Applied linguistics and language learning/teaching
INVESTIGATING THE PROBLEMS: THE METHODOLOGY OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS
Language proficiency testing
Testing is more a normal part of language teaching than of other curriculum subjects because the language teacher is concerned with skill as well as with knowledge. This means that there is more need for testing. Testing is further complicated by the unusual presence of a living criterion, the native speaker. In History, Physics and so on there is no equivalent, no body of persons who represent ultimate attainment. Of course there may be an individual, an Einstein or a Gibbon, whose scholarship is universally recognized as a model for us all; but even that is not really comparable because no course of instruction sets out to emulate such scholarship whereas in many language-teaching operations the goal is the native speaker, but increasingly testing comes under criticism as to which native speaker.
What language proficiency testing is about is the setting of appropriate targets for varying levels and uses of language. Such tests aim to provide the rigors of test guidelines, while ensuring that the right kinds of language behavior are included and in appropriate quantities. The applied linguistic interest in language proficiency testing is now central but that was not always the case. What has become clear over the last thirty years is the role of the test in encapsulating both what the learner needs to know for a particular purpose and what amount of that knowledge counts as success. This is a major contribution both to the practice of language learning and teaching, and to the theoretical understanding of language learning and language need.
Furthermore, language proficiency tests both model the native speaker and at the same time provide an alternative means of setting goals for learning. They operationalize language learning precisely by setting explicit goals, which is another way of stating that language tests make language learning accountable by establishing what it means to ‘know’ the language. They do this by sampling the relevant areas of language to be learned and guarantee that their sampling is correct through their documentation on reliability and validity. And here is the major distinction between tests of proficiency and tests of achievement (or attainment): tests of proficiency sample the language that is being learned; tests of achievement sample the teaching program (syllabus, course, textbook etc.) that has already been agreed, a sample then of an existing sample.
We can distinguish six kinds of information that language testing provides. The first is in research in which language testing is used to provide hypotheses in relation to our understanding of language and language learning. The status and concept of language proficiency, the structure of language ability and the natural order of language acquisition have been much discussed by language testers using language testing techniques to produce data which furthers discussion. Such issues are primarily intended to add to our knowledge and understanding of language and language learning, though no doubt they also have an applied potential in language teaching programs.
The second use of language testing in experiments is a subset of the first use, in research. But there is an important difference. In the research use we are thinking of research into language testing; in the experimental use we are thinking of tests as criteria for language-teaching experiments, for example in method comparison.
The third use, which is reflexive, and much discussed as a responsibility of testing, is used less than it could be, that is the washback effect on the syllabus of language testing (Clapham et al. 1997). The implications of test results and their meaning are employed as a critique of the syllabus and the teaching; while the testing structure, the content and method of the tests themselves influence the teaching. We are concerned here with teaching to the test, for it is always the pejorative aspect of washback that is implied, but we stress that there is a positive side to this. The implications are, first, that teaching is influenced by testing and, second, that testing has an important responsibility – to ensure that its influence is constructive.
The fourth use of language testing is measuring progress among learners, the most common type of test being the achievement test.
The fifth use is in selection of students on the basis of either previous learning or in terms of some more general language-learning ability or aptitude for the next stage of education or a particular vocation. What is of interest here is the interaction between use for progress and use for selection, that is to what extent a valid test of progress is in itself a valid test for selection purposes.
The sixth use is in relation to evaluation of courses, methods and materials. This is a special use of testing which must cope with the learner variable, distinguishing it from the evaluation of the materials, program and so on.
Language assessment provides a triple message:
1. A message about skill, to what extent learners have reached adequate proficiency, however that is defined and the role of language tests in developing more specific and detailed indicators of adequate proficiencies.
2. A message about development, which appears at first sight only to be psycholinguistic since it seems to suggest a progress along a very clear and obvious path towards ultimate attainment. That obviousness is not true even of native speakers, who may have very different endpoints. Attached to this message about development for all language learners is an indication of the identity which the learner chooses (usually unconsciously). Information about development therefore provides an indication – through assessment – as to both the psycholinguistic and the sociolinguistic provenance of the learner.
3. A message about knowledge. Language users, both native speakers and non-native speakers, distinguish themselves in terms of their awareness of language. This shows itself both in the range of acceptability judgements they are prepared to make and in the extent of their conscious metalinguistic reflecting upon language, which in turn demonstrates itself in knowledge about language and in areas of ludic creativity. Such a reification of language does seem to discriminate both among native speakers and among non-native speakers; it does, of course, have some bearing on our first message, that of skill, since there may well be an element of knowledge within skill which determines differential proficiency (Davies 1990: 11, Davies 2006).
