Chapter One General Idea of Language Testing: the Past, the Present, and the Future.
1.1 the Four Approaches to Language Testing
❖ 1. The essay-translation approach 写作-翻译法
❖ 2. The structuralist-psychometric approach 结构主义/心理测量法
❖ 3. The integrative approach 综合法
❖ 4. The communicative approach 交际法
The relationship between testing and teaching
A large number of examinations in the past have encouraged a tendency to separate testing from teaching. Both testing and teaching are so closely interrelated that it is virtually impossible to work in either field without being constantly concerned with the other.
Tests may be constructed primarily as devices to reinforce learning and to motivate the student or primarily as a means of assessing the student’s performance in the language. In the former case, the test is geared to the teaching that has taken place, whereas in the latter case the teaching is often geared largely to the test.
《简明英语测试教程》备课笔记
Standardized tests and public examinations, in fact, may exert such a considerable influence on the average teacher that they are often instrumental in determining the kind of teaching that takes place before the test.
A language test which seeks to find out what candidates can do with language provides a focus for purposeful, everyday communication activities. Such a test will have a more useful effect on the learning of a particular language than a mechanical test of structure. Such a test will have a more useful effect on the learning of a particular language than a mechanical test of structure.
In the past even good tests of grammar, translation or language manipulation had a negative and even harmful effect on teaching. A good communicative test of language, however, should have a much more positive effect on learning and teaching and should generally result in improved learning habits.
1.2 A short history of language testing
Essentially, the general picture that emerges is as follows. In China, during the Han Dynasty (201BCE to 8 CE), examinations on classical Confucian doctrine replaced the patronage, a method of selecting civil servants.
To avoid corruption, all essays were marked anonymously, and the Emperor personally supervised the final paper. In Europe, examinations flourished first in the universities: from the seventeenth century the debates that had been required for degrees were first supplemented and later replaced by written examinations.
《简明英语测试教程》备课笔记
In Prussia, examinations were first used for selection of civil servants in the eighteenth country. In Britain, written examinations in emulation of the major university examinations were first used in the middle of the nineteenth century as a means of selecting candidates for the upper grades in the Indian Civil Service,
and later adopted for admission to the Home Civil Service and other professions. In France, Napoleon introduced oral examinations at the end of secondary school. In England, similar examinations were established some fifty years later under the control of various universities.
By the end of the nineteenth century public examinations were firmly established in Western Europe as methods of controlling education and selecting civil servants. By the 1890s, the element of uncertainty and chance still involved in written examinations had been recognized, and minimal efforts were being made to overcome them.
At that period of time, tests were mainly subjective and unscientific. The objective modern language test derived its appeal from the belief that the methods of mental testing could be satisfactorily applied to specific cognitive abilities as well as to general intelligence,
and the associated belief that objective new-type tests were fairer than the older traditional examinations.
The first new- type language tests appeared in the United States at the
《简明英语测试教程》备课笔记
beginning of the 1920s, and received a strong stimulus from their utilization in a major U.S. study of language teaching at the end of the decade.
During the 1930s, the growth of the psychometrics industry encouraged the use of objective testing techniques. By 1954, objective testing seemed to be successful on one side of the Atlantic at least. Then the changed goals of language teaching required the developments of techniques for testing
Approaches to language testing
Language tests can be roughly classified according to four main approaches to testing (i) the essay-translation approach; (ii) the structuralist approach; (iii) the integrative approach; and (iv) the communicative approach.
Although these approaches are listed here in chronological order, they should not be regarded as being strictly confined to certain periods in the development of language testing. Nor are the four approaches always mutually exclusive.
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 approach, however attractive that approach may appear.
1 The essay –translation approach
This approach is commonly referred to as the Pre-scientific stage of language
《简明英语测试教程》备课笔记
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 comment about the language being learnt). The tests also have a heavy literary and cultural bias. Public examinations (e.g. secondary school leaving examinations)
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 an integral part of the syllabus or examination.
Tests usually consist of essay writing, translation, and grammatical analysis (often in the form of comment about the language being learnt). The tests also have a heavy literary and cultural bias. Public examinations (e.g. secondary school leaving examinations)
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 an integral part of the syllabus or examination.
2. The structuralist approach
《简明英语测试教程》备课笔记
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. Such mastery is tested using words and sentences completely divorced from any context on the test in a comparatively short time.
The 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
The 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
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 testees’ ability to write by attempting to separate a composition test from reading is commendable in certain respects.
《简明英语测试教程》备课笔记
Indeed, there are several features of this approach which merit consideration when constructing any good test.
3. The integrative approach
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 of proficiency-an underlying language competence or ‘grammar of expectancy’,
which it is argued every learner 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.
The principle of cloze testing is based on the Gestalt theory of ‘closure’ (closing gaps in patterns subconsciously). Thus, cloze tests measure the reader’s ability to decode ‘interrupted’ or ‘mutilated’ messages by making the most acceptable substitutions from all the contextual clues available.
Every nth word is deleted in a text (usually every fifth, sixth or seventh word), and students have to complete each gap in the text, using the most appropriate
《简明英语测试教程》备课笔记
word.
4. 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 tests are concerned primarily (if not totally) with how language is used in communication. Consequently, most aim to incorporate tasks, 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 (described in prescriptive grammars and lexicons). In practice, however, some tests of a communicative nature include the testing of usage and also assess ability to handle the formal patterns of the target language.
Indeed, few supporters of the communicative approach would argue that communicative competence can ever be achieved without a considerable mastery
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of the grammar of a language.
1.3 What are the current large-scale tests at home and abroad?
❖ PETS 1-5 (Public English Test System)
❖ CET4, CET6 (College English Tests)
❖ TEM4, TEM8 (Test for English Majors)
❖ TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language)
❖ IELTS (International English Language Testing System)
References
1. Bachman, L. F. & Adrian S. Palmer. Language Testing in Practice. London: Oxford University Press, 1996.
2. Heaton, J. B. Writing English Language Tests. London and New York: Longman Group UK Limited, 1988.
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