Vîlceanu Daniela-Ileana, The Relationship Between Teaching and Testing

Proiectul Internațional “Omul drag de la catedră”

Ediția a III-a 2018-2019

Concurs elevi. Simpozion Internațional dascăli

Inclus în CAERI, anexa 9 din OMEN nr. 3016/09.01.2019, poziția 1518

ISBN 978-606-725-262-0

The Relationship Between Teaching and Testing

Prof. Vîlceanu Daniela-Ileana, Colegiul Național ”Tudor Vladimirescu”, Tîrgu-Jiu

For many years, language teaching research and language testing research have been considered as distinct areas of study. The dialogue between practitioners in the two fields has been sometimes inexistent and few times sporadic. But this situation is definitely unproductive. Thus, many test designers are often unaware of developments in the teaching methods and research, consequently producing highly reliable items, but without reference to the realities in the teaching area, so of questionable validity when used for teaching purposes. Similarly, progress in language testing remains sometimes unknown to many teaching specialists, who may produce studies that are innovative in theory, but inadequate in terms of teaching practice.

Research in this domain has shown that specialists in either teaching or testing are many times ignorant of the other field, not being aware of the approaches and methods commonly used. This fact has led to increasing concern among language researchers, and the need for a more extensive dialogue between specialists in teaching and in testing has become obvious. So, since the late 1980s, there have been a number of studies in which these two domains of teaching and testing come together, as there have been discovered many areas of overlapping and ‘interfacing’ (Bachman, Cohen, 1998:1). 

First of all, both second language teaching and testing focus on ‘what’ and ‘how’ issues (Shohamy, in Bachman, Cohen, 1998:156): language teaching is ‘concerned with what the learner’s language is at a given point and how further language can best be acquired, and language testing is concerned with what language ability (knowledge) is and how it can best be measured’. (Shohamy, in Bachman, Cohen, 1998:156). As the two fields are interrelated, it is obvious that each can benefit from advances made in the other.

Thus, language teaching specialists can advise language testers of the effects on testing of differences between second and first language, for example. Then language testers can adjust the test they design according to the information they get, especially concerning differences among groups and individuals. So there should be a closer cooperation between specialists in the two domains. The construction of quality language tests is related to the integration of knowledge from the field of language teaching and learning.

Researchers in language teaching can produce hypotheses and questions that should then be dealt with by language testers, and ‘the results should lead to new or revised hypotheses and continuation of the process’. (Shohamy, in Bachman, Cohen, 1998:171)

Team work will definitely make it possible to design assessment instruments and procedures that can offer a ‘broader picture of the language of the learner’ (Shohamy, in Bachman, Cohen, 1998:172). Similarly, teaching specialists can obtain from language testers clear evidence confirming the fact that the instruments used are reliable and valid.

They could rely on language testers to evaluate the quality of their instruments or tasks. Then they could use the findings to interpret language test results and to advise testers of possible problems that appear. This type of cooperation will surely lead to the formulation of more valid theories in the field of research and to ‘more sound decisions about individual learners’ (Shohamy, in Bachman, Cohen, 1998:172).

Bibliography

Bachman, L. F., Cohen, A. D. (eds) 1998: Interfaces Between Second Language Acquisition and Language Testing Research, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press;

Chaudron, C. 1988: Second Language Classroom: Research on Teaching and Learning, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.