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Unit 1 – History of and Four Approaches to Language Testing
1.0 Intended Learning Outcomes
At the end of this unit, you will be able to:
a. Define and illustrate the nature of teaching and testing in English language;
b. Explain the historical overview of language testing; and
c. Illustrate the four different approaches that have evolved in language testing.
1.1 Introduction
Many types of languages are used throughout the world to communicate daily our
countless ideas, beliefs, intentions, actions and feelings. With mass media and the Internet,
this interaction is occurring faster and more frequently with every passing second. Even
specialized languages, such as mathematics and computer programming, are being used
more often in an effort to create much desired and needed new processes and systems and to
educate people.
Therefore, as members of a growing global village encompassed by our dynamic
information age, good language expression, usage, and comprehension are vital not only for
accurately communicating with each other in many different ways and on many different
levels, but also for correctly communicating with and managing our machines, structures and
other synthetic systems as well as the organic systems we have inherited.
1.2 History of and Four Approaches to Language Testing
What is teaching?
In education, teaching is the concerted sharing of knowledge and experience, which is
usually organized within a discipline and, more generally, the provision of stimulus to the
psychological and intellectual growth of a person by another person or artifact (Glossary of
Education Reform, 2014).
What is testing?
In general, testing is finding out how well something works. In terms of human beings,
testing tells what level of knowledge or skill has been acquired. A test is used to examine
someone’s knowledge of something to determine what that person knows or has learned. It
measures the level of skill or knowledge that has been reached. (Glossary of Education
Reform, 2014).
HISTORY OF LANGUAGE TESTING
The history of testing can be traced back a long way. Play is one of the basic phenomena
constituting the human condition and in play, humans compete against each other and test
their abilities.
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Game and play reveal the positive aspect of testing from the testee’s perspective, which
is often forgotten. However, testing in its broader sense is part of our everyday life. In playful
activities, we learn to set and achieve goals, to enjoy victory as well as to cope with defeat.
Accounts of language testing can be found throughout the history of mankind. Probably, the
first evidence is found in the Old Testament, when the Gileads use a Shibboleth to distinguish
between friends and enemies (cf. Kunnan 1999:707, Brown / Hudson 2002:1).
“And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and
it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over;
that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay; Then
said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not
frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of
Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand (Judges
12: 5-6).”
This story also indicates that, in testing, there is always a standard people are expected
to meet. In this case, it was the standard of being able to pronounce the word “shibboleth”
correctly.
Can you think of a word, phrase, or any form of language that has been used as a
standard in games, play, or testing? Come on.
Share it with us on a separate sheet of paper. �� (10 points)
As we have seen, the beginning of language testing dates back more than two
millennia and for certain purposes, not all as sanguinary as in the biblical tale, people have
always relied on certain language tests.
The history of modern language testing, however, is relatively young.
The growing demand for soldiers with foreign language skills due to World War I
caused the US army to develop the Army Alpha tests as a tool to measure people’s linguistic
abilities. Nevertheless, it was not until the 1940s that language testing became an object for
scientific research, with “Vilareal’s Test of Aural Comprehension in 1947 and Lado’s
Measurement in English as a Foreign Language in 1949” (Kunnan 1999:707) being the first
two Ph.D. dissertations in the field of language testing.
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Robert Lado went on to do further research and, in
1961,
presented his views in Language Testing. His
structuralist
approach promoted discrete point testing, a concept
which
“was reinforced by theory and practice within
psychometrics”
(McNamara 2000:14).
It is based on this assumption that the four basic language
skills listening, reading, writing, and speaking are
independent from one another and can, therefore, be assessed
separately.
In contrast to this, the notion of integrative testing
acknowledges the fact that mastery of a language’s formal
system alone is not enough. For this reason, integrative tests aim
at adding a context-specific component to the purely
decontextualized discrete point testing format.
Typical tasks include essay writing (e.g. as a response to a given statement or essay) as well as
an oral interview. These tests may thus reflect natural linguistic behaviour more accurately and
feature a more appropriate theoretic approach, but, as judges are needed to assess the individual
test samples “such integrative tests tend to be expensive and, in any case, potentially unreliable”
(McNamara 2000: 15).
