Kohat University of Science and Technology

Course Name: Language Assessment

Assignment Topic: Current Issues and Problems in Language Assessment and

Language Assessment Research

Level: Ms. Linguistics

Submitted to: Prof. Dr. Syed Sabih-ul-Hassan

Submitted by: Muhammad Jamshaid

Student Reg# ENG320182010

Due Date: 14 Nov, 2018

Submission Date: 12 Nov, 2018

Current Issues and Problems in Language Assessment and Language
Assessment Research
“Language is the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of
a culture through the use of language, signs and images which stand for or represent things
(Hall, 1997).”

Language assessment, if it is summative or formative, has a significant role in second

language learners’ experience of education and outcomes of learning. It is a self-evident truth
that assessment shapes how teachers teach and students learn. If we desire to judge an
educational system, we have to analyze the assessment practices and the characteristics of
students that are being assessed by the system. Educational reforms will fail if they do not
include assessment. In contrary to the past, where assessment was a primary mean of
accountability and certification, now assessment has a broader range of purposes. A new
vision integrates assessment and learning and the roles of teacher and learning are redefined.
Assessment for learning is getting more prestige over assessment of learning. (Christina
Gitsaki and Christine Coombe, 2016)

According to Fenton, 1996, "Assessment is the collection of relevant information that may
be relied on for making decisions. Evaluation is the application of a standard and a decision-
making system to assessment data to produce judgments about the amount and adequacy
of the learning that has taken place." Too often these processes are confused... we say
assess, but we mean evaluate... or we use the term evaluation, when we really are doing
assessment.”

Language assessment involves evaluating, interpreting and gathering evidence of learning. It

can be used for student placement, progression or initial screening in a language course. The
information which is collected through various evaluations and assessment tools permit
educators to recognize the needs of the students, get knowledge about the effectiveness of
teaching practice, design proper curriculum and instruction material. (Christina Gitsaki and
Christine Coombe, 2016)

The belief that if we follow established procedure, it becomes possible to develop a format
for administering a reliable and valid language performance test seems a too much simplified
view of performance testing given the complexity of reliability and validity issue in
performance assessment. (Yen-Fen Liao).

The most difficult task for language educators is assessment because developing reliable
and valid assessment tools needs specialized skills as decisions about assessment may have
long lasting impacts on the progress of students’ life. Apart from this if assessment is to be
useful, it must be adjusted according to the academic expectations and authorized standards
of the particular context where it takes place. It is a fact that there is no single type of
assessment which may give you all the information needed to judge the progress and
proficiency levels of the students, educators are required to integrate a variety of assessment
techniques during their practice. Also they should be known to various methods and
approaches which may help them in getting reliable and valid evidence of student learning.
(Christina Gitsaki and Christine Coombe, 2016)

While it is true that the field of language assessment has developed in terms of addressing
research questions and in the range of research approaches to address them, it still engages
with the questions that are central to our endeavor. What is the nature of language ability?
How can we assure that the interpretation and results about test takers’ language ability are
meaningful to the stakeholder and themselves? How can we assure that these interpretations
which are based on assessment may be generalized to language use situations beyond the
assessment itself? Up to what extent can we justify the intended uses of our assessment? To
what extent does our assessment’ uses and its consequences respect the rights of individual
and educational and societal values of those who are affected by its consequences and uses.
(Lyle F. Bachman, 2013)

Due to the increasing worldwide demand for people with greater level of language ability, the
field of language assessment faces new challenges and problems. These demands are two-
fold: (1) the large and increasing number of individual whose native language is not the
language of instruction and who desire to learn the target language so is to become a
functioning member of the society; (2) globalization and the increasing demand for workers
who can serve in multilingual settings. Along with this there is a growing demand for
accountability in language teaching. Businesses and corporations are increasingly requiring
educational institutions such as universities, colleges and schools to bring forth employees
who have ample language ability to work in a multilingual workplace. Government requires
teachers and educational institutions to be held accountable for the learners’ levels of
language ability in reference to the resources used. Such demands for accountability
strengthen teachers’ interest in presenting instruction that is appropriate and more effective
for increasing their students’ learning. In all such sort of situations, the instrument for getting
information upon which instructional and accountability decisions are to be made, is
language assessment. (Lyle F. Bachman, 2013)

