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HOW TO DEVELOP COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TESTS
Author(s) -
CARROLL BRENDAN J.
Publication year - 1981
Publication title -
world englishes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.6
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-971X
pISSN - 0883-2919
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-971x.1981.tb00446.x
Subject(s) - realism , test (biology) , language assessment , communicative language teaching , communicative competence , battle , epistemology , linguistics , language education , psychology , computer science , mathematics education , history , philosophy , paleontology , archaeology , biology
It is often said that the moves towards realism and communication in the teaching of language are not being matched by developments in language testing; that we are having to test progress in ‘communicative’ learning programmes by tests built on ‘structural’ lines. Perhaps in no other area of language teaching is the ‘form versus function’ battle being more vigorously waged. And yet, in spite of the difficulty of reconciling the demands of realism and the requirements of scientific measurement, there are now several tests or examinations being developed to bring the broad ideas of functionalism into practical classroom use. I hope in a series of short articles to describe the broad ideas of communicative testing and to show how these ideas can be translated into actual test items in actual tests. One of the criticisms of my recent book Testing Communicative Performance (Pergamon Press, 1980) has gone something like this: ‘The general ideas are all very fine, but let us see the actual tests before we can judge for ourselves if those ideas are practicable.’