Which test of which English and why by Tayyiba Hanif and colleagues. It is a very important topic in World Englishes. This material help you a lot in understanding the topic. Thanks!

2. By: Brian Tomlinson
Group-06
Subject: WORLD ENGLISHES
BOOK:“The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes”
by Andy Kirkpatrick

3. M.A 4th Linguistics and Literature
Government College University Faisalabad

4.  A Test is a tool to measure learner’s proficiency level.
 Around the world, learners of the English language are tested on British English or American English.
 Importance:
1. The parents want to know their child’s progress
2. It helps teachers to know how much learners have learnt
3. The teachers will know how effective their methods are
 The test may be objective or subjective, e.g. multiple-choice questions, filling in the blanks, true/false or
essay writing, etc. (Baker,1989).

5.  Brian Tomlinson has described the criteria for language testing. He
suggests it necessary to decide before making the language test:
1. Why should we test?
2. What should we test?
3. When should we test?
4. How should we test?

6.  Many countries or institutions take test because of the
following
reasons:
1. To keep a record of progress.
2. The parents want to know how their children are
doing.
3. The students will engage in study.
4. The teachers stick to the syllabus.
5. To maintain standards of institutions.
 Other Reasons:
1. Accountability
2. Placement
3. Predicting suitability
4. Passing judgment
5. Improving teaching
6. Improving learning

7.  Teachers are accountable to their superiors.
 If teachers want to demonstrate how successful they are , will make easy tests for the learners
to score high marks.
 If they want to demonstrate how professional their standards are by making sure that a
predetermined number of learners fail tests (Kirkpatrick, 2006).
 Many institutions fail learners who communicated effectively, but did not conform to a native-
speaker standard variety of English.
 Another aspect of accountability is the use of tests by authorities to make selections.
Example: the New Zealand government’s use of the IELTS test as part of the selection
procedure for immigrants, and the use of standardized tests of English competence in the USA.

8.  Many institutions test students on entry to determine their level. It theoretically helps the learners
to receive appropriate tuition and helps to select suitable textbooks for each level.
 Ideally a placement test should provide information about:
1. What the students can do in English?
2. What the students cannot do in English?
3. What the students need to do in English?
4. What the students want to do in English?
5. What varieties of English the students use and need to be able to use?
6. What pedagogical approach the students prefer?
7. Who they want to teach them?
8. Who they want to learn with?

9.  Through it can gain information about the learners’ suitability for a particular course.
 Match the learners’ preferred learning modes against the target course and should
provide information about the likelihood of the learners being able to gain sufficiently
enough from tuition and experience to be successful.
Examples:
 Universities of UK rely on the IELTS test to give them information about L2 speakers’
language skills in an academic context.
 IELTS is recognized as an entrance requirement by British, Australian, New Zealand
and Canadian universities.
 In the USA, academic institutions rely on TOEFL to give them similar information.

10.  Through testing the teachers or institutions can pass judgment to determine ‘who
gets what’ (Bachman, 1990).
 One legitimate function, is to provide information about the abilities of the learners,
help to make decisions about the learners.
 It can be given as feedback, which encourages and helps them to improve.
If judgments are going to be made about a learner’s ability to use English, the
learner should be:
1. Tested on tasks which replicate the learners’ intended uses of English
2. Tested with topics and texts which are relevant to the learners’ experience of life
3. Provided with positive feedback, tells them what they can and cannot do well
which helps them to improve.

11.  Teachers need to help learners to improve how they learn.
Example:
 If a test reveals that learners can define the meaning of a set of words, but cannot
understand them in texts or use them for communication, then must try to help them to
achieve the deeper processing they need for acquisition(Craik & Lockhart 1972)
 . One way would be by advising them to read for pleasure and by providing them with
the means to do so.

12.  It is important for teachers to know how to improve their teaching.
 One way of doing this should be designing tests which give them feedback on the
effectiveness of teaching.
 Main goal of teachers is to help each of learners to improve.
Example:
 They have focused too much on grammatical accuracy and have not given learners
enough experience of language in use.

13.  The objectives for testing derive from the reasons for testing and should inform the
setting and marking of the tests.
 It helps to guide the selection of materials, tasks, and give learners a clear idea of
what they can expect from a language program.
 For public examinations, the list of objectives should be available so that decisions
can be made about which test is the most appropriate.
 For classroom tests, the objectives should only be made available to the learners at
the feedback stage so as to remove pressure and prevent excessive preparation.