In the late 1970s, as an answer to these problems, John Oller
proposed so-called tests on the basis of his Unitary Competence
Hypothesis. He was convinced that language proficiency was
indivisible and could consequently not be tested in part.
Pragmatic testing formats, such as cloze tests or dictation,
were related to language proficiency as a unitary concept and,
thus, reflected language ability more aptly, he claimed.
Further research revealed, however, that due to various
reasons, the Unitary Competence Hypothesis had to be given up,
although a weaker version supporting “the ‘partially divisible’
nature of language proficiency” (Baker 1989:72. Also cf. Kunnan
1999: 708, and McNamara 2000: 15) could be maintained.
Yet, another concept gained popularity during the 1980s: the Communicative Testing
approach was first formulated by Canale and Swain and took into account the “interactive, direct
and authentic” (Shohamy 1997: 142) nature of language.
With regard to actual testing, this means that we should aim at providing candidates with
authentic stimuli and tasks as well as testing them while they are engaged in some sort of
communication, be it active or passive.
As for the theory of Communicative Testing, Canale and Swain divided general language
competence into four sub-competencies: grammatical competence, strategic competence, discourse
competence and sociolinguistic competence, a concept which was elaborated by Lyle Bachman in
1990 and revised by Bachman and Palmer in 1996.
Their model holds that general language knowledge consists of two sub-domains,
organizational knowledge including grammatical and textual knowledge on the one hand, AND
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pragmatic knowledge including functional and sociolinguistic knowledge on the other (cf.
Bachman/Palmer 1996: 68).
“Communicative language testing dominates the field” (Shohamy 1997:143) and it is
Bachman and Palmer’s concept which “has been accepted as the definition of language
competence used by testers that is often used as a basis for test
construction” although it somewhat lacks empirical evidence
(cf. Kunnan 1999: 707. and Shohamy 1997:
146).
Portfolio evaluation, observation and simulation among
other methods are used by a strand of language ‘testing’ called
alternative assessment which holds that a person’s language
skills cannot be sufficiently assessed by a single test as general
language ability is far too complex. Even the best test can only
hint at what the testee can really do.
Therefore, “multiple assessment procedures” are needed
so that a broader and more valid language perspective can be
sampled (Shohamy 1997: 142).
stage
Three major stages in the development of
language testing have been identified and Michael Canale
correlated with corresponding methods in
teaching. These are: (1) the pre-scientific
associated with the grammar-translation method; (2) the psychometric-structuralist stage
concomitant with the audio-lingual method; and (3) the integrative-sociometric stage which
goes along with recent communicative methods.
The three trends are discussed in terms of views of language and learning, language teaching
and the learner, testing, and strengths and weaknesses of each approach.
The study shows the progression from lack of concern for statistical information and no
accounting for validity, reliability, or objectivity in the pre-scientific stages through an atomistic
approach towards language that concentrated on form, towards an integrative or global approach
that concentrates on meaning. This third trend calls for testing instruments that allow an
assessment of the learners' communicative competence.
It would seem that a large number of tests will have to be
developed if they are to evaluate different learners'
communicative competence and if they are based on the learners'
communicative needs.
“[Until about 1980], language was basically seen to be
grammar: that eventually came to be regarded as too distant, too
abstract.”
“[In the 1980s], language was reckoned to be a set of real
life encounters and experiences and tasks, a view which took
“real life” testing so seriously that it lost both objectivity and
compromise between these two positions,
Merrill Swain where language is viewed as being about
generality.”
“[From the 1990s], there has been a
communication, but in order to make contact with that communication, it is considered necessary
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to employ some kind of distancing from the mush of general
goings on that make up our daily life in language.”
Language Testing now focuses on:
∙ Methodology
∙ Practical advances
∙ Performance-affecting factors
∙ Performance assessment
∙ Ethical issues
(Bachman, 2000)
FOUR APPROACHES TO LANGUAGE TESTING
Within language testing, there has arisen over time at least two (2) major viewpoints on
assessment. Originally, as mentioned in the readings above, the view was that assessing language
should look specific elements of a language or one could say that language assessment should look
at discrete aspects of the language.