Growing numbers of “young language learners” in schools pose challenges for classroom
language assessment as well as for high stakes accountability assessment. For classroom
language assessment, the challenge is how to apply the knowledge we have acquired (1) to
develop assessments that will serve the purposes of learning and instruction; and (2) to
provide training in language assessment for classroom language teachers. For accountability
assessments, the challenge is how to apply the knowledge we have, as language testers, to
inform the kinds of assessments that are made of students’ achievement not only in the
language of instruction, but also in other areas, such as math and science, where the language
of the assessment may not be the native language of the test takers.

The displacement of huge numbers of individuals across countries and continents, whether
voluntary or involuntary, due to political unrest, economic hardship, or personal
circumstances, presents another kind of challenge for the field. In many such situations
governments require those seeking to immigrate to demonstrate proficiency in a particular
language. In the case of individuals who are voluntarily intending to immigrate in order to
seek employment, governments typically require them to demonstrate proficiency in the
dominant or official language of the country. In cases where individuals are involuntarily
seeking political asylum, governments may wish to determine what their native language or
dialect is in order to make a decision about granting them asylum. Again, the instruments that
are used to collect information to support these decisions are language tests.

Literature Review:

Ongoing Challenges in Language Assessment by Lyle F. Bachman (University of

California, Los Angeles, USA): The foremost challenges which language assessment faces
are not in the spheres of socio-psychological theory, validity theory, and moral philosophy
nor are they present in sophisticated measurement and statistical models. But as language
testers the problems which we face are in real world where we use language tests in order to
make decisions about individuals and institutions. If we want to turn these challenges into
accomplishments, it needs capability and willingness on the part of language testers to apply
their skills and knowledge to the urgent practical assessment needs of our education system-
from primary to university level. If we use our expertise in solving the practical problems of
assessment in our education system, it will be a great contribution in making our meritocracy
impartial and fair.

Current Issues in Language Evaluation, Assessment and Testing: Research and

Practice, is an assemblage of papers that deal with pertinent issues in language assessment
from a variety of perspectives and contexts. The paper is divided into three parts.

Issue of Reliability and Validity in Second Language Performance Assessment by Yen-

Fen Liao (Teachers College, Columbia University): The paper shortly discusses the issue of
reliability and validity in the context of second language performance test. In the field of
language testing, second language performance assessment has aroused immense interest. It
can provide Predictive information about how well a candidate will perform in a non-testing
setting. Although there are a number of issues in performance assessment, reliability and
validity are of great concern to language testers and educators.

Implications:

There are various challenges and issues in language assessment. As we know that assessment
has a huge influence on how teachers and how students learn. It is very difficult to change
assessment practices, but if they remain so having no improvement, then significant aspects
of new emerging culture are at risk. |There should be alternative assessment forms in order to
meet new development and expectations of society.

Other issues are like validity of scored-based interpretations and the nature of the construct
we want to assess i.e. language ability ,ethical and professionalism in the way we develop and
use language assessments role of language assessments in accountability decisions, impact of
assessments on instructions. Another important issue in language assessment is related to
classroom language assessment. In educational context language assessment performs an
important role since the past decades. The best example of this is given by (Liying Cheng,
2017), gives us detail explanation of the issues that are facing by students in classroom and
how to overcome these issues in classroom and more specifically it gives detail explanation
for teachers that how to overcome the issues of language assessment in classroom.

Today we feel a gap between the theories of a new learning culture and traditional
assessment. There should be alignment of theories of learning and assessment. On the other
hand, our students and teachers are socialized into traditional assessment practices and it is
big challenge for them to deal with the new modes of assessment.

Language testing and assessment should consider the effects of migration and globalization,
more demands of accountability and the imperative for an ethically and socially responsible
positioning in assessment. Language testing and assessment research is quite narrow: there is
a focus on examination processes; language proficiency referenced to native speaker
performance, unrelated to the multilingual language capacities and instructional and social
needs of testees, with much second language assessment undifferentiated from L1
assessment. The makeup of language proficiency itself is lacking spontaneity, not adequately
covering the vast and complex range of language assessment requirements and needs in our
global world.

