Toefl From a Communicative Viewpoint on Language Proficiency: A Working Paper

Durán, Richard P.; Canale, Michael; Penfield, Joyce; Stansfield, Charles W.; Liskin–Gasparro, Judith E.

doi:10.1002/j.2330-8516.1985.tb00093.x

Cited by 16 publications

(21 citation statements)

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“…The TOEFL ® test transitioned as well. It evolved from a test conceived in the 1960s to a measure rooted in the communicative competence construct (Canale and Swain 1980;Duran et al 1987). The earlier efforts to bolster TOEFL by introducing stand-alone writing and speaking tests-the Test of Written English (TWE® test) and the Test of Spoken English (TSE® test)-were seen as stopgap measures that led to an "awkward" situation for the "communication of score meaning" (C. A.…”

Section: The Interplay Of Constructs and Technologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With respect to construct definition, a major conference was held at ETS in the 1980s (Stansfield 1986b) to discuss the relevance of communicative competence for the TOEFL. Envisioning TOEFL from that perspective was a likely outcome of the conference (Duran et al 1987). Evidence of the acceptance of the communicative competence construct can be seen in its use to validate TSE scores (Powers et al 1999b), and in the framework for incorporating a speaking component in a revised TOEFL (Butler et al 2000).…”

Section: Speakingmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Historical Survey of Research Regarding Constructed-Response Formats

Bejar

2017

Methodology of Educational Measurement and Assessment

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This chapter chronicles ETS research and development contributions related to the use of constructed-response item formats. 1 The use of constructed responses in testing dates back to imperial China, where tests were used in the selection of civil servants. However, in the United States, the multiple-choice format became dominant during the twentieth century, following its invention and use by the SAT ® examinations created by the College Board in 1926. When ETS was created in 1947, post-secondary admissions testing was largely based on tests consisting of multiplechoice items. However, from the start, there were two camps at ETS: those who believed that multiple-choice tests were sufficiently adequate for the purpose of assessing "verbal" skills and those who believed that "direct" forms of assessment requiring written responses had a role to play. For constructed-response formats to regain a foothold in American education several hurdles would need to be overcome. Research at ETS was instrumental in overcoming those hurdles.The first hurdle was that of reliability, specifically the perennial issue of low interrater agreement, which plagued the acceptance of constructed-response formats for most of the twentieth century. The second hurdle was broadening the conception of validity to encompass more than predictive considerations, a process that began with the introduction of construct validity by Cronbach and Meehl (1955). Samuel Messick at ETS played a crucial role in this process by making construct validity relevant to educational tests. An inflexion point in the process of reincorporating constructed-response formats more widely in educational tests was marked 1 Constructed responses to a prompt or question can range in scope and complexity. Perhaps the most common constructed response is the written essay. However, short written responses to questions are also considered to be constructed, as are spoken answers in response to a prompt, mathematical responses (equations, plotted functions, etc.), computer programs, and graphical responses such as architectural designs.

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Section: The Interplay Of Constructs and Technologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Speakingmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Historical Survey of Research Regarding Constructed-Response Formats

Bejar

2017

Methodology of Educational Measurement and Assessment

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“…Without this central core, a student is not literate for any job-related purpose. This is recognised by Canale's levels ofliteracy (Duran et al, 1985):…”

Section: Autonomous and Ideological Viewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These errors are best remedied through instruction and practice in ESL programs. Then there are the discourse and strategic errors (Duran et al, 1985). Some of these may be dealt with in ESL classes, but many could be covered in a technical writing course for all students rather than as ESL instruction.…”

Section: Applying Grammatical Sociolinguistic and Discourse Errorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Without this central core, a student is not literate for any job-related purpose. This is recognised by Canale's levels ofliteracy (Duran et al, 1985):Grammatical Competence Mastery of the language code (sentence structure, vocabulary, word formation, spelling).Sociolinguistic Competence Appropriateness of use of meaning (topics, attitudes, functions) and forms (register, form, expression).Discourse Competence Combining meanings and forms (pronouns, transitions, coherence) and organised meaning (development, consistency, balance).Strategic Competence Mastery of strategies to compensate for breakdowns in communication and enhance rhetorical effects.Stubbs (1986) provides some linguistic background for the concept of the sociolinguistic element ofliteracy. While this and the other categories are imprecise, incomplete, and overlapping, they do point to the need to define basic functional literacy in terms of different levels of linguistic capability-not just "grammar."…”

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confidence: 99%

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Basic Functional Literacy for Engineering Students: Towards a Linguistic Definition

