The History of Language Testing

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THE HISTORY OF LANGUAGE TESTING Language testing as a methodology for probing and investigating language ability comes from a long and honorable tradition of practical teaching and learning needs. Being central to language teaching, it provides goals for language teaching and it monitors for both teachers’ and learners’ success in reaching these goals. Language testing also provides a methodology for experiment and investigating both language teaching and language learning/acquisition. According to Davis (1990), what makes language testing important within applied linguistics is that unlike other subjects offered to students in education, a language has no obvious content. Therefore, assessing language produces complications regarding what is to be tested, i.e., the issue of validity, and how the testing is to be done i.e., the issue of reliability. Language testing has been classified into three main trends or periods: Pre-scientific, Scientific, and Socio-Integrative. Each of these trends or periods in language testing has its corresponding language teaching approaches and methods. LANGUAGE TESTING PERIODS | LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODS | Pre-Scientific Era | Grammar Translation MethodDirect MethodSituational Language Teaching | Scientific Era | Psychometric-Structuralist Era | The Reform MovementAudio-Lingual Method | Socio-Integrative Era | Psycholinguistic-Sociolinguistic Era | Communicative Language Teaching | | Communicative Era | | Language testing has its roots in pre-scientific stage in which no special skill or expertise in testing is required. This is characterized by lack of concern for statistical considerations or for such notions as objectivity and reliability (Weir 1990 et al.,). In its simplest form, this trend assumes that one can and must rely completely on the subjective judgment of an experienced teacher, who can identify
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