CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Problem

Education is a necessity that can not be separated from everyday

life. Each person must have tried to get a good education in the formal and
non-formal institutions. Success or failure of a school is often measured by
the results of the assessment at the end of the learning process, although
it is not the sole determinant tool an education, but it is still used in the
world of education.

In education there are a variety of disciplines, including lessons

learned. lessons include the four skills namely listening, speaking, writing
and reading. All it should also be tested to determine the ability of the
already gained during the study through a test or exam.

Questions about the tests to be tested can be made by teachers

themselves or others. Not all teachers understand about the creation of
good, quality matter made or things that need to be tested. many do not
know how to test the quality of questions that tested or will be tested. it is
also not free from their ignorance of what is language testing or language
tests. language testing needs to be known because it would provide the
basis for language testing.

Language testing is the practice and study of Evaluating the

proficiency of an individual in a particular language using effectively. This
evaluation to measure whether students can use the language they have
learned to fluently in speaking, listening, writing, and reading. This is also
used as a gauge whether students can receive lessons or material
submitted by the teachers well.

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 For this time, we as the second group will discuss about
competence in language testing and language test performance and
language use.

B. Problem Statement
1. What does competence in language testing involve?
2. What does correspondence between language test performance
and language use?

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 CHAPTER II
DISCUSSION

A. Competence in Language Testing

1. Competence in language testing involves the following:
a. An understanding of the fundamental consideration that must be
addresed at the start of any language testing effort, whether this
involves the development of new test or the selection of existing
language tests;
b. An understanding of the fundamental issues and concerns in the
appropriate use of language tests;
c. An understanding of the fundamental issues, approaches, and
methods used in measurement and evaluation;
d. The ability to design, develop, evaluate, and use language tests
in ways that are appropriate for a given purpose, context, and
group of tests takers;
e. The ability to critically read published research in language
testing and information about published tests in order to make
informed decisions.

There are two approach to language testing that is:

1. A theoretically grounded and principled basis for developing and

using language tests, and
2. An understanding that will enable readers to make their own
judgments and decisions about either selecting or developing a
language test that will be useful for a particular language testing
situation.

Approach to language test development and use incorporates recent

researh in language testing dan language teaching is based on two
fundamental principles:

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  The need for a correspondence between language test
performance and language use;
in order for a particular language test to be useful for its intended
purposes, test performance must correspond in demonstrable ways
to language use in non-test situations.
 A clear and explicit definiton of the qualities of test usefulness:
test usefuless, consisting of several qualities (reliability, construct
validity, autheticity, interactivness, impact, and practicality), is an
overriding consideration for quality control throughout the process
of designing, developing, and using a particular test.

B. Correspondence between Language Test Performance and

Language Use

If we want to use the scores from a language test to make inference

about individuals' language ability, and possibly to make various types of
decisions, we must be able to demonstrate how performance on that
language test is related to language use in specific situations other than
the language test itself. In order to be able to demonstrate this
relationship, we need a conceptual framework that enables us to treat
performance on a language test as a particular instance of language use.
That is, we need a framework that enables us to use the same
characteristics to describe what we believe are the critical features of both
language test performance and non-test language use.

To illustrate the need for such a framework. Let us consider a

typical situation in which there is the need to develop a language test.
Suppose you need to develop a test to determine if undergraduate
students of spanish as a foreign language at a north american university
are ready, in terms of their language ability in spanish, to spend a year
studying entirely in spanish at a university in spain. You may already know
that one of spanish will be in comprehending academic lectures, so you
initially decide to include such a task in your test.

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 When you begin designing the actual test task, however, there are
a lot of characteristics of the academic lecture that you will need to
specify. For example, how long will the lecture be? in what discipline? at
what level, introductory or advanced, in terms of its topical content? in
addition to characterizing the input-the lecture-of your test task, you will
need to specify what test takers will be asked to do with this input. For
example, will they be asked to summarize the lecture, or to answer short
questions? If the latter, how long will these questions be, and how
complex, in terms of their language (e.g. syntax, vocabulary)? Will the
questions be presented Orally or in writing? And what about the responses
you expect from the several choices that are presented, or will they
construct their responses? If the responses are to be constructed, how
long will you expect these responses to be? Will test takers be expected to
respond in writing, or by speaking? In spanish or their native language?
clearly, then, in order to adequately describe a given language use task,
such as listening to an academic lecture, a whole range of specific task
characteristics must be considered.

