Assessment and Evaluation

Abstract

Research and development in the assessment of language abilities in the past decade have been concerned both with achieving a better understanding of the nature of language abilities and other factors that affect performance on language tests and with developing methods of assessment that are consistent with the way applied linguists view language use. The way language testers conceptualize language abilities has been strongly influenced by the broadened view of language proficiency as communicative competence that has emerged in applied linguistics. And while this view of language proficiency provides a much richer conceptual basis for characterizing the language abilities to be measured, it has presented language testers with a major challenge in defining these abilities and the interactions among them with sufficient precision to permit their measurement. Language testing researchers have also been influenced by developments in second language acquisition, investigating the effects on test performance of other factors such as background knowledge, cognitive style, native language, ethnicity, and sex. Finally, language testing research and practice have been influenced by advances in psychometrics, in that more sophisticated analytic tools are being used both to unravel the tangled web of language abilities and to assure thhat the measures of these abilities are reliable, valid, efficient, and appropriate for the uses for which they are intended.

What Does Language Testing Have to Offer?

“…This view of language ability is consistent with research in applied linguistics that has increasingly come to view language ability as consisting of two components: (a) language knowledge, sometimes referred to as competence, and (b) cognitive processes, or procedures, that implement that knowledge in language use (e.g., Bachman, 1990a;Bialystok, 1990;Spolsky, 1989;Widdowson, 1983). It is also consistent with information-processing, or cognitive, models of mental abilities, which also distinguish processes or heuristics from domains of knowledge (e.g., Sternberg, 1985Sternberg, , 1988.…”

“…In sum, language testing can now claim its own research questions and research methodology. As Bachman (1990a) states, "perhaps for the first time in the history of language testing it is possible to see a genuine symbiotic relationship between applied linguistic theory and the tools of empirical research as they are applied to both the development and the examination of a theory of performance on language tests [and to] the development and use of better language tests" (p. 220).…”

“…Since 1989, four papers reviewing the state of the art in the field of language testing have appeared (Alderson, 1991;Bachman, 1990a;Skehan, 1988Skehan, , 1989Skehan, , 1991. All four have argued that language testing has come of age as a discipline in its own right within applied linguistics and have presented substantial evidence, I believe, in support of this assertion.…”

Developments in Language Testing

“…Before beginning this review of current developments in language testing, it might be of interest to recall Bachman's (1990b) earlier review of language testing which appeared in the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics. Bachman discussed the following issues as likely to be of concern into the 1990s:…”