Bài giảng môn Phương pháp kiểm tra và đánh giá học tập: Chapter 2 - Phan Thị Thu Nga

Language tests are chronologically classified according to four main approaches: the essay translation approach, the structuralist approach, the integrative approach, the communicative approach.

Chapter 2

Approaches to language testing

Language tests are chronologically classified according to four main approaches:

(1) the essay translation approach;

(2) the structuralist approach;

(3) the integrative approach; and

(4) the communicative approach

(1) the essay translation approach

Characteristics:

No special skill or expertise in testing

Subjective judgment of teacher

Essay writing, translation & grammatical analysis (comments about the language)

 tests  a heavy literary and cultural bias

 an aural/ oral component at the upper

intermediate & advantage levels as

something additional & not an integral part

of the syllabus or examination

(2) the structuralist approach

Language learning  chiefly concerned with the systematic acquisition of set of habits.

Focusing the importance of contrastive analysis & the need to identify & measure learners’ mastery of separated elements of L2:phonology, vocabulary & grammar

Listening, speaking, reading & writing are separated from one another & it’s essential

to test one skill at a time.

The need for statistical measures of

reliability & validity - important in testing multiple choice item

(3) the integrative approach

involving the testing of language in context

& concerned with the meaning and the

total communicative effect of discourse

assessing the learners’ ability to use two

or more skills simultaneously, or a global view of proficiency

involving functional language but not the use of functional language

Forms: cloze test & dictation

Cloze testing

 Principle: the Gestalt theory of “closure”

 Purpose: measuring the reader’s ability to

decode ‘interrupted’ or ‘mutilated’

messages by making the most acceptable substitutions from all the contextual clues available

 Requirements: to fill in each blank in the text itself

 Methods of scoring :

 one mark  acceptable answer; another

 each exact answer

 misspelling not be penalized

 measuring familiarity with the grammar of the language rather than reading

Evidence from research studies

performance on cloze tests correlates

highly with listening, writing & speaking

close testing: a good indicator of general linguistic ability

linguistic knowledge, textual knowledge & knowledge of the world

cloze tests: achievement, proficiency tests, classroom placement tests & diagnostic

tests

Purpose: previously regarded solely as a

means of measuring students’ skills of

listening comprehension

Auditory discrimination, the auditory

memory span, spelling, the recognition of sound segments, a familiarity with

grammatical and lexical patterning of the language, and overall textual

comprehension

good predicators of global language

ability, but recent research has found that dictation tends to measure lower-order

language skills- straightforward

skills- inference

(4) the communicative approach

concerned primarily with how language is used in communication

Communicative competence achieved

without a considerable mastery of

grammar

resulting in an attempt to obtain different profiles of a learner’s performance in the language

The score obtained on a

communicative test several

measures of proficiency rather than

simply one overall measure

Reflecting the culture of a particular

country because of its emphasis on

context and the use of authentic

materials

Introducing the concept of qualitative modes of assessment in preference to quantitative ones