How should one attempt to answer all of these questions? One way
might be to identify and analyze the tasks these students will need to
accomplish, using spanish, in what you have identified as the target
language use situation, you will undoubtedly find it very useful to either
begin with or to derive a set of specific characteristics, such as the length
of the language samples provided in the input to test takers, the
grammatical, textual, functional, and sociolinguistics characteristics of the
input, and so on, for identifying similarities and differences across the wide
range of individual tasks you might choose to analyze.

Another set of questions that you will need to address in designing

your test pertains to the characteristics of the language users, or your
potential test taker. for example, how much knowledge are they likely to
have about the topical content of the lecture, and at what level? Do they
have positive or negative emotions and feelings about the lecture, the

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lecturer, the topic, or the setting? Are they overly anxious about their
ability to cope with this task? you will also need to address some
questions about the nature of the areas of language ability you want to
measure. for example, although you may have some general notions
about this, you may decide to use a current theory of language ability or of
listening to help you identify specific abilities involved in listening
comprehension task.

As this example illustrates, when we design a language test we

need to consider the characteristics of the language use situation and
tasks and of language users and test takers. We need to consider task
characteristic in order to insure and demonstrate the ways in which our
test tasks correspond to language use tasks. We need to consider
characteristic of individuals in order to be able to demonstrate the extent to
which these characteristics are involved in language use tasks and test
task. Thus, two sets of characteristic that affect both language use and
language test performance are of central interest. One set, the
characteristic of individuals, is relevant to the construct validity of any
inferences we make about language ability. The other set, the
characteristic of the tasks, is relevant to determining the domain to which
these inferences generalize. The effect of these two sets of characteristics
on language use and language test performance are illustrated in figure
1.1.

As indicated above, the correspondence that is of central concern

in designing, developing, and using language tests is that between
language test performance and non-test language use, illustrated by the
horizontal arrow labeled 'A' in figure 1.1. in order to demonstrate this
correspondence, either in tests that we design and develop ourselves, or
in tests that we may want to select for possible use, we need to be able to
demonstrate the correspondences between both the characteristic of the
language use situation and tasks and those of the test situation and tasks,

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illustrated

Figure 1.1: Correspondences between language use and language test

performance

the arrow labeled 'B' inf figure 1.1, and the characteristics of individuals as
language users and as test takers, illustrated by the arrow labeled 'C' in
Figure 1.1.

The characteristic of individuals that is of primary interest in

language testing is language ability, since this is what we want to make
inferences about. Other individual characteristics that we also need to
consider are topical knowledge acemata, and affective schemata. We
include this in our discussion for two reasons. First, we believe that these
characteristic can hava important influences on both language use and
test performance. second, we believe that it is possible to design language

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tests so that these characteristics facilitate, rather than impede, test takers'
performance

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 CHAPTER III

CONCLUSION

There are some competence that we should know in language testing.

the competence is:

1. An understanding of the fundamental consideration that must be

addresed at the start of any language testing effort, wether this
involves the development of new test or the selection of existing
language tests;
2. An understanding of the fundamental issues and concerns in the
appropriate use of language tests;
3. An understanding of the fundamental issues, approaches, and
methods used in measurement and evaluation;
4. The ability to design, develop, evaluate, and use language tests in
ways that are appropriate for a given purpose, context, and group of
tests takers;
5. The ability to critially read published research in language testing and
infromation about published tests in order to make informed decisions.

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 REFERENCES

Bachman, Lyle F. and Adrian S. Palmer. Language Testing in Practice:

Designing and Developing Useful Language Tests. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1996.

Bachman, Lyle F. Fundamental Considerations in Language Testing. New

York: Oxford University Press, 1990.

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