O’Sullivan on test taker characteristics

Physical/Physiological Psychological Experiential

Short-term ailments Personality Education

Examination
Toothache, cold, etc. Memory
preparedness

Longer-term disabilities Cognitive style Examination experience

Communication
Speaking, hearing, vision Affective schemata
experience

(e.g., dyslexia) Concentration TL country residence

Age Motivation

Sex Emotional state

In this table, physical/physiological characteristics can be seen in terms of:

• Short-term ailments, such as a toothache or earache, a cold or ‘flu, etc. – by their nature
these illnesses are unpredictable and are not normally relevant to the construct, and 

• Longer-term illnesses or disabilities, such as problems with hearing, vision e.g., dyslexia,
or speaking – either speech defects such as a stammer or lisp, or a deformity of the mouth
or throat which affects production; or by other attributes such as age or sex. 


The characteristics listed under ‘Psychological’ are ordered to suggest that there will be some
that are unlikely to change to any great extent with time; while others will be more or less likely
to change within particular individuals (this list represents an admittedly anecdotally derived
continuum). 


Experiential characteristics are seen as being comprised of all those influences that have
essentially come from outside of test takers, and refer to:

• Their education.
• Their experience of the examination in question – in terms of having prepared 
through a
course of study for example, or having taken the examination on a 
previous occasion. 

• Their experience in communicating with others, particularly in the target language, 
but
may also refer to L1 communication – this would be of particular concern where, for
example, younger learners are expected to interact in the TL with a partner who is
unknown to them, something they may rarely have done in their own language. 

• The final characteristic referred to may be connected to this idea of communication, in
that it is more likely that a learner will experience reduced anxiety having lived for some
period of time in the TL country or culture.

(Cyril Weir, Language Testing and Validation, pp.66-67)