The document outlines various approaches to language testing, including discrete-point testing, integrative testing, communicative language testing, and performance-based assessment. It discusses the limitations of traditional testing methods and emphasizes the need for authentic assessments that reflect real-world language use. Key themes include the importance of context, interaction, and the holistic nature of language competence in evaluating proficiency.

1. APPROACHES TO
LANGUAGE TESTING
Testing & Assessment, 4th Year
Haider Al-Mansury
Meeting # 04
10/29/2017

2.  Discrete-Point Testing
 Integrative Testing
 Communicative Language Testing
 Performance-Based Assessment

3. REFLECTION
 “The whole of the communicative event was considerably greater
than the sum of its linguistic elements”????
 Currently, test designers are challenged in their quest for more
authentic, valid instruments that stimulates real-world interaction.
Why??

4. DISCRETE-POINT TESTING
 What is assumption on which the discrete-point test constructed?
 What is the drawback of the discrete-point tests?
 Examples

5. INTEGRATIVE TESTING
 “Language competence is a unified set of interacting abilities that cannot be
tested separately”.
 What is Integrative test?
 Examples of Integrative tests?
 What is the Unitary trait hypothesis?
 What is the take of UTH on the discrete-point tests?
 What are the contentions on the Unitary trait hypothesis?

6. COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TESTING
 The emphasis on language test performance and language use.
Authenticity
Language competence
Strategic competence ?

7.  To measure language proficiency …. Account must now be
taken of: where, when, how, with whom, and why language is to
be used, and on what topics, and with what effect.”
COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TESTING

8. PERFORMANCE-BASED ASSESSMENT
 What does the performance-based assessment involve?
 What are the short comings of such assessment??
 “Higher content validity is achieved because learners are
measured in the process of performing the targeted linguistic acts.
????
 What is the characteristic of performance-based assessments?
 How are learners measured in interactive tasks?
 Example of performance-based assessment?

9. WORKS CITED
• Brown, H. Douglas. Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices.
White Plains, NY: Pearson/Longman, 2010. Print.