Assignment Submitt.docx

Kohat University of Science and Technology Course Name: Language Assessment Assignment Topic: Current Issues and Problems in Language Assessment and Language Assessment Research Level: Ms. Linguistics Submitted to: Prof. Dr. Syed Sabih-ul-Hassan Submitted by: Muhammad Jamshaid Student Reg# ENG320182010 Due Date: 14 Nov, 2018 Submission Date: 12 Nov, 2018

Current Issues and Problems in Language Assessment and Language Assessment Research “Language is the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture through the use of language, signs and images which stand for or represent things (Hall, 1997).” Language assessment, if it is summative or formative, has a significant role in second language learners’ experience of education and outcomes of learning. It is a self-evident truth that assessment shapes how teachers teach and students learn. If we desire to judge an educational system, we have to analyze the assessment practices and the characteristics of students that are being assessed by the system. Educational reforms will fail if they do not include assessment. In contrary to the past, where assessment was a primary mean of accountability and certification, now assessment has a broader range of purposes. A new vision integrates assessment and learning and the roles of teacher and learning are redefined. Assessment for learning is getting more prestige over assessment of learning. (Christina Gitsaki and Christine Coombe, 2016) According to Fenton, 1996, "Assessment is the collection of relevant information that may be relied on for making decisions. Evaluation is the application of a standard and a decisionmaking system to assessment data to produce judgments about the amount and adequacy of the learning that has taken place." Too often these processes are confused... we say assess, but we mean evaluate... or we use the term evaluation, when we really are doing assessment.” Language assessment involves evaluating, interpreting and gathering evidence of learning. It can be used for student placement, progression or initial screening in a language course. The information which is collected through various evaluations and assessment tools permit educators to recognize the needs of the students, get knowledge about the effectiveness of teaching practice, design proper curriculum and instruction material. (Christina Gitsaki and Christine Coombe, 2016) The belief that if we follow established procedure, it becomes possible to develop a format for administering a reliable and valid language performance test seems a too much simplified view of performance testing given the complexity of reliability and validity issue in performance assessment. (Yen-Fen Liao). The most difficult task for language educators is assessment because developing reliable and valid assessment tools needs specialized skills as decisions about assessment may have long lasting impacts on the progress of students’ life. Apart from this if assessment is to be useful, it must be adjusted according to the academic expectations and authorized standards of the particular context where it takes place. It is a fact that there is no single type of assessment which may give you all the information needed to judge the progress and proficiency levels of the students, educators are required to integrate a variety of assessment techniques during their practice. Also they should be known to various methods and

approaches which may help them in getting reliable and valid evidence of student learning. (Christina Gitsaki and Christine Coombe, 2016) While it is true that the field of language assessment has developed in terms of addressing research questions and in the range of research approaches to address them, it still engages with the questions that are central to our endeavor. What is the nature of language ability? How can we assure that the interpretation and results about test takers’ language ability are meaningful to the stakeholder and themselves? How can we assure that these interpretations which are based on assessment may be generalized to language use situations beyond the assessment itself? Up to what extent can we justify the intended uses of our assessment? To what extent does our assessment’ uses and its consequences respect the rights of individual and educational and societal values of those who are affected by its consequences and uses. (Lyle F. Bachman, 2013) Due to the increasing worldwide demand for people with greater level of language ability, the field of language assessment faces new challenges and problems. These demands are twofold: (1) the large and increasing number of individual whose native language is not the language of instruction and who desire to learn the target language so is to become a functioning member of the society; (2) globalization and the increasing demand for workers who can serve in multilingual settings. Along with this there is a growing demand for accountability in language teaching. Businesses and corporations are increasingly requiring educational institutions such as universities, colleges and schools to bring forth employees who have ample language ability to work in a multilingual workplace. Government requires teachers and educational institutions to be held accountable for the learners’ levels of language ability in reference to the resources used. Such demands for accountability strengthen teachers’ interest in presenting instruction that is appropriate and more effective for increasing their students’ learning. In all such sort of situations, the instrument for getting information upon which instructional and accountability decisions are to be made, is language assessment. (Lyle F. Bachman, 2013) Growing numbers of “young language learners” in schools pose challenges for classroom language assessment as well as for high stakes accountability assessment. For classroom language assessment, the challenge is how to apply the knowledge we have acquired (1) to develop assessments that will serve the purposes of learning and instruction; and (2) to provide training in language assessment for classroom language teachers. For accountability assessments, the challenge is how to apply the knowledge we have, as language testers, to inform the kinds of assessments that are made of students’ achievement not only in the language of instruction, but also in other areas, such as math and science, where the language of the assessment may not be the native language of the test takers. The displacement of huge numbers of individuals across countries and continents, whether voluntary or involuntary, due to political unrest, economic hardship, or personal circumstances, presents another kind of challenge for the field. In many such situations governments require those seeking to immigrate to demonstrate proficiency in a particular language. In the case of individuals who are voluntarily intending to immigrate in order to

