Date Posted:18:21:11 08/06/03 Wed Author: Carolina Dias Cunha Subject: Task 14
Read the text below and say how we can test communicative competence.
An exam that tests communicative competence should be centred in the language used for effective communication, that is, the real use of language in the student’s everyday life. It focuses on appropriateness rather than on the language itself (the knowledge of grammar and the specific vocabulary learnt up to that moment).
Unfortunately it is quite difficult to achieve such goal since our current classroom situation (in most schools) does not allow the teacher to test students’ communicative competence due to the high number of students or the impossibility of adopting their own assessment system. The tests end up being a combination of structural exercises usually grammar ones) and the test of communicative abilities (such as oral tests).
