What Does Language Testing Have to Offer?

Abstract

Advances in language testing in the past decade have occurred in three areas: (a) the development of a theoretical view that considers language ability to be multicomponential and recognizes the influence of the test method and test taker characteristics on test performance, (b) applications of more sophisticated measurement and statistical tools, and (c) the development of communicative language tests that incorporate principles of communicative language teaching. After reviewing these advances, this paper describes an interactional model of language test performance that includes two components, language ability and test method. Language ability consists of language knowledge and metacognitive strategies, whereas test method includes characteristics of the environment, rubric, input, expected response, and relationship between input and expected response. Two aspects of authenticity are derived from this model. The situational authenticity of a given test task depends on the relationship between its test method characteristics and' the features of a specific language use situation, while its interactional authenticity pertains to the degree to which it invokes the test taker's language ability. The application of this definition of authenticity to test development is discussed.