EL106 Chapter 3 PDF

TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT OF LITERATURE
MODULE STUDIES
CHAPTER 3: Language Testing: Approaches and Techniques

Objectives:
a) Identify the different approaches to language testing.
b) Explain the strengths and weaknesses
c) Discuss various language test techniques
d) Realize the usefulness of the lessons in testing students.
A. APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE TESTING

Approximately language test can be categorized
according to four main approaches to testing.
1. The Essay-Translation Approach

a) Characteristics and Types of Testing in Essay-Translation Approach:
1) This approach is commonly referred to as the pre-scientific stage of
language testing.
2) No special skill or expertise in testing is required.
3) Test usually consist of essay writing, translation, and grammar analysis.
4) Test have a heavy literary and cultural bias.
5) Public examinations resulting from the tests using this approach sometimes
have an oral component at the upper intermediate and advance levels.
b) Strengths of Essay-Translation Approach
1) This approach is easy to follow because teachers will simply use their
subjective judgement.
2) The essay-translation approach may be used for testing and level of
examinees.
3) The model of tester can easily be modified based on the essential of tests.
c) Weaknesses of Essay-Translation Approach
1) Subjective judgement of teachers tend to be biased
2) As mentioned, the test have a heavy literary and cultural bias.
2. The Cultural Approach

a. Characteristics and Types of Tests and the Structuralist Approach:
1) This approach views that language learning is chiefly concerned with a
systematic acquisition of a set of habits.
2) The structuralist approach involves structural linguistic which which
stresses the importance of constructive analysis and the need to identify
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MODULE STUDIES
and measure the learners mastery of the separate elements of the target
language such as phonology, vocabulary and grammar.
3) Testing the skills of listening, speaking,
reading and writing is separate from another
as much as possible.
4) The psychometric approach to measurement
with its emphasis on reliability and
objectivity forms an integral part of
structuralist testing.
b. Strengths of Structuralist Approach
1) In testing students’ capability, this
approach may objectively and
surely be used by testers.
2) Many forms of tests can be covered
in the test in a short time.
3) Using this approach in testing, will help
students find their strengths in every skill they study.
c. Weaknesses of Structuralist Approach
1) It tends to be a complicated job for teachers to prepare questionnaires using
this approach.
2) This approach considers measuring non-integrated skills more than
integrated skills.
3. The Integrative Approach
a. Characteristics and Types of test of integrative approach:

1) This approach involves testing of language in context and is thus concerned
primarily with meaning and the total communicative effect of discourse.
2) Integrative test are concerned with a global view of proficiency.
3) Integrative testing involves functional language but not use of functional
language.
4) The use of cloze test, dictation, oral interview, translation and essay writing
are included in many integrative test.
b. Strengths of Integrative Approach
1) The approach to meaning and the total communicative effect of discourse
will be very useful for students in testing.
2) This approach can view students’ proficiency with a global view.
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3) A model cloze test used in this approach measures the reader’s ability to
decode ‘interrupted’ or ‘mutilated’ messages by making the most
acceptable substitutions from all the contextual clues available.
4) Dictation, another type of using this approach, was regarded solely as a
means of measuring students’ skills of listening comprehension.
c. Weakness of Integrative Approach
Even if many think that measuring integrated skills is better sometimes there is
a need to consider the importance of measuring skills based on students’ need,
such as writing only, speaking only, ect.
4. The Communicative Approach
a. Characteristics and types of tests of Communicative Approach:

1) Communicative test are concerned primarily with how language is used in
communication.
2) Language use is often emphasized to the exclusion of language usage.
3) The attempt to measure different language skills in communicative tests is
based on a view of language referred to as the divisibility hypothesis.
4) The test content should totally be relevant for particular group of examinees
and the task set should relate to real-life situation.
5) Communicative testing introduces the concept of quantitative modes of
assessment in preference to quantitative mode of assessment.
b. Strengths of Communicative Approach
1) Communicative test are able to measure all integrated skills of students.
2) The test using this approach face students in real life so it will be very useful
for them.
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3) Because a communicative test can measure all language skills, it can help
students in getting the score. Consider students who have a poor ability in
using spoken language but may score quite high test of reading.
4) Detailed statements of each performance level serve to increase the
reliability of the scoring by enabling the examiner to make decisions
according to carefully drawn-up and well established criteria.
c. Weakness of Communicative Approach

