Trends in Assessment Scales and Criterion-Referenced Language Assessment

Abstract

Two current developments reflecting a common concern in second/foreign language assessment are the development of: (1) scales for describing language proficiency/ability/performance; and (2) criterion-referenced performance assessments. Both developments are motivated by a perceived need to achieve communicatively transparent test results anchored in observable behaviors. Each of these developments in one way or another is an attempt to recognize the complexity of language in use, the complexity of assessing language ability, and the difficulty in interpreting potential interactions of scale task, trait, text, and ability. They reflect a current appetite for language assessment anchored in the world of functions and events, but also must address how the worlds of functions and events contain non skill-specific and discretely hierarchical variability. As examples of current tests that attempt to use performance criteria, the chapter reviews the Canadian Language Benchmark, the Common European Framework, and the Assessment of Language Performance projects.Two complementary developments in second and foreign language testing relate to issues surrounding characteristics of proficiency or ability scales and how these scales are conceptualized in criterion-referenced performance assessment. These developments have been motivated by a perceived need to produce test results that are more transparent than has traditionally been the case. They are alternative views to those reflected by traditional testing enterprises that provide a single numerical score with an associated indication of the percentile position of the examinee's standing relative to other examinees who took the test. In many ways, each of these developments attempts to address the complexity of language in the assessment of language use. They reflect a current appetite for language assessment anchored in the world of functions and events. These developments interact to promote language assessment that recognizes the need to expand beyond a tradition that has focused on language primarily as a decontextualized cognitive skill or ability. Language takes place in a social context as a social act, and this frequently needs to be recognized in language assessment. This chapter examines three

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