Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Second Edition

Four kinds of assessment
If the question asked above has been ‘What kind of a thing is
it that is being assessed?’ the next question must be ‘What is
the purpose of making that assessment?’
There are at least four different sorts of purpose that
assessment may serve. First, one may wish to assess whether
a particular individual will ever be able to learn any foreign
language at all. An assessment of this kind is an assessment of
aptitude. The question being asked is ‘Can he learn this at
all?’ Tests designed to measure aptitude must largely be only
indirectly specific language orientated. There appear to be no
tests to determine whether a foreigner has the aptitude to
learn English as such. Aptitude test batteries include items
like tests of the ability to break or use codes, to generate or
create messages on the basis of a small set of rules and
symbols, tests for memory of nonsense syllables, tests of
additory discrimination and so on. A standardised test
battery The Modern Language Aptitude Test has been
devised by J.B. Carroll and S.M.Sapon. Such a test looks only
forward in time from the point of the test and nothing lies
behind it in terms of English language teaching.

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Second, assessment may be made to determine how much
English an individual actually knows with a view to how
well he might be able to function in situations, which may be
more or less closely specified, often quite outside the
language learning classroom. The basic question being
asked is ‘Does he know enough English to…?’ ‘…follow a
course in atomic physics?’ ‘…act as waiter in a tourist
hotel?’ and so on. Assessment of this kind is assessment of
proficiency. Tests of proficiency look back over previous
language learning, the precise details of which are probably
unknown, with a view to possible success in some future
activity, not necessarily language learning but requiring the
effective use of language. Proficiency tests do, however,
sometimes have a direct language teaching connection. They
might, for example, be used to classify or place individuals
in appropriate language classes, or to determine their
readiness for particular levels or kinds of instruction. The
question here is a rather specific one like ‘Does he know
enough to fit into the second advanced level class in this
institution?’ Thus selection examinations, and placement
tests are basically proficiency tests. The title of the well-
known Cambridge Proficiency Examination implies
proficiency in English to do something else, like study in a
British institution of further education.
Third, assessment may be made to determine the extent of
student learning, or the extent to which instructional goals
have been attained. In other words the question being asked
is ‘Has he learned what he has been taught?’ Indirectly of
course such assessment may help to evaluate the programme
of instruction, to say nothing of the capabilities of the
teacher. If he has learned what he has been taught the
teaching may well be all right; if he hasn’t, the teaching may
well have to be looked at carefully and modified and
improved. Assessments of this kind are assessments of
achievement. Tests of achievement look only backwards over
a known programme of teaching. Most ordinary class tests,
the quick oral checks of fluency or aural discrimination that
are part of almost every lesson are achievement tests, and so
too should be end of term or end of year examinations.
Lastly, assessment may be undertaken to determine what
errors are occurring, what malfunctioning of the systems

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there may be, with a view to future rectification of these. The
question being asked is ‘What has gone wrong that can be
put right, and why did it go wrong?’ Assessment of this kind
is diagnostic. Diagnostic tests look back over previous
instruction with a view to modifying future instruction. The
details of past instruction may be known or not, so some
kinds of diagnostic test will be like proficiency tests, some
will be like achievement tests in this regard. However, it is
important at all times to bear in mind the basic question
which is being asked, and to realise that items which may be
very good tests of actual achievement may be very poor
diagnostically. A diagnostic test ought to reveal an
individual’s strengths and weaknesses and it is therefore
likely that it will have to be fairly comprehensive, and devote
special attention to known or predicted areas of particular
difficulty for the learner. Diagnostic tests are most often used
early in a course, when particular difficulties begin to arise
and the teacher wants to pin down just what is going wrong
so that he can do something about it. Such tests are almost
always informal and devised for quite specific situations.
The four terms aptitude, proficiency, achievement, and
diagnostic are very frequent in the literature on testing and it
is well to get their meaning clear. It is also worth noting the
characteristic usages which these terms have. A learner may
have an aptitude for English language learning; if he does he
may quickly attain sufficient proficiency in English for him
to be able to study mathematics; this means he has achieved a
satisfactory standard, but a test may diagnose certain faults
in his English or in the teaching he has received.