seek employment, governments typically require them to demonstrate proficiency in the dominant or official language of the country. In cases where individuals are involuntarily seeking political asylum, governments may wish to determine what their native language or dialect is in order to make a decision about granting them asylum. Again, the instruments that are used to collect information to support these decisions are language tests.

Literature Review: Ongoing Challenges in Language Assessment by Lyle F. Bachman (University of California, Los Angeles, USA): The foremost challenges which language assessment faces are not in the spheres of socio-psychological theory, validity theory, and moral philosophy nor are they present in sophisticated measurement and statistical models. But as language testers the problems which we face are in real world where we use language tests in order to make decisions about individuals and institutions. If we want to turn these challenges into accomplishments, it needs capability and willingness on the part of language testers to apply their skills and knowledge to the urgent practical assessment needs of our education systemfrom primary to university level. If we use our expertise in solving the practical problems of assessment in our education system, it will be a great contribution in making our meritocracy impartial and fair. Current Issues in Language Evaluation, Assessment and Testing: Research and Practice, is an assemblage of papers that deal with pertinent issues in language assessment from a variety of perspectives and contexts. The paper is divided into three parts. Issue of Reliability and Validity in Second Language Performance Assessment by YenFen Liao (Teachers College, Columbia University): The paper shortly discusses the issue of reliability and validity in the context of second language performance test. In the field of language testing, second language performance assessment has aroused immense interest. It can provide Predictive information about how well a candidate will perform in a non-testing setting. Although there are a number of issues in performance assessment, reliability and validity are of great concern to language testers and educators.

Implications: There are various challenges and issues in language assessment. As we know that assessment has a huge influence on how teachers and how students learn. It is very difficult to change assessment practices, but if they remain so having no improvement, then significant aspects of new emerging culture are at risk. |There should be alternative assessment forms in order to meet new development and expectations of society. Other issues are like validity of scored-based interpretations and the nature of the construct we want to assess i.e. language ability ,ethical and professionalism in the way we develop and use language assessments role of language assessments in accountability decisions, impact of

assessments on instructions. Another important issue in language assessment is related to classroom language assessment. In educational context language assessment performs an important role since the past decades. The best example of this is given by (Liying Cheng, 2017), gives us detail explanation of the issues that are facing by students in classroom and how to overcome these issues in classroom and more specifically it gives detail explanation for teachers that how to overcome the issues of language assessment in classroom. Today we feel a gap between the theories of a new learning culture and traditional assessment. There should be alignment of theories of learning and assessment. On the other hand, our students and teachers are socialized into traditional assessment practices and it is big challenge for them to deal with the new modes of assessment. Language testing and assessment should consider the effects of migration and globalization, more demands of accountability and the imperative for an ethically and socially responsible positioning in assessment. Language testing and assessment research is quite narrow: there is a focus on examination processes; language proficiency referenced to native speaker performance, unrelated to the multilingual language capacities and instructional and social needs of testees, with much second language assessment undifferentiated from L1 assessment. The makeup of language proficiency itself is lacking spontaneity, not adequately covering the vast and complex range of language assessment requirements and needs in our global world. The next important issue in language assessment is language proficiency assessment in both social and academic educations (Hidalgo, 2015) and we identifies the strengths and weaknesses of learners we check the progress of learners and support decisions about learners eligