UNIVERSIDAD CATÓLICA DE LA SANTÍSIMA CONCEPCIÓN

FACULTAD DE EDUCACIÓNDepartamento de Lenguas

Theoretical Framework

Evaluación de la Competencia Comunicativa en Inglés

Profesora Gabriela SanhuezaMelissa Arévalo

María Francisca Rojas

Concepción, Abril 2013

Theoretical Framework

In today’s classrooms, the word assessment can be considered an ambiguous term since it

usually evokes situations related to anxiety or stress, such as: quizzes, oral presentations,

midterms or any evaluative task. It is of primary importance for student-teachers, or any

subject involved in the teaching-learning process, to understand the differences between

concepts such as: assessment, test and evaluation. For us, future educators, it is important to

understand the principles that each author provides regarding language assessment in

classroom practices, because these principles facilitate us with guidelines, which are helpful

and indispensable when doing evaluations, worksheets, rubrics, checking assignments,

and, above all, to contribute to the improvement of our teaching process.

It is highly important to take into consideration the perspective of the students in relation

to good assessment, because it will enhance their motivation when participating in the

teaching-learning process by contextualizing the learning in authentic tasks, so that

meaningful knowledge is developed. Students should be measured on what they have been

taught at their respective schools, they need to be provided with comments and feedback in

order to learn about their own mistakes and improve their competences in the English

language; also, the objective of a proper assessment is to trigger language performance, so

that the students are able to communicate in L2.

In the following paragraphs, a revision of the principles of language assessment according

to Brown (2004), Coombe et. al (2010), and Bachman & Palmer (1996), will be presented.

According to Brown (2004), in “Language assessment principles and classroom

practices”,provides definitions for three very similar concepts that usually are confusing

for training teachers: assessment, testing and teaching; the first concept refers to a broader

field (not only tests are considered here, but also comments from teacher to student and

viceversa), testing is a type of assessment, and teaching (which encompasses assessment

and testing). The author establishes that five principles are to be considered when effective

testing: practicability, reliability, validity, authenticity and washback. The concept of

practicability deals with test administration, expensiveness and time constraints. If a test is

easy to administrate, cheap, and it is done within the appropriate time constraints, then a

test can be considered practical. The second concept of reliability refers to the consistency

of a test, which means that if a teacher gives the students the same test, on different times of

the day, there will be no variation in the student’s scores.Within the concept of reliability,

there are four factors that alter it: student-related reliability (a student is not feeling very

well, anxiety, etc), rater reliability (it refers to teacher’s criteria, student bias), test

administration reliability (conditions in which a test is administered), test reliability (poorly

written tests, ambiguous answers). The following concept is validity which according to

Brown (2004), it is the most relevant of the five principles, because it is referred to

evaluating the contents that have been covered in class; there are five types of validity:

content validity (to measure student’s performance), criterion-related validity (consistent

criteria for evaluating something), construct validity (measuring all aspects of a construct),

consequential validity (the effect of using an assessment), and face validity (student’s

consideration of a test). The fourth principle is Authenticity, which refers to real-world

tasks and relevantly interesting topics for the learner. Finally, it is important to provide

students with meaningful feedback, whether it is a positive comment or the clarification of

incorrect answers in a test, washback is the fifth principle that refers to this idea, which is

also considered an instance for students to be part of their own learning process.

Coombe, Folse and Humbley (2010) make a distinction between evaluation, assessment

and testing, in which the broader one is evaluation (that involves the whole course or

program), assessment is only related to the learner’s achievements, and testing, as Brown

remarked, is part of assessment and it evaluates the student’s accomplishments.

These authors present eight principles of a good test, in which five have already been

mentioned by Brown (validity, reliability, practicality, washback and authenticity), and the

other three principles are: usefulness “is the most important quality of the cornerstone of

testing”(Bachman and Palmer, 1996), which is related to the purpose that will be developed

within a test. The following principle is transparency, which refers to the teacher’s fairness

when testing students (clear information). The last concept mentioned by Coombe et al. is

security; this concept is associated to recycling test items (not the whole test) in order to

avoid students from copying previously applied tests.

