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LECTURE NOTES 6B - Approach and Techniques of Language Testing

The document discusses different approaches and techniques for language testing. It describes four main approaches: the essay-translation approach, the structuralist approach, the integrative approach, and the communicative approach. It also discusses direct versus indirect testing, discrete point versus integrative testing, norm-referenced versus criterion-referenced testing, and objective versus subjective testing. The approaches and techniques provide different ways to test language skills and proficiency.

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Theresa Nova Dologmandin-Villaester
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94 views5 pages

LECTURE NOTES 6B - Approach and Techniques of Language Testing

The document discusses different approaches and techniques for language testing. It describes four main approaches: the essay-translation approach, the structuralist approach, the integrative approach, and the communicative approach. It also discusses direct versus indirect testing, discrete point versus integrative testing, norm-referenced versus criterion-referenced testing, and objective versus subjective testing. The approaches and techniques provide different ways to test language skills and proficiency.

Uploaded by

Theresa Nova Dologmandin-Villaester
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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LANGUAGE TESTING: APPROACHES AND TECHNIQUES

I. Approaches to Language Testing

Approximately, language tests can be categorized according to four main approaches to


testing. They are the essay-translation approach, the structuralist approach, the integrative
approach and the communicative approach.

The Essay-Translation Approach

Characteristics and Types of Tests


1. This approach is commonly referred to as the pre-scientific stage of language testing.
2. No special skill or expertise in testing is required.
3. Tests usually consist of essay writing, translation, and grammatical analysis.
4. Tests have a heavy literary and cultural bias.
5. Public examinations resulting from the tests using this approach sometimes have an oral
component at the upper intermediate and advance levels.

Strengths
1. This approach is easy to follow because teachers will simply use their subjective judgment.
2. The essay-translation approach may be used for testing any level of examinees.
3. The model of tester can easily be modified based on the essentials of the tests.

Weaknesses
1. Subjective judgment of teachers tends to be biased.
2. As mentioned, the tests have a heavy literary and cultural bias.

The Structural Approach

Characteristics and Types of Tests


1. This approach views that language learning is chiefly concerned with a systematic
acquisition of a set of habits.
2. The structuralist approach involves structural linguistics which stresses the importance of
constructive analysis and the need to identify and measure the learner’s mastery of the
separate elements of the target language such as phonology, vocabulary and grammar.
3. Testing the skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing is separate from another as
much as possible.
4. The psychometric approach to measurement with its emphasis on reliability and
objectivity forms an integral part of structural testing.

Strengths
1. In testing students’ capability, this approach may objectively and surely be used by testers.
2. Many forms of tests can be covered in the test in a short time.
3. Using this approach in testing will help students find their strengths and weaknesses in
every skill they study.
Weaknesses
1. It tends to be a complicated job for teachers to prepare questionnaires using this approach.
2. This approach considers measuring non-integrated skills more than integrated skills.

The Integrative Approach

Characteristics and Types of Tests


1. This approach involves the testing of language in context and is thus concerned primarily
with meaning and the total communicative effect of discourse.
2. Integrative tests are concerned with a global view of proficiency.
3. Integrative testing involves functional language but not the use of functional language.
4. The use of cloze test, dictation, oral interview, translation and essay writing are included
in many integrated tests.

Strengths
1. The approach to meaning and the total communicative effect of discourse will be very
useful for students in testing.
2. This approach can view students’ proficiency with a global view.
3. A model cloze test used in this approach measures the reader’s ability to decode interrupted
or mutilated messages by making the most acceptable substitutions from all the contextual
clues available.
4. Dictation, another type using this approach, was regarded solely as a means of measuring
students’ skills of listening comprehension.

Weaknesses
Even if many thinks 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.

The Communicative Approach

Characteristics and Types of Tests


1. Communicative tests are concerned primarily with how language is used in
communication.
2. Language use is often emphasized to the exclusion of language usage.
3. The attempt to measure different language skills in communicative tests is based on a view
of language referred to as the divisibility hypothesis.
4. The test content should totally be relevant for a particular group of examinees and the tests
set should relate to real-life situation.
5. Communicative testing introduces the concept of qualitative modes of assessment in
preference to quantitative modes of assessment.
Strengths
1. Communicative tests are able to measure all integrated skills of students.
2. The tests using this approach face students in real life so it will be very useful for them.
3. Because a communicative test can measure all language skills, it can help students in
getting the score.
4. 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.

Weaknesses
1. 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.
2. It is possible for cultural bias to affect the reliability of the tests being administered.

II. Test Techniques

Direct versus Indirect Testing

Direct Testing- it requires the candidate to perform precisely the skill that the test wishes to
measure.

• To know how well candidates can write compositions, get them to write compositions.
• To know how well they pronounce a language, get them to speak.
• Is easier to carry out when it is intended to measure the productive skills of speaking and
writing.

Direct testing has a number of attractions:


1. Provide the abilities that should be assessed is clear, it is relatively straightforward to create
the conditions which will elicit the behavior on which judgment will be based.
2. The assessment and interpretation of students’ performance are also quite straightforward
and; there is likely to be a helpful backwash effect.

Indirect Testing
• Attempts to measure the abilities that underlie the skills in which the test is interested.
• It contains underlined items which the student needs to identify as erroneous or
inappropriate in formal Standard English.

* It is worth mentioning that some tests are referred to as semi-direct. The most obvious
examples of these are speaking tests where candidates respond to tape-recorded stimuli, with their
own responses being recorded and later scored. These tests are semi-direct in the sense that,
although not direct, they stimulate direct testing.
Discrete Point versus Integrative Testing

Discrete- a completely discrete-point item would test simply one point or objective such as testing
for the meaning of a word in isolation.

Discrete Point Testing- refers to the testing of one element at a time, item by item.

Integrative Testing- by contrast, requires the candidate to combine many language elements in
the completion of a task. This might involve writing a composition, making notes while listening
to a lecture, taking a dictation, or completing a cloze passage.

Integrative Test refers to an integrative item that would test more than one point or
objective at a time. (e.g., comprehension of words, and ability to use them correctly in context).

*Sometimes an integrative item is really more a procedure than an item, as in the case of a
free composition, which could test a number of objectives; for example, use of appropriate
vocabulary, use of sentences level discourse, organization, statement of thesis and supporting
evidence.

Norm-referenced versus Criterion-referenced Testing

Norm-referenced Test- student’s scores are interpreted relative to each other in a normal
distribution scheme (bell curve). The idea is to spread the students out on a continuum of
knowledge/ability in order to facilitate proficiency and placement decisions.

Criterion-referenced Test- measure student ability against a predetermined standard, e.g. the
learning objectives of a specific course or unit of a course.

• This test is by-far the most commonly used by teachers in language courses, as they are
used to measure achievement and to diagnose strengths and weaknesses.

Objective versus Subjective Testing

Objective Testing
• No judgment is required on the part of the scorer
• Objective test-is objective in that there is only one right answer.

Subjective Testing
• Judgment is required.
• Refers to a free composition which may be more subjective in nature if the scorer is not
looking for any one right answer, but rather for a series of factors (creativity, style,
cohesion, and coherence, grammar, and mechanics).
* Objectivity in scoring is sought after by many testers, not for itself, but for the greater
reliability it brings. In general, the less subjective the scoring, the greater agreement there will be
between two different scorers.

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