Testing Language Communicative Competence - An Overview

Abstract

 Language learning/teaching is considered a continuous process. To maintain the continuity, a teacher needs to frequently assess learners' achievement and proficiency that he/she has attained during the 'learning process,' rather than after the lesson process is completed. Language teachers who consider language learning a continuous process stress that evaluation/testing is a continuous process, simultaneous with the lesson process.

                       However, it must be pointed out that language testing has not kept pace with the developments in the language teaching, and applied linguistics has done very little in this area. It is true that any language teaching techniques can be used for language testing. A traditional dictation task, translation work, reading assignment, any question-answer technique, an oral test and a close- test that uses the fill-in-the-gaps technique used for evaluation can become a language test. Davies (1968) once wrote, "a good test is an obedient servant since it follows and apes the teaching". Most of the language tests that are used are surface tests which test only surface problems in language. In such tests, the learners are asked to supply the correct forms as fill-in-the-blank types, spelling, etc. Often, even the surface tests are used only to supply what is given in the text. These text-based language tests evaluate only learner's ability to recall what they memorize; and hence, they are reproductive in nature. Outside the text, people speak, listen, read, write, think, compose, describe, pray, promise and do meaning processing in order to achieve certain life-oriented goals and negotiate meaning as realized in pain and pleasure. Language testing in the communicative approach can open up a number of possibilities that are literally unlimited.