Jordan¹

1998

DW/R

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Queen's University at Kingston Established categories of grammatical, sociolinguistic and discourse competence and principles of autonomous and ideological literacy are used as the basis for an analysis ef e"ors in submissions for a post-admissionswriting test at university level. To complement Crawford's recent (1995) analysis ef the test in this journal, emphasis is placed on identifying the significant ''job-related" e"ors BackgroundTire Pedagogical Need 41 IT IS OF COURSE PEDAGOGICALLY ABSURD to expect teachers of any technical writing course to provide meaningful instruction when a significant proportion of the students is functionally illiterate in the language of instruction. Yet that is often the case in many English language Canadian colleges and universities today. Increased numbers of immigrants and visa students, especially from the Pacific Rim, coupled with reduced funding in schools for skilled library teaching, ESL instruction and special education, mean that fewer students are capable ofbenefiting from a technical writing or first-year writing course.The lack of reliable admissions criteria for writing ability is the real problem. TOEFL test scores tell us very little about the candidates' abilities Technostyle Vol. 14, No. 11998 Spring!Printemps 42 Basic Functional Literacy to comprehend or write in English; and the TOEFL essay scores, though more reliable as an indicator, are not readily available internationally. The grossly-inflated marks for graduating high school English in Canada are at best a poor indicator of a student's ability to write in English. Marks in the high 80s and even the 90s are no guarantee of basic functional literacy, although marks below 70 do tend to indicate general illiteracy in English. Moreover, school grades for "English" tend to reflect students' abilities to analyse literary texts, and are thus often unreliable indicators of their abilities to express themselves clearly and correctly.Because of the unreliability ofindicators ofbasic proficiency in written English, every year Canadian colleges and universities find that they have admitted students who are functionally illiterate in written English. One solution is a first-year course with early testing and streaming, with additional time being given to those with severe language and writing problems. Another solution, discussed here, is a post-admissions test, designed to identify the weaker students early in first year and to require them to improve to a minimum level of adult functional literacy (N afzinger et al, 1976) before being allowed to start a technical writing course. The question then becomes: ''What is that minimum level?" To answer that in other than loose aims or goals, we need to establish writing competence in clear linguistic terms. Defining Basic Functional LiteracyThe difficulty of defining literacy in reasonably concrete terms has been noted by Mikulecky and Drew (1991), who claim that:Most attempts to define literacy or establish a criterion for determining what is "basic functional l...

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A Study of the Effects of Variation of Short‐term Memory Load, Reading Response Length, and Processing Hierarchy on Toefl Listening Comprehension Item Performance

Henning

1990

ETS Research Report Series

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This study was conceived in response to criticisms of the current TOEFL listening comprehension test‐item format. Major areas of criticism have included speculation that listening as tested places too much burden on short‐term memory as opposed to comprehension, that a knowledge of reading is required in order to respond successfully, and that many items appear to require mere recall and matching of details rather than higher‐order processing skills. To address these criticisms in turn, a study was designed with 120 ESL learners and three listening tests (comprised of 144 total real and adapted TOEFL test items) to examine the characteristics of item functioning under conditions of stimulus repetition versus nonrepetition, variation of length of aural stimulus passage and of associated numbers of items, shorter versus longer reading response options, and higher versus lower level of processing skills required. Those item types and stimulus conditions that were found to associate with superior item functioning as indicated by estimates of item difficulty, item discriminability, internal consistency reliability, fit to a latent trait model, and convergent and discriminant validity were identified. Results suggested that, while repetition of the stimulus passage predictably tended to reduce item difficulty when control was made for concomitant influences, there was no consistent effect of stimulus passage repetition on item discrimination, Rasch model fit, or discriminant validity across difficulty level. However, there was a tendency for items in the no‐repetition condition to exhibit greater convergent and discriminant validity than items in the one‐repetition condition. Although passage length was confounded with numbers of items per passage and with comprehension hierarchy level, the test with passages of three‐sentence length tended to be more reliable than the test with passages of two‐sentence length, and the test with passages of two‐sentence length tended to be more reliable than the test with passages of one‐sentence length. Also, the test with the longest passages tended predictably to be slightly more difficult than the test with the shortest passages. Item response‐option length was significantly related to item difficulty and Rasch model fit in the direction that items with options that were shortened to about half current TOEFL response‐option length tended to be easier and to exhibit better fit than items with current longer options. Also, items with shortened options showed greater convergent and discriminant validity across levels of difficulty than did items with unshortened options. And, there was a near‐significant tendency for items with shortened options to exhibit better discrimination than items with unshortened options, when concomitant influences were controlled. Comprehension hierarchy level of items, as defined by the length of passage required to respond correctly, was not significantly related to item difficulty except through a complex option‐length‐by‐hierarchy‐ level intera...

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Toefl From a Communicative Viewpoint on Language Proficiency: A Working Paper

Cited by 16 publications

References 14 publications

A Historical Survey of Research Regarding Constructed-Response Formats

A Historical Survey of Research Regarding Constructed-Response Formats

Basic Functional Literacy for Engineering Students: Towards a Linguistic Definition

A Study of the Effects of Variation of Short‐term Memory Load, Reading Response Length, and Processing Hierarchy on Toefl Listening Comprehension Item Performance

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