A reaction to this discrete method came about with the idea that language is holistic, so,
testing should be integrative or should address many aspects of language, simultaneously. In this
specific topic, although there are, indeed, four (4) approaches to language testing, we will take a
closer look at discrete and integrative language testing methods through providing examples of
each along with a comparison.
1. Discrete Point Testing Approach
Discrete point tests are constructed on the assumption that language can be divided into its
component parts, and those parts can be tested successfully. The components are the skills of
listening, speaking, reading, writing, and various units of language of phonology, morphology,
lexicon, and syntax. Discrete point tests aim to achieve a high reliability factor by testing a large
number of discrete items, but each question tests only one linguistic point. Examples of discrete
point test items in language testing include multiple choice, true/false, fill in the blank, and
spelling.
What all of these example items have in common is that they usually isolate an aspect of
the language from the broader context. For example, a simple spelling test is highly focused on
the orthographic characteristics of the language. True/false can be used to assess knowledge of
various grammar rules, etc.
The primary criticism of discrete-point testing was its discreteness. Many believe that
language is holistic and that, in the real-world, students will never have to deal with language in
such an isolated way. This led to the development of integrative language testing methods.
Strengths
∙ The test of this approach can cover a wide range of scope of materials to be put in the
tests.
∙ The test allows quantification on the students’ responses.
∙ In the term of scoring, the test is also reliable because of its objectivity; the scoring is
efficient, even it can be performed by machine.
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Weaknesses
∙ Constructing discrete point test items is potentially energy- and time-consuming. ∙ The
test does not include social contexts where verbal communications normally take place.
∙ Success in doing the test is not readily inferable to the ability of the test taker to
communicate in real-life circumstances.
2. Integrative Testing Approach
Integrative language testing is based on the unitary trait hypothesis, which states that
language is indivisible. This is in complete contrast to discrete-point methods which supports
dividing language into specific components.
Integrative testing approach involves the testing of language in context and is, thus,
concerned primarily with meaning and the total communicative effect of discourse. This
approach states that communicative competence is so global that it requires the integration of all
linguistic abilities. According to Oller (1983), if discrete items take language skills apart,
integrative tests put it back together; whereas, discrete items attempt to test knowledge of
language a bit at a time, integrative tests attempt to assess a learner’s capacity to use many bits
all at the same time.
The fact that discrete point and integrative testing only provided a measure of the
candidate’s competence rather than measuring the candidate’s performance brought about the
need for communicative language testing (Weir, 1990). By the mid-1980s, the language testing
field had abandoned arguments about the unitary competence and had begun to focus on
designing communicative language testing (Brown, 2004).
Two (2) common integrative language assessments include cloze test and dictation.
Cloze test involves taking an authentic reading passage and removing words from it.
Which words will be removed depends on the test creator. Normally, it is every 6th or 7th word,
but it could be more or less or only the removal of key vocabulary. In addition, sometimes,
potential words are given to the student to select from or, sometimes, the list of words is not
given to the students.
The students’ job is to look at the context of the entire story to determine which words to
write into the blank space. This is an integrative experience as the students have to consider
grammar, vocabulary, context, etc. to complete the assessment.
Dictation is simply writing down what was heard. This also requires the use of several
language skills simultaneously in a realistic context.
Integrative language testing also has faced criticism. For example, discrete point testing
has always shown that people score differently in different language skills and this fact has
been replicated in many studies. As such, the exclusive use of integrative language approaches
is not supported by most Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) scholars.
Strengths
∙ The approach to meaning and the total communicative effect of discourse will be very
useful for pupils in testing.
∙ This approach can view pupils’ proficiency with a global view.
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∙ The strength of the test such as dictation, writing, and cloze test is that relatively cheap
and easy to make.
Weaknesses
∙ Even if measuring integrated skills are better, but, sometimes, teacher should consider
the importance of measuring skills based on particular need, such as writing only,
speaking only, etc.
∙ The scoring is not efficient and not reliable.
