LANGUAGE
TESTING:
APPROACHES AND
TECHNIQUES
Prepared by Aries A. Sunga
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of the Module, students should be able to:
Identify and differentiate the different approaches to language
testing.
Explain their strengths and weaknesses.
Discuss the various language test techniques.
Realizes the usefulness of the lessons in testing students.
CHARACTERISTICS AND TYPES OF TESTS IN ESSAY
-TRANSLATION APPROACH
•This is commonly referred to as the pre- scientific stage of
language testing. No special skill or expertise in testing is required.
Tests usually consist of essay writing, translation and grammatical
analysis.
Strengths of Essay-
This approach is easy to follow because teachers will simply use
their subjective judgement
Weaknesses of Essay-
Translation Approach
Subjective judgement of teachers tends to be biased.
- Asmentioned, the tests have a heavy literary and cultural bias.
CHARACTERISTICS AND TYPES OF TESTS IN STRUCTURALIST
APPROACH
This approach views that language learning is chiefly concerned
with systematic acquisition of a set of habits. The structuralist
approach involves structural linguistics which stresses the
importance of constructive analysis and the need to identify and
measure the learners’ mastery of the separate elements of the
target language such as phonology, vocabulary and grammar.
Strengths of Structuralist Approach
Using this approach in testing will help students find their strengths and
weaknesses in every skill they study.
Weaknesses of Structuralist Approach
It tends to be a complicated job for teachers to prepare
questionnaires using this approach.
CHARACTERISTICS AND TYPES OF TESTS IN INTEGRATIVE APPROACH
This approach involves the testing of language in context and is thus
concerned primarily with meaning and the total communicative effect
of discourse. Integrative tests are concerned with a global view of
proficiency.
Strengths of Integrative Approach
Thisapproach can view students’ proficiency with a global view.
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, etc.
CHARACTERISTICS AND TYPES OF TESTS IN COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH
>Language is created by the individual, often through trial and error
Learners interact with each other in pairs or groups, to encourage a flow
of language and maximize the percentage of talking time, rather than just
teacher to student .
•Information Gap
•Role play
•Learning by Teaching
•Games
•Surveys
•Interviews
Strengths of Communicative Approach
Communicative tests are able to measure all integrated skills of
students.
The tests using this approach face students in real life so it will be very
useful for them.
Weaknesses of Communicative Approach
Unlike the structuralist approach, this approach does not emphasize
learning structural grammar, yet it may be difficult to achieve
communicative competence without a considerable mastery of the
grammar of a language.
TEST
TECHNIQUES
• KINDS OF TESTS AND TESTING
Direct Test Items
Direct test items used authentic assessment approaches. Examples in
TESOL would include the following…
For speaking: Interviews and presentations
For writing: Essay questions
For reading: Using real reading material and having the student respond to
question verbally and or in writing
For listening: Following oral directions to complete a task
The primary goal of direct test items is to be as much
like real-life as possible. Often, direct testing items are
integrative, which means that the student has to apply
several skills at once. For example, presentations involve
more than just speaking but also the writing of the speech,
the reading or memorizing of the speech as well as the
critical thinking skills to develop the speech
Indirect Test Items
Indirect test items assess knowledge without authentic application.
Below are some common examples of indirect test
items.
Multiple choice questions
Cloze items
Paraphrasing
• Indirect Testing
-attempts to measure the abilities that underlie the skills in which the
test is interested.
-Example: Grammatical knowledge contributes to writing ability, then
a grammar test may be used as an indirect test of writing.
Multiple Choice
Multiple choice questions involve the use of a question followed by
several potential answers. It is the job of the student to determine
what is the most appropriate answer. Some challenges with writing
multiple choice are the difficulty of writing incorrect choices. For
every correct answer, you need several wrong ones. Another problem
is that with training, students can learn how to improve their success
on multiple choice test without having a stronger knowledge of the
subject matter.
Cloze Items
Cloze items involve giving the student a paragraph or sentence
with one or more blanks in it that the student has to complete.
One problem with Cloze items is that more than one answer
may be acceptable for a blank. This can lead to a great deal of
confusion when marking the test.
Paraphrasing
Paraphrasing is strictly for TESOL and involves having
the student rewrite a sentence in a slightly different way
as the example below.
“
I’m sorry I did not go to the assembly”
I wish________________________________
Integrative Testing
-requires the candidate to combine many language elements in the
completion of a task.
-Examples:
-• writing a composition
-• making notes while listening to a lecture
-• taking a dictation
Objective vs. Subjective Testing
• Objective Test – there is only one right answer .
• Subjective Test - the scorer is not looking for only one right
answer, but rather for a series of factors.
