill to be measured
• Indirect testing:
-Measures the abilities underlying the skills to be
measured
-Ex. A writing test that requires Ss to identify
grammatical errors in sentences
• Semi-direct testing:
-tape recorded speaking test
 Problems
• Direct testing:
-practicality (limited resources)
-small sample of tasks

• Indirect testing:
-nature of the trait to be measured
-relationship b/w test performance and skills
tested
 Discrete point vs. integrative tests
• Discrete point tests:
-Focus on one linguistic element at a time
-Assumption: language can be broken down into separate
element
-tend to be indirect
• Integrative tests:
-Requires to students to combine many linguistic elements
-Unitary trait/competence hypothesis (Oller)
-tend to be direct
-Ex. Composition, dictation, cloze tests, note-taking
 Objective vs. subjective tests
• Scoring of tests
• Objective tests:
-Requires no judgment from the scorer
-Ex. Multiple choice, T/F tests
• Subjective tests:
-Requires judgment from the scorer
-Ex. Essay questions, composition
• Different degrees of subjectivity
 A Brief History of Testing
• Hot debate in 1970s and 1980s
• Starting point: discrete-point tests
 Assumption: language can be broken down into component parts and
tests (skills (e.g. reading) and units (e.g. morphology, phonology,
discourse)

• Oller (1979) argued that language is a unified

set of interacting abilities that cannot be
separated
• Goal should be integrative test: e.g. cloze test and
dictation
 Cloze test – a sample:

The recognition that one’s feelings of (1) ____ and

unhappiness can coexist much like (2) ____ and
hate in a close relationship (3) _____ offer valuable
clues on how to (4) ____ a happier life. It suggests,
for (5) _____, that changing or avoiding things that
(6) _____ you miserable may well make you (7)
____ miserable but probably no happier.
 The Communicative Language Model
Canale & Swain (1980s) and Bachman & Palmer (1990s):
1. Grammatical or formal competence (knowledge of
grammar, lexis, phonology)
2. Sociolinguistic competence (knowledge of rules of
language use, i.e. what is appropriate depending
on speakers, settings, topics)
3. Strategic competence (ability to compensate for
imperfect linguistic resources in 2nd language)
4. Discourse competence (ability to deal with
extended use in context)
 New Goal

Communicative Language Testing should

correspond to
non-test situations
(that is, the target criterion or domain of behavior)
 Moving toward
• Performance-Based Assessment
– More student centered
– Less paper-and pencil / multiple-choice
– More productive
– More authentic
– More open-ended responses
– More integrated tasks and procedures
 New Views on Intelligence

– Gardner:
Multiple Intelligences: linguistic; logical-
mathematical; spatial; musical; bodily-kinesthetic;
interpersonal; intrapersonal

– Sternberg: recognized creative thinking and

manipulative strategies as part of intelligence

– Goleman: “EQ” – importance of emotions

 Traditional Alternative
 One-shot, standardized  Continuous long-term
 Timed, multiple choice  Untimed, free-response
 Decontextualized  Contextualized
 Scores only  Individualized feedback
 Norm-referenced  Criterion-referenced
 Focus on “right” answer  Open-ended, creative
 Summative  Formative
 Oriented to product  Oriented to process
 Non-interactive  Interactive performance
 Fosters extrinsic  Fosters intrinsic
motivation motivation
 Computer-Based Testing
• Standardized testing
• Classroom testing
• Self-testing
• Practice for test-taking
• Some individualization (through CAT)