1) Unlike the structuralist approach, this
approach does no emphasize learning
structural grammar, yet it may be difficult to
achieve communicative competence without a
considerable mastery of the grammar of a
language.
2) It is possible for cultural bias to affect the
reliability of the test being administered.
B. TEST TECHNIQUES
Direct versus Indirect Testing
Two approaches to test construction:
A. Direct when it requires the candidate to perform precisely the skill that the test
wishes to measure. To know how well the candidates can write compositions, get
them to write compositions. To know how well they pronounce a language, get
them to speak. The task, and the texts that are used, should be as authentic as
possible. The fact that the students are aware that they are in a test situation
means that the task cannot be really authentic. Nevertheless, every effort is made
to make them as realistic as possible.
Direct testing is easier to carry out when it is intended to measure the
productive skills of speaking and writing. The very acts of speaking and writing
provide information about the student’s ability. With listening and reading,
however, it is necessary to get students not only to listen or read but also to
demonstrate that they have done this successfully.
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Direct testing has a number of attractions. First, provide the abilities that
should be assessed is clear, it is relatively
straightforward to create a conditions
which will elicit the behavior on which
judgement will be based. Secondly,
at least in the case of a productive
skills, the assessment and
interpretation of students’
performance are also quite
straightforward. Thirdly, since practice
for the test involves practice of the
skills to foster, there is likely to be a helpful backwash effect.
B. Indirect testing attempts to measure the abilities that underlie the skills in which
the test is interested. It contains underlined items which the student needs to
identify as erroneous or inappropriate in formal standard English.
While the ability to respond to such items has been shown to be related
statistically to the ability to write compositions (although the strength of the
relationship was not particularly great), the two abilities are far from being identical.
Another example of indirect testing is Lado’s (1961) proposed method of testing
pronunciation ability by a paper and pencil test in which the student has to identify
pairs of words which rhyme with each other.
It is worth mentioning that some tests are referred to as semi-direct. The
most obvious examples of these are speaking test where candidates respond to
tape-recorded stimuli, with their own responses being recorded and later scored.
These test are semi-direct in the sense that, although not direct they simulate direct
testing.
1. Discrete Point versus Integrative testing
A. Discrete – A completely discrete-point item would test simply one point on

objective such as testing for the meaning of a word in isolation.
For Example:
Choose the correct meaning of the word paralysis.
(A). Inability to move
(B). State of unconscious
(C). State of shock
(D). Being in pain
Discrete point testing refers to the testing of one element at a time, item by
item. This might, for example, take the form of a series of items, each testing a
particular grammatical structure.
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Integrative testing, by contrast, requires the candidate to combine many language

elements in the completion of a task. This might involve writing a composition,
making notes while listening to a lecture, taking a dictation, or completing a cloze
passage. Clearly, this distinction is not unrelated to that between indirect and direct
testing. Discrete point tests will almost always be indirect, while integrative tests
will tend to be direct. However, some integrative testing method, such as the cloze
procedure, are indirect. Diagnostic tests of grammar of the kind referred to in an
earlier section of this chapter will tend to be discrete.
Integrative test refers to an integrative item that would test more than one point
or objective at a time. (e.g., comprehension of words, and ability to use them
correctly in context). For example:
Demonstrate your comprehension of the following words by using them
together in a written paragraph: “paralysis,” “accident,” and “football.”
Sometimes an integrative item is really more a procedure than an item, as in the
case of a free composition, which could test a number of objectives; for example, use of
appropriate vocabulary, use of sentence level discourse, organization, statement of thesis
and supporting evidence. For example:
Write a one-page essay describing three sports and the relative
likelihood of being injured while playing them competitively.
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2. Norm-referenced versus Criterion-referenced Testing

There are two types of language test:
Norm-referenced and Criterion-Referenced. These two types of language test are

used for different purposes. In a non-related test, students’ scores are interpreted
relative to each other in a normal distribution scheme (bell curve). The idea is to
spread the students out on a continuum of knowledge/ability in order to facilitate
proficiency and placement decisions.
Criterion-reference exams, on the other hand, measure student ability against a
predetermined standard, e.g., the learning objectives of a specific course or unit of a
course. The interpretation of scores is, therefore, absolute and may be
representational of amount of course material that the student has learned. Criterion-
referenced tests are by far the most commonly used to measure achievement in
language courses, as they are used to measure achievement and to diagnose
strengths and weaknesses.
It is in order to foster reflection on the possible uses of norm-reference test (NRT)
and criterion-referenced tests (CRT)
3. Objective versus Subjective Testing

The distinction here is between methods of scoring. If, no judgement is required on
the part of scorer, the scoring is objective. A multiple choice test with the correct
responses unambiguously identified, would be a case in point. If judgement is called
for, the scoring is to be said to be subjective, there are different degrees of subjectivity
in testing. The impressionistic scoring of a composition may be considered more
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subjective than the scoring of short answers in response to questions on a reading

passage.
Specially, an objective test is objective in that there is only one right answer while
a subjective refers to a free composition which may be more subjective in nature if the
scorer is not looking for any one right answer, but rather for a series of factors
(creativity, style, cohesion and coherence, grammar and mechanics).
Objectivity in scoring is sought after by many testers, not for itself, but for the
greater reliability it brings, in general, the less subjective the scoring, the greater
agreement there will be between two different scores (ab between the scores of the
person scoring the same test paper on different occasions.).
For more knowledge:

https://www.slideshare.net/eyenabainza/approaches-to-language-testing
References:
Language and Literature Assessment –A comprehensive Guide /pages23-26
Authors: Mildred B. Go, Ph.D., Ofelia T. Pocesion, Ph.D.
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TEACHING AND ASSESSMENT OF LITERATURE

CHAPTER 3: Language Testing: Approaches and Techniques

A. APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE TESTING

1. The Essay-Translation Approach

2. The Cultural Approach

3. The Integrative Approach

a. Characteristics and Types of test of integrative approach:

4. The Communicative Approach

a. Characteristics and types of tests of Communicative Approach:

c. Weakness of Communicative Approach

1. Discrete Point versus Integrative testing

A. Discrete – A completely discrete-point item would test simply one point on

Integrative testing, by contrast, requires the candidate to combine many language

2. Norm-referenced versus Criterion-referenced Testing

Norm-referenced and Criterion-Referenced. These two types of language test are

3. Objective versus Subjective Testing

subjective than the scoring of short answers in response to questions on a reading

For more knowledge:

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