Language Assessment:
Principles and Issues
Theme
• Differences between assessment and
testing
• Basic principles of language assessment
• Genres of tests
• Historical development in language
testing
• Issues in language assessment
Defining test and
assessment (p. 489-490)
• Test: in a given domain, have identifiable
scoring methods, occupied specified time
periods, a subsets of assessment
• Assessment: an ongoing process, wider
domain
– Informal assessment: incidental, unplanned
comments and responses
– Formal assessment: designed for storehouse
of skills and knowledge
Principles of language
assessment
• Practicality: Financial limitations, time
constrains, ease of administration scoring
interpretation
– Norm-referenced: in relation to a mean, median,
standard deviation and/or percentile rank, i.e.
standardized test
– Criterion-referenced: give feedback on specific
course or lesson objectives, i.e. classroom tests.
Principles of language
assessment
• Reliability: The extent to which a test measure
consistently.
• - Test reliability: same test, same test-taker,
same result
• - Rater (scorer) reliability : careful
specification of an analytical scoring
instrument
– Student-related reliability
Principles of language
assessment
•Validit : measure what you intended to
ymeasure
• Achieved through observation and theoretical
justification
• Criterion validity: test particular objective
• Content validity: actual samples the subject
about which conclusions are to be drawn
standardized exam
Principles of language
assessment
• Face validity: “does the test, on the “face”
of it, appear from the learners’ perspective
to test what it is designed to test?”
• Construct validity: “Does this test actually
tap into the theoretical construct as it has
been defined?” Ex. Proficiency, self-
esteem… etc.
Principles of language
assessment
• Authenticity: the degree of
correspondence of the characteristics of a
given language test task to the features of
a target language task.
– The criteria for designing an authentic test
(p.496)
• Washback: The effect a test has on
teaching and learning.
• Principles of assessment (p. 499)
Kinds of tests
• Diagnostic tests: An assessment instrument
or procedure that attempts to diagnose, or
identify, a learner’s strengths and weakness,
typically so that an efficient and appropriate
course of instruction can be presented.
• Placement tests: An assessment instrument
or procedure used to determine a student’s
language skills relative to the levels of a
particular program he or she is about to enter.
Kinds of tests
• Achievement tests: Assessment
instruments based on the objectives of a
course, used to determine how much of
the course content students have learned.
It helps determine acquisition of course
objectives at the end of a period of
instruction
Kinds of tests
• Aptitude tests: Assessment instruments which
do not test someone’s skill in a particular
language-rather they are intended to assess a
person’s ability to learn any language. It tends
to predict future success.
• Proficiency test: global competence; have
content validity weakness. It tends to have
weak content validity.
Ex: TOEFL
Historical development
in language testing
• 1950s:
-Era of Behaviorism
-Contrastive analysis: Test on specific language
elements: phonological, grammatical and
lexical contrasts between 2 languages.
• 1970s-1980s:
-Communicative theories of language
• Today:
- Focus on communication, authenticity, context
and content-valid
-Stimulate real world interaction
Two major approaches
• Discrete-point tests: Assessment instruments in
which each item is intended to measure one
and only one linguistic element.
• Integrative tests: Tests that assess one or more
levels of language (phonology, morphology,
lexicon, syntax, or discourse) and/or one or
more skills (reading, writing, speaking and
listening). Ex: cloze, dictation
Issues in language
assessment
• Large-scale tests of language ability
– Challenges: Cost, security, mirror language
tasks of the real world
– Recent accomplishment: focus on
communicative component, etc. (p. 503)
• Authenticity: consider the interactive
nature of language
– Dilemmas: task complex, lack practicality,
reliability issue
Issues in language
assessment
• Performance-based assessment: lose the
practicality, gain the (content) validity
• Multiple intelligent: Gardner (1983, 1999),
Sternberg (1985, 1997) and Goleman
(1995), example (p.505)
• Alternatives in classroom-based
assessment: Authentic, learner-centered
(p. 507)