The next important issue in language assessment is language proficiency assessment in both
social and academic educations (Hidalgo, 2015) and we identifies the strengths and
weaknesses of learners we check the progress of learners and support decisions about learners
eligibility for different tests. It is a formative assessment tool. Test give us timely and
precious information about planning and to support both the learning and teaching (Test of
English language learning (TELL),(Pearson),2016).

Assessment research addresses a diverse range of issues including identification of

disciplinary content for assessment (e.g., subject-based concepts and knowledge in biology or
English), principles of assessment, and means of charting students’ knowledge and
understanding. Language testing and assessment research should evolve new insights about
language use through multiple and diverse socially situated assessment practices discuss the
implications for widening the construct that impart valid assessment practices, such as the
assessment of interactional performance and multilingual in classrooms.

In English as a second language’s assessment, students sometimes use qualitative methods

along with quantitative methods to investigate issues. Breen (1997) conducted observations
and interviews with teachers in classroom and the relationship between the framework and
pedagogy is observed. Qualitative research can light up the complex issues as what counts as
subject content. These types of information can be very helpful for the purpose of assessment
and it can accomplished the nature of judgments in specific domains e.g. it is specifically
design for formative assessment. It also points out different challenges of language
assessment which need further research. For example some of the findings that become
prominent from the analysis were not easy to divide in different sections or categories and are
not clearly labeled (Leung, Qualitative research in language assessment).

When we assess language we desire to get absolute result, that is, an unimpeachable evidence
of individual language ability. It is because it would make educational decision more direct
and easy and results of the research more convincing. However, it is true that assessment
results are not exact indicators of the abilities which we measure. This is because there are
certain limitations in measuring mental abilities. In language assessment, an individual’s
performance is affected by a number of factors including the context and type of assessment,
the time of the day, his/her mental alertness at the time of assessment, and his/her personality
characteristics. (Lyle F. Bachman, 1990)

While measuring a given language ability, we must specify what it is. This specification is at
two levels. At theoretical level, we must define it in order to distinguish it from other factors
and language abilities in which we are not interested and which may affect test performance.
However, it is almost impossible for us to do so, given the fact that there are multiple
individual characteristics such as physical, affective, cognitive which could affect test
performance. At the operational level, we are required to specify the instances of language
performance which we intend to interpret as indicators of the ability we are going to measure.
For Language assessment research, it implies that, if we develop any theory for language test
performance, it is likely to be underspecified. (Lyle F. Bachman, 1990)

In addition to the limitation of under specification, the process of quantification and

observation also limit our interpretation of test results. All measures are incomplete, indirect,
subjective, imprecise, and relative. (Lyle F. Bachman, 1990)

There are ethical issues in language assessment as well. The primary and important factor by
giving tests to student is to make certain types of decisions about students. Are they eligible
for getting admission in the programme? In which class each student is placed we get to
know the position of every student and according to their level we put them in the class.
Sometimes we can make decisions that whether the student is able to sit in the specific
programme or not. These are very important decisions for giving different tests just to check
the students’ ability. Other level of test objective is to underlie these decisions on the basis of
learners language abilities on test performance. We are not able to measure learners language
ability but we can measure their performance and on the basis of these performances test
takers make decisions about their ability of language. (Douglas, 2010)

Bibliography
Lyle F. Bachman. Ongoing Challenges in Language Assessment by Lyle F. Bachman (University of
California, Los Angeles, USA)

Yen-Fen Liao. Issue of Reliability and Validity in Second Language Performance Assessment
(Teachers College, Columbia University)
Gitsaki , Christina and Coombe, Christine (2016) . Current Issues in Language Evaluation,
Assessment and Testing. Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Douglas, D. (2010). Understanding langugae testing . USA: Hodder education.

Harding, L. (2014). Communicative language testing:Current issues and future research. London:

Lancaster University.

Harsh, C. (2014). General language proficiency Revisited:current and future issues. united kingdom:
university of Warwick.

Liying Cheng, J. F. (2017). Assessment in the language classroom:Teachers support student learning.
London.

Breen. (1997).

Leung, C. (n.d.). Qualitative research in language assessment.