14. Tomlinson (2005) has provide some valid objectives for testing:
1. Information about the most suitable classes, courses, materials, approaches, etc. for the learners
2. Each learner with valuable learning experiences
3. Each learner with information about their progress
4. Parents with information about the progress of their children
5. Each learner with information about what they can do well
6. Each learner with information about what they cannot yet do well
7. Each learner with encouragement
8. The teacher with information about what their learners can do well
9. The teacher with information about what their learners cannot do well
10. The teacher with information about the problems facing their learners
11. The teacher with information about the effectiveness of their teaching
12. Institutions and potential employers with information about what applicants can do well

15. C.
 Learners have their own internal
syllabus of needs and wants which
is much more powerful than the
external syllabus of the institution
or the course book. So, Instead of
Testing what has been taught, we
should test what the learners can
do; and we should test those
capabilities that the learners needs
to develop.
D.
 A learner in a test or examination is
much more likely to communicate
effectively if the topics of the texts and
tasks are familiar (Alderson 2005).
 In global examinations those topics
should be tested which are universal
and to which all candidates can relate
for example, growing up, going to
school, making friends, getting married.
 Tests should be related to these topics
which are both cognitively and
emotively engaging. Candidates from
all over the world can be stimulated as
well as tested fairly.

16.  Test and examinations of English as an L2 should test the candidates’ ability to use English rather than just
their knowledge of it (e.g. Weir 1990; Underhill 1997; McNamara 2000; Tomlinson 2005)
 For classroom tests and ESP examinations those abilities should be tested which learners will need when they
will use English outside the classroom.
 In global examinations there is a difficulty in order to take decision what are those capabilities in which a
user of English as an international language needs to develop proficiency.
 The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) has certainly helped testers in deciding which
capabilities should be tested. CEFR is actually a syllabus consisting of a number of capabilities which learners
can be expected to have mastered by specified levels.
 The Association of Language Testers in Europe (ALTE) have developed a list of ‘can do’ statements to act as
criteria for testing.
 There are capabilities and abilities which are especially salient when using English as an international
language such as Accommodation. ‘Accommodation’ is the ability to vary your language in relation to your
interlocutor and to negotiate the interaction in order to achieve effective communication (Jenkins 2000;
Kirkpatrick 2004).
 In their description of Communication Accommodation Theory, Giles et al. (1991) described how speakers
adjust their speech to make it more similar to their interlocutor (convergence) or to make it different
(divergence). These abilities also should be tested in Global Examination.

17.  Variety which the learners are likely to need to communicate in specific context or situation. If they need to
communicate at National then their own English variety should be tested. (Kirkpatrick)
 If they are going to need English mainly to communicate with other non-native speakers, they will need
competence in English as an International Language. (Kirkpatrick)
 If are going to need to communicate effectively with native speakers of English, then in test, a standard British or
American variety of English should be evaluated.
 Taylor says that we need tests and examinations which reflect the reality of language use. The major examination
bodies are considering moving towards the testing of EIL (e.g. Taylor 2002), but as yet there is little sign that they
are taking action.(Kirkpatrick)
 Objection against the use of local, EIL and standard variety in test :
 Some people rise objection against the testing of local variety as they say it risks lowering standards.
 A major objection to testing English as an International Language in addition to the accusation of lowering
standards is the claim that it does not exist.
 Some people also rise objection against the testing of standard varieties as they say that the standard varieties of
English are idealized and do not exist either (especially in their spoken forms)
 So, the English we should test in Examination is the variety of English which is appropriate and effective in the
contexts in which the candidates are likely to need to use English.

18. All tests and examinations should be developed, evaluated and revised in relation to principled criteria. The
criteria should focus on ways of achieving specified objectives.
There are two types of Criteria for testing:
Learner-centred criteria: It focuses on learners. There are two types of learner-centred criteria:
Universal criteria
1. Does it provide a useful learning experience?
2. Does it provide information to the learners (and to their teachers) which will facilitate and/or accelerate
learning? (Fradd and McGee 1994; Tomlinson 2005)
3. Does it help the learners to notice the gaps between their actual performance and desired performance?
4. Does it evaluate the learners’ ability to communicate accurately, fluently, appropriately and effectively?
5. Does it reward effective achievement of intended outcomes rather than just correct output.
6. Is it likely to lead to a positive effect in the classroom and/or on the process of learning?
7. Does it replicate the communicative contexts which the learners are preparing to use English in?
8. Does it present an equivalent challenge to all its candidates?

