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Types of Language Testing
    Good morning, everyone. Today, we’ll talk about the language tests. As we know, the testing history in the world can be traced back to nearly two thousand years ago. And in today’s lecture, I’d like to mainly discuss the different types of language testing.
    The first one is a placement test, which is designed to sort new students into teaching groups, so that they can start a course at approximately the same level as the other students in the class. It is concerned with the student’s present standing, and so relates to general ability rather than specific points of learning. As a rule, the results are needed quickly so that teaching may begin. A variety of tests is necessary because a range of different activities is more likely to give an accurate overall picture of a student’s level than a single assessment.
    Sometimes one member of staff sees each student individually before the final class allocation is made. This procedure has several advantages. It helps to complete the assessment for each individual student by disclosing factors which are not revealed by the written tests, either positive ones such as a friendly, outgoing character or a higher level of production than a writing test suggests, or negative ones such as a slight stammer or more than average shyness. Perhaps the greatest advantage of the interview is that there is now the opportunity to assess both oral production(the ability to make English sounds)and fluency(the ability to sound English in a social situation)at one and the same time.
    Secondly, let us look at diagnostic tests. This test, sometimes called a formative or progress test, checks on student’s progress in learning particular elements of the course. It is used, for example, at the end of a unit in the course book or after a lesson designed to teach one particular point. These tests can take the form of an extension of the lesson from a practice phase into an assessment phase. They can provide information about progress which may be used systematically for remedial work. The diagnostic test tries to answer the question "How well have the students learned this particular material?" If his learning has been successful, the results will give a considerable lift to the student’s morale and he is likely to approach the next learning tasks with fresh enthusiasm. If he finds he has not mastered the point at issue, the test should give him clear indication of how he falls short, so that he can do some useful revision.
    Next, achievement test. An achievement test, also called an attainment test, looks back over a longer period of learning than the diagnostic test, for example a year’s work, or a whole course, or even a variety of different courses. It is intended to show the standard which the students have now reached in relation to other students at the same stage. This standard may be established for a country, as with school-leaving certificates; or it may relate to an individual school or group of schools which issues certificates to students attending courses. But the important point which is common to all these situations is that the standard remains constant as far as possible from course to course and from year to year and is external to the individual class or textbook.
    Lastly, proficiency. The aim of a proficiency test is to assess the student’s ability to apply in actual situations what he has learnt. It seeks to answer the question: "Having learnt this much, what can the student do with it?" This type of test is not usually related to any particular course because it is concerned with the student’s current standing in relation to his future needs. Efforts must be made to use in the tests the kind of language which actually occurs in the situation the student will meet. For example, a test which sets out to assess the proficiency of a student hoping to follow a university course in an English-speaking country would need to take into account not only his level of skill in listening to lectures, but also his ability to take notes, to make full use of what is gained from the lecture in his subsequent writing. An important element in proficiency testing is to assess in some way the student’s ability to repair breakdowns in communication, by asking for a repetition or an explanation, for example, or by rephrasing what he has just tried to say.
    A rather typical example of a standardized proficiency test is the Test of English as a Foreign Language or TOEFL. It is used by nearly 1,000 institutions of higher education in the United States as an indicator of a prospective student’s ability to undertake academic work in English. The TOEFL consists of the following sections:
    — Listening Comprehension measures the ability to understand English as it is spoken in the United States.
    — Structure and Written Expression measures mastery of important structural and grammatical points in standard written English.
    — Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension tests the ability to understand the meanings and uses of words in written English as well as the ability to understand a variety of reading materials. Proficiency tests sometimes add sections that involve free writing and/or oral production.
    Lastly, I want to remind you that though it is convenient to say that the purpose of any test can be defined in this way, there are in practice several different purposes for every test.
    Now, to sum up, in today’s lecture, we have discussed some main types of language testing, namely, placement, diagnostic, achievement and proficiency. In our next lecture, we will take a look at the evolution of the language testing.