CURRENT ISSUES IN LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT

In some ways, recent work in language assessment makes the above account seem like ancient
history. So many steps have been taken to improve the construction, delivery, and scoring of
assessment that it’s difficult to capsulize them here. From an era not to many decades ago when
virtually all tests were thought to necessitate decontextualized linguistic stimuli of dubious
authenticity, we have emerged into a new world of more communicative, learner- centred,
performance – based assessment. Nevertheless, many challenges remain -in the world of
commercial production of language tests and in the language classroom. Let’s look at a few of
those highlights.

A. Large-Scale Language Proficiency Testing

Proficiency test, on the other hand, are not based on a particular curriculum or language
program. They assess the overall language ability of students at varying levels. They may also
tell us how capable a person is in a particular language skill area (e.g., reading). In other words,
proficiency tests describe what students are capable of doing in a language.

Proficiency tests are typically developed by external bodies such as examination boards like
Educational Testing Services (ETS), the College Board, or Cambridge ESOL. Some
proficiency tests have been standardized for international use, such as the TOEFL®, which
measures the English language proficiency of foreign college students who to study in North
American universities or the IELTSTM, which is intended for those who wish to study in the
United Kingdom or Australia (Davies et al., 1999). Increasingly, North American universities
are accepting IELTSTM as a measures of English language proficiency.

At the present time, designers of large-scale language tests are still struggling with some of
Bachman’s criteria, but some progress has been made. Tests such as the TOEFL in a new
incarnation in 2005, include performance on all four skill, interactive response techniques, and
improved tasks requiring pragmatic, discourse, and sociolinguistic competence in order to
accurately respond.

B. Authenticity
 A test must be authentic. Bachman and Palmer (as cited in Brown, 2004:28) defined
authenticity as the degree of correspondence of the characteristics of a given language test task
to the features of a target language. Several things must be considered in making an authentic
test: language used in the test should be natural, the items are contextual, topics brought in the
test should be meaningful and interesting for the learners, the items should be organized
thematically, and the test must be based on the real-world.

Language learners are motivated to perfume when they are faced with task that reflect real-
world situations and context. Good testing or assessment strives to use formats and tasks that
mirror the types of situations in which students would authentically use the target language.
Whenever possible, teachers should attempt to use authentic materials in testing language
skills.

C. Performance-Based Assessment
Closely related to the issue of authenticity is what has come to be called performance-based
assessment. An authentic task in any assessment implies that test-taker (or classroom student)
must engage in actual performance of the specified linguistic objective. In educational settings
around the world, test designers and classroom teachers are now tackling this new agenda
(Leung, 2005). Instead of just offering paper-and pencil single-answer test of possibly
hundreds of discrete items, performance-based testing of typical school subject involves
 Open-ended problem-solving tasks
 Hands-on projects
 Students portfolios
 Experiments
 Tasks in various genres of writing
 Group projects

To be sure, such testing is time-consuming and therefore expensive, but the losses in
practicality are made up for in higher validity. Students are tested as they actually perform the
behaviour itself. In technical terms, higher content validity is achieved as learners are measured
in the process of performing the objectives of a lesson or course. Performance-based testing
means that you may have a difficult time distinguishing between formal and informal testing.
D. Challenges from Innovative Theories of Intelligence
Intelligence was once viewed strictly as the ability to perfume (a) linguistic and (b) logical-
mathematical problem solving. This “IQ” concept of intelligence permeated the Western world
and its way of testing for almost a century. Since “smartness “in general is measured by timed,
discrete-point test consisting of many little items, then why shouldn’t every field of study be
so measured? Today we still live in a world of standardized, norm-referenced tests that are
timed, multiple-choice, tricky, long, and artificial.

Research on intelligence by psychologist like Gardner (1982, 1999), Sternberg (1988, 1997),
and Goleman (1995) challenged the traditional psychometric orthodoxy. Standard theories of
intelligence, on which standardized IQ (and other) tests are based, were expanded to include
inter- and intrapersonal, spatial, kinaesthetic, contextual, and emotional intelligences, among
others.

These new conceptualizations of intelligence infused the decade of the 1990s with a sense of
both freedom and responsibility in our testing agenda. We were freed from exclusive reliance
on timed, discrete-point, analytical tests in measuring language. We were liberated from the
tyranny of “objectivity” and its accompanying impressionableness. But we also assumed the
responsibility for tapping into whole language skill, learning processes, and the ability to
negotiate meaning. Our challenge was to test interpersonal, creative, communicative,
interactive skills, and in doing so, to place some trust in our subjectivity, our intuition.

E. Expanding “Alternatives” in Classroom-Based Assessment

Current practice sees a great deal of action by teachers more and more involved in the creation
of their own instruments and/or the willing adaptation of published tests for their own
classroom context. In what has been termed “classroom-based assessment, a number of current
challenges and issues merge: authentic assessment, performance-based assessment, formative
assessment, informal assessment, and alternatives in assessment.
 Some references to alternatives is assessment refer to “alternative assessment”, a term that
conveys the wrong message, as Brown and Hudson (1998) note. To speak of alternatives
assessment implies something that outside of or “exempt from the requirements of responsible
test construction” (Brown & Hudson, 1998, p. 657). Instead, alternatives in assessment
recognized that tests are one of many possible alternatives within the superordinate concept of
assessment.

Traditional Tests Alternatives is Assessment

One-shot, standardized exams
Timed, multiple-choice format
Decontextualized test items
Scores suffice for feedback
Norm-referenced scores
Focus on the “right” answer
Summative
Oriented to product
Noninteractive performance
Fosters extrinsic motivation
Continuous long-term assessment
Untimed, free-response format
Contextualized communicative tasks
Formative, interactive feedback
Criterion-referenced scores
Open-ended, creative answer
Formative
Oriented to process
Interactive performance
Fosters intrinsic motivation

It should be noted here that traditional testing offers significantly higher levels or practicality.
Considerably more time and higher intuitional budgets are required to administer and evaluate
assessments that presuppose more subjective evaluation, more individualization, and more
interaction in the process of offering feedback. The payoff for the latter, motivation, and
ultimately greater validity.

F. Ethical Issues: Critical Language Assessment

Test designers, and the corporate socio-political infrastructure that they represent, have an
obligation to maintain certain standards as specified by their client educational institutions.
These standards bring with them certain ethical issues surrounding the “gatekeeping” nature
of “high-stakes” standardized tests.
 The issues of critical language testing are numerous:
 Psychometric traditions are challenged by interpretive, individualized procedures for
predicting success and evaluating ability.
 Test designers have a responsibility to offer multiple modes of performance to account
for varying styles and abilities among test-takers.
 Tests are deeply embedded in culture and ideology.
 Test-takers are political subjects in a political context.

One of the problems of critical language testing surrounds the widespread belief that standardized
tests designed by reputable test manufacturers are infallible in their predictive validity. A further
problem with our test-oriented culture lies in the agendas of those who design and those who utilize
the tests. Tests are used in some countries to deny citizenship (Shohamy, 2001).

As a language teacher you might be able to exercise some influence in the ways tests are used and
interpreted in your own context. You might be instrumental in establishing an institutional system
of evaluation that places less emphasis on standardized tests and more emphasis on the ongoing
process of formative evaluation you and your co-teachers an offer. In so doing, you might offer
educational opportunity to a few more people who would otherwise be eliminated from contention.