Finally, Bachman and Palmer (1996) consider seven qualities of language tests: reliability,

construct validity, authenticity, interactiveness, impact, practicality, and the most

important, test usefulness, which encompasses the first six concepts mentioned above.

Firstly, reliability, already mentioned by Brown (2004), also refers to test consistency when

measuring a student’s performance. The authors recognize the concept of construct validity

as “the meaningfulness and appropriateness of the interpretations that we make on the

basis of test scores”, which means that teachers must provide consistent evidence when

scoring their students, so that they can be evaluated on their true capacity and knowledge,

not randomly. Thirdly, authenticity, previously considered by Brown (2004) and Coombe

et al. (2010), in order to facilitate test performance, must include real world tasks that

students will face in their near future. Bachman and Palmer (1996) introduce the principle

of interactiveness, which refers to the implications of test takers, taking into consideration

their own features to achieve a test task; these features include the student’s language

ability, topical knowledge (what students know about a certain topic), and affective

schemata ( teachers must not include topics that will affect a student’s emotions). When it

comes to the concept of impact, it relates, as the word implies, to the impact that an

evaluation has, not only on the student (micro level), but also to his/her parents, his/her

school, the educational system and society (macro level); impact is also associated to the

concept of washback, as Hughes (1989) defines it as “the effect of testing on teaching and

learning”, this means that depending on the feedback that the teacher gives to a student,

this comments will affect the student both emotionally and academically; furthermore, it

will not only affect the students but also the washback will have repercussions to the entire

educative community. All principles mentioned above are included within test usefulness,

the most important test quality, which considers that tests must have a purpose, a context

and take into account the language use. Finally, the last principle is practicality, which

refers to the implementation of a test (human and monetary resources, time constraints,

etc).

From our own point of view, we believe that Brown (2004) is the one author that presents

all the essential principles for language assessment in a clear way.He advises us not only to

design proper tests, but also to have in mind that students need to be motivated and

considered in terms of their feelings, their abilities, their backgrounds, and the students’

learning styles. We also need to have in mind, as Brown suggested, that the feedback we

provide to our students is necessary, for it is this part of the assessing process the one that

will make a difference in the students’ reaction to the teaching-learning process.All

principles mentioned above are of great importance to us training teachers, because it

provides us with guidelines and directions that are a mean of instructive manual to a good

practice, so that we can apply them to the improvement of our teaching methodologies

within the classroom. Moreover, we can highlight the principles of authenticity, for it is an

excellent way of contextualizing the learning process to create meaningful knowledge and

provide the opportunity for students to actually produce the target language effectively.

Another principle we believe is remarkable to be mentioned and applicable is the concept

of validity; because students must be measured on the contents they have reviewed in class

and not be asked to do tests or present something they have never covered or they are not

familiar with. The last concept we consider to be indispensable is washback, because, as we

have previously stated, it is fundamental that learners know about their mistakes and their

strengths to reinforce motivation and increase the students’ active participation on their

own learning process.

In order to conclude, language assessment principles are essential to be known and

applied, not only for us training teachers, but also to those educators who have more

experience, since they may need to adjust their methodologies and take into consideration

the learners’ needs, feelings, background and abilities, when testing and teaching. It is

important to mention that it is compulsory for people who are involved in the educational

system to know about the difference between the concepts of assessment, testing and

evaluation, since misconceptions of these three elements will definitely affect teaching

practices on the students’ learning.It is our task to have these principles in mind when

becoming teachers, for they are transcendent elements that will affect and will have a huge

and long-life impact on both the individual learner and society.

References:

-Bachman, L. F. & Palmer, A. (1996). Language testing in practice: designing and

developing useful language tests. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press

-Brown, H. D. (2004). Language assessment principles and classroom practices.New

York: Pearson Education

-Coombe, C., Folse, K. Hubley, N. (2007). A practical guide to assessing English language

learners. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.