* As with many other concepts in education, the best choice between discrete point and
integrative testing is a combination of both. The exclusive use of either will not allow the
students to demonstrate mastery of the language.
3. Communicative Language Testing Approach
Communicative language testing approach lays more emphasis on the notion and
function, like agreeing, persuading, or inviting, that language means in communication.
Communicative language testing approach is used to measure language learners’ ability to use
the target language in authentic situations. The approach believes that someone/a student is
considered successful in learning the target language if s/he can communicate or use
knowledge and skills by way of authentic listening, speaking, reading, and writing.
Communicative language tests have to be as accurate as a reflection of that situation as possible.
The example of communicative language test is role play. The teacher asks students to do a role
play such as pretending that the students come to the doctor, pretending that the students are in
the market, etc.
Strengths
∙ The tests are more realistic to evaluate the students’ language use, as the students in a
role as though they were to communicate in the real world / daily lives.
∙ It increases students’ motivation since they can see the use of language they learnt in
class in the real world.
Weaknesses
∙ Not efficient (time and energy consuming)
∙ Problem of extrapolation (Weir, 1990)
∙ We cannot guarantee that the students who successfully accomplish the task in class will
also be successful in the communication in real life.
The principles of testing in the communicative language testing can be described as the
following (Anon, 1990):
∙ Tasks in the test should resemble, as far as possible, to the ones as would be found in real
life in terms of communicative use of language.
∙ There is a call for test items contextualization.
∙ There is a need to make test items that address a definite audience for a purposeful
communicative intent (goal) to be envisioned (might happen).
∙ Test instructions and scoring plans should touch on effective, communication of meaning
rather than on grammatical accuracy.
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4. Performance Testing Approach
Any assessment can be considered a type of performance when a student is placed in some
contexts and asked to show what they know or can do in that context. Performance-based
assessment believes that the students will learn best when they are given a chance to perform
and show what they know according to their own plan, collect data, infer pattern, draw
conclusion, take a stand or deliver presentation. According to Brown (2004), in developing
performance-based assessment, we, as teachers, should consider the following principles:
∙ State the overall goal of the performance.
∙ Specify the objectives (criteria) of the performance in details.
∙ Prepare students for performance in step-wise progressions.
∙ Use a reliable evaluation form, checklist, or rating sheet.
∙ Treat performances as opportunities for giving feedback and provide that feedback
systematically.
∙ If possible, utilize self- and peer-assessments judiciously (wisely/carefully).
Strengths
∙ Increasing learning motivation (The students tend to be more motivated and involved when
they are allowed to perform according to their own plan, collect data, infer a pattern, draw
conclusions, take stand, or deliver a presentation.)
∙ Meaningful (It is meaningful assessment when we require students to show what they can do
through project, performance, or observation. It will give them learning experience more
than just paper-and-pencil test.)
∙ Authentic (Since the materials and topics we use in class are authentic, the students can see
the relation of what they learn with the reality in their daily lives.)
∙ Challenges high order thinking skills of students (In order to prepare for the best
performance, the students will also try their best to analyze the problem deeper and find
many learning sources by themselves.)
Weaknesses
∙ Time consuming (for students: they need to prepare the performance e.g. downloading
information from the Internet or preparing the costume and property for role play; for
teachers: Teachers need to provide guidance in every stage they are going to get through.
For example, in assessing the students to make portfolio of essays, they need to check every
single paper of the students, one by one every week, and when it has been revised, they
have to check them again.)
∙ Expensive (Students: the students should provide extra money to prepare the performance
such as costumes for role play.)
∙ Challenges the teacher to match performance assessment to classroom goals and learning
objectives
Let’s Try This ��
To have a better understanding of the above-mentioned approaches to language
testing, below are tests that you need to answer. (50 points)
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1. For Discrete Point Testing
1.1. Multiple Choice
Because my mother was sick, I _____ to go home last week.
a. had b. Have c. has d. hadn’t
1.2. Completion Item (Supply the missing grammatical item.)
Give the book to ______ woman in the blue dress.
I will _______ to your house tomorrow.
John _________ in this office since 2010.
1.3. Yes/No; True/False
In the simple present tense, we use did to make questions and negatives.
a. True b. False
We use present participle when we tell about plan.
a. True b. False
1.4. Phoneme Recognition (You do not need to answer these.)
∙ This form of listening assessment assesses students’ ability to correctly identify
different phonemes and morphemes commonly found in the English language.
Examples:
• Phonemic Pair, consonants
Students hear: (He is walking.; He is working.)
• Phonemic Pair, vowels
Students hear: (Is he living?; Is he leaving?)
• Morphological Pair, -ed ending
Students hear: (We walk to school.; We walked to school)
2. For Integrative Testing
Cloze Test
Directions: Read the following text and complete it by being guided with the words given
in the options.
I do remember it and I’m grateful, but I can’t help feeling that a woman
capable of taking other people’s lives and juggling with them as if they were
rubber balls, as she did with ours, is likely at any moment to break out in a
new place. So, my gratitude to her is the sort of (1) ______ [hat tip] you would
feel toward a cyclone if you were walking home late for dinner, and it caught
you up and deposited you on your doorstep. Moreover, your Aunt Lora is a
human (2) _____ [storm]. No, on the whole, she’s more like an earthquake as
she has a habit of splitting up and altering the face of the world whenever she
feels like it, and I’m too well satisfied with my world at present to (3) _____
[enjoy] the idea of having it changed.
Little by little the garrison of the studio had been (4) _______ [small
slice] down. Except for Steve, the community had no regular members
outside the family itself. As Hank was generally out of town, and Bailey paid
one more
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visit, then seemed to consider that he could now absent himself altogether,
and the members of Kirk’s bachelor circle stayed away to a man.
Q 1. Q 2. Q 3. Q 4.
A) Tippy A) Cyclone A) Good A) slice
B) Gratitude B) giant B) relish B) whittled
C) Excellence C) Chin C) delicious C) Cut
D) Battle D) Hunter D) Happy D) levelled
3. For Communicative Language Testing
Role Play
Directions: Pick one from the three situations below and act out the scenario. You may ask
for co-participants whenever necessary. Have someone to video-record you while doing
the role play. (15 points)
∙ Pretend that you are a sales clerk at a store and are trying to find an outfit for
your client’s special occasion. Tell what the hot trends are for a red-carpet show. ∙
You are asking your class deeper-level questions to help them process a lesson
you are teaching. One of your students is acting particularly silly, raising a
hand, and offering flippant and irresponsibly incorrect answers. What do you
do?
∙ A customer ordered a product online and has not yet received it after the
expected delivery date. The customer is irritated and demanding a refund. What
do you do?
∙ Suppose you are a TV anchor and you have scheduled a Senator or Congressman
for an interview on the recently approved bill, the “Child Car Seat Law”.
∙ You have already booked for a three-day stay in a five-star hotel out of town.
However, due to the sudden bad weather condition, you can no longer pursue
your travel. Through a telephone conversation, what do you do?
4. For Performance Testing
Job-related Writing
Your school has received a letter from Juan dela Cruz, the leader of a local
youth club, whom you have not met before, asking for a donation toward the
club’s activities. As the school principal, you have been asked to reply. (10 points)
Retelling
Listen to a story or watch a news event and simply retell it, or summarize it
orally. In so doing, you must identify the gist, main idea, purpose, supporting
points, and/or conclusion to show full comprehension while applying, of course,
the grammar points. Send to my Facebook messenger account both your source
(either the audio for the story or the video for the news event) and your own video
recorded output. (15 points)
Congratulations! ��
You are now done with Learning Packet-1 discussion. It is hoped that you have
learned a lot from this lesson. Why don’t we try to take another test? �� Good luck!
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Evaluation (60 points)
Name: ________________________________ Professor: _____________________________ Year
Level: ____________________________ Date: _________________________________
Directions: On separate sheets of paper, answer as asked. Thereafter, attach it and the other sheets
(where you have written your answers to the earlier questions/tasks) to this page.
