Date Posted:14:14:09 08/06/03 Wed Author:Alessandra Rosario Subject: Task 14
Task 14
Communicative language tests are intended to be a measure of how the testes are able to use language in real life situations. In testing productive skills, emphasis is placed on appropriateness rather than on ability to form grammatically correct sentences. In testing receptive skills, emphasis is placed on understanding the communicative intent of the speaker or writer rather than on picking out specific details. And, in fact, the two are often combined in communicative testing, so that the test must both comprehend and respond in real time. In real life, the different skills are not often used entirely in isolation.
A communicative language test should be based on a description of the language that the testes need to use. Though communicative testing is not limited to English for Specific Purposes situations, the test should reflect the communicative situation in which the tests are likely to find themselves. In cases where the tests do not have a specific purpose, the language that they are tested on can be directed toward general social situations where they might be in a position to use English.
This basic assumption influences the tasks chosen to test language in communicative situations. A communicative test of listening, then, would test not whether the test could understand what the utterance, "Would you mind putting the groceries away before you leave" means, but place it in a context and see if the test can respond appropriately to it.
If students are going to be tested over communicative tasks in an achievement test situation, it is necessary that they be prepared for that kind of test, that is, that the course material cover the sorts of tasks they are being asked to perform. For example, you cannot expect tests to correctly perform such functions as requests and apologies appropriately and evaluate them on it if they have been studying from a structural syllabus.
Tests intended to test communicative language are judged, then, on the extent to which they simulate real life communicative situations rather than on how reliable the results are.
There is necessarily a subjective element to the evaluation of communicative tests. Real life situations don't always have objectively right or wrong answers, and so band scales need to be developed to evaluate the results. Each band has a description of the quality (and sometimes quantity) of the receptive or productive performance of the test.