19. Local criteria
Local criteria will obviously vary from test to test.
1. Does it test capabilities which the students will need to master in order to perform well in their academic
subjects in Year Two?
2. Does it test varieties of English which the students will meet in their academic lectures and reading?
3. Does it focus on topics which are familiar to teenage males in the Middle East?
There are legitimate reasons for also developing tester-centred criteria, both universal and local.
Universal criteria
1. Is it a valid test of what it claims to be testing?
2. Does it provide useful information for teachers?
3. Is it a reliable test which would yield the same results with different markers but equivalent sets of
students?

20. Local criteria
1. Does it provide valid information about which students are ready to
pursue their academic studies through the medium of English?
2. Does it provide reliable information which could help teachers to
prepare remedial programs for those students who are not yet ready
to pursue their academic studies through the medium of English?

21. •Pre-Test
•Whilst Test
•Post- Test

22. In order to place students in appropriate classes.
Function: is to record a starting point.
Example:
Students can record a conversation then write a story before the course
start. Then compare it with their mid and post course performance.

23. More learner-friendly, let each learners to decide every four weeks.
Classroom test can be counted as a assessment test and their marks
used for assessment at the end term.
Problem: whilst-course tests is they often test something which has
just been taught, and they therefore test the teaching and not the
learning.
Solution: test what was learned two weeks previously to see if the
learners can still do what they learned to do.

24. Many are summative tests, which judge learners without providing
them with any useful feedback.
Purpose: reveal what the learners can do after the course.
provide the learners with feedback designed to help them to do even
better.
be administered a number of weeks after the end of the course to allow
for acquisition and development to take place.

25. Some important questions to ask about the timing of tests include:
Do the students have to be tested?
Will the students gain from being tested?
If the answer is “no” then no need to test at all and ignore the
questions:
How often do the students want to be tested?
Will the learners get tense if they are tested too often?

26. Examples of important tester-Centred questions:
How much time do we need to elapse between teaching and testing?
How often do learners need to be tested in order to feed useful
information to the teachers about learner progress?
Should each learner be tested when they feel ready or with all the other
learners at a time determined by the tester(s)?

27. How to humanize and how to achieve both validity and reliability for
‘classical’tests.
Aim: ‘aim to measure to what extent a language learner can perform
certain language tasks at a particular moment in time’.
Alternative Testing:
Observations, Portfolios,
Self-assessment, Projects,
Peer assessment, Real-life tasks,
Individual assessment contracts, Shadowing
Think-aloud protocols

28. They remove the unfairness.
Pressure of one-off assessment.
They relate to real-world use of language.
They are holistic tests of performance rather than discrete tests of
knowledge.
They can provide the learners with information which can help them
progress.

29.  Different skills papers for different skills, like ILETS
 IELTS Test format: Less than three hours.
 There are two types of IELTS:
1. Academic 2. General Training.
 Receptive skills (listening and reading)
 Reporting on mental process, indications of skills about to report and summarize.
 According to Brian Tomlinson; it is impossible to set up valid tests for receptive
skills.
 Reason: do not show any observable mental manifestation, subjectivity of
marking.

30.  Reliable response to testing reading and writing, plus pedagogical and real- world
task.
 Example: listen a story and then to re-tell it to other student.
 Other example of a ‘real-world task’ would be a Malaysian learner, acting as an
employee in a Malaysian company, reading a letter of complaint from a
Venezuelan and then writing a reply to it.
 Colpin and Gysen (2006); ‘assessment tasks ideally should be motivating and
authentic tasks that relate to what learners are expected to be able to do with the
target language (in real life)’.

31.  Because we do not have such standards.
 Do we can design own books.
 We design books, and all activities and task are also given but we do not practice
them.
 Our learners are not capable of standard IELTS and TOFFLE test because they do
not have competence.
 All activities of all skills are given; if we practice of these skills then we can
develop competence in learners.
Mistake/ Weak Point
 The basic mistake is not in designing books but in
teaching/implimentation/practical.

32.  All Learners/students of different schools, institutions (private and private)
levels do not habitual of reading.
Solution
 If learners read books, watch English movies and listen English news they
would be capable of IELTS and TOFFLE test.
 Even we can design excellent books and also build all standard tests.

33.  A good test or examination of English should be:
 Have clear objectives.
 Provide a valuable learning experience.
 Use the varieties of English and the topic content suitable for the learners.
 Assess the students’ typical performance of contextualized communication tasks
relevant to their objectives in learning English
 Be designed so as to provide useful information about the effectiveness of the
learners’ performance of the tasks.
 Be reliable.
 Be developed and assessed in relation to clear, specific and principled criteria.
 Have a positive washback effect on the teaching of learners of English.