1. Differentiate the nature of teaching and testing in English language. (10 points) 2. Using a
timeline, illustrate the history of language testing, mention authorities, and briefly explain the
essential details. (10 points)
3. Using the matrix below, differentiate the four approaches to language testing. (40 points)
Four Approaches to LT Principles Strengths Types of Test
1. Discrete Point Testing
2. Integrative Testing
3. Communicative
Language Testing
4. Performance Testing
1.3 References
Glossary of Education Reform. (2014). https://www.edglossary.org/assessment/
Language Learning Assessment. (2012, December 19). Re: Approaches in Language Testing.
https://thejoyoflanguageassessment.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/approaches-in
language-testing-2/
Larsen-Freeman, D. (2001). Teaching grammar. In M. Celce-Murcia (ed.), Teaching English as a
second or foreign language (3rd edn. pp. 251–66). Retrieved from:
https://www.uibk.ac.at/anglistik/staff/freeman/course-documents/tesfl_-
_teaching_grammar.pdf
Larsen-Freeman, Diane. (2001). Teaching Language: From Grammar to Grammaring. Heinle &
Heinle.
Larsen-Freeman, Diane. (2009). Teaching and Testing Grammar. Heinle & Heinle.
Research techniques and education. (2017, March 10). Re: Discrete-Point and Integrative
Language Testing Methods.
https://educationalresearchtechniques.com/2017/03/10/discrete-point-and
integrative-language-testing-methods/
1.4 Acknowledgment
The images, tables, figures, and pieces of information contained in this learning
packet were taken from the references cited above.
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ESSAY or WRITE-UP Scoring Rubric
INDICATORS 5/EXCELLENT 4/VERY 3/AVERAGE 2/NEEDS 1/
GOOD IMPROVEMENT UNACCEPTABLE
Ideas This paper is clear This paper is The writer is Topic is not As yet, the paper
and focused. It mostly beginning to well defined has no clear sense
holds the reader's focused, and define the and/or of
attention. has some topic, even there are too purpose or
Relevant details good details though many topics. central theme.
and quotes enrich and quotes. development is To extract
the still basic or meaning from the
central theme. general. text, the reader
must make
inferences
based on sketchy
or missing
details.
Organization The organization Paper (and The Sentences within The writing
enhances and paragraphs) organizational paragraphs make lacks a clear
showcases the are mostly structure is sense, but the sense of
central idea or organized, in strong enough order of direction. Ideas,
theme. The order, order, and to move the paragraphs does details, or events
structure of makes sense reader through not. seem strung
information is to the the text without together in a loose
compelling and reader. too much or random
moves the reader confusion. fashion; there is no
through the text. identifiable
internal structure.
Sentence The writing has The writing The text hums The text seems The reader has to
Fluency an easy flow, mostly along with a choppy and is practice quite a bit
rhythm, and flows, and steady beat, not easy to in order to give
cadence. usually but tends to read orally. this
Sentences are well invites oral be more paper a fair
built, with strong reading. businesslike interpretive reading.
and varied than musical,
structure that more
invites expressive mechanical
oral reading. than fluid.
Conventions The writer The write The writer The writer seems Errors in
demonstrates a understands shows to have made spelling,
good grasp of good writing reasonable little punctuation,
standard conventions control over a effort to use capitalization,
writing and usually limited conventions: usage, and
conventions (e.g., uses them range of spelling, grammar and/or
spelling, correctly. standard punctuation, paragraphing
punctuation, Paper is writing capitalization, repeatedly distract
capitalization, easily read conventions. usage, grammar the reader and
grammar, usage, and errors Conventions and/or make the text
paragraphing) are rare; are paragraphing difficult to read.
and uses minor sometimes have multiple
conventions touch-ups handled well errors.
effectively to would get and enhance
enhance this piece readability; at
readability. ready to other times,
publish. errors are
distracting and
impair
readability.
Presentation The form and The format The writer's The writer's The reader receives
presentation of only has a message is message is only a garbled message
the text few understandable understandable due to problems
enhances the mistakes and in this format. occasionally, relating to the
ability for the is generally and paper is presentation of
reader to easy to read messily the text, and is
understand and and written. not typed.
connect with the pleasing to
message. It is the eye.
pleasing to the eye.
