No open-access location is known for this record yet.
No open-access location is known for this record yet.
A TEACHER S CONCEPT OF WHAT A LANGUAGE IS AND HOW PEOPLE LEARN IT will have a direct and immediate impact on the method he uses to teach that language.' It is equally clear that the evolution of teaching methods requires a similar change in the way the learner's success is tested and measured. The audio-lingual method is no longer dominant: language teaching has become more eclectic, so much so that it is easier to say what it is not, than what it is. The concept of language as discrete linguistic items in mere sequential relationships has been abandoned and this item-and-arrangement theory of language which permeated the audio-lingual method has now given way to emphasis on the meaningful use of language and, more substantially, to the practice of communicative acts in full context. One would expect that earlier preoccupation with testing discrete items would, under these circumstances, yield to integrated tests of global communicative competence in whatever mode, spoken or written. Such a shift has not yet taken place, probably for societal and pragmatic reasons. Proficiency tests are given in precise social settings (schools, courses, classes) and usually have specific consequences (grades, placement, graduation, employment, and salary raises). These factors place a high premium on methods of testing that are economical in administration and statistically reliable, and it has been found that economy and reliability are enhanced by testing discrete items (morphemes, grammar points, lexical items). This has led to the partial eclipse of more traditional tests which are intuitively valid procedures to measure the global linguistic competence of students: dictation, composition (oral or written), interpretation of spoken or written passages and translation. As a result, many foreign language teaching programs in which high value is being placed on communication, continue assessing progress by tests that simply dip into the partial and superficial skills that the students develop on the way, such as their ability to make verbs agree with their 1 This is a revised and expanded version of a paper read at the 1976 Kentucky Foreign Language Conference. It has since benefited from the criticism of John W. Oiler, Jr. and J. A. Upshur, and the statistical expertise of Gerald M. Gillmore. A debt of gratitude is owed to these colleagues and to the Graduate School Research Fund, University of Washington, for much needed support.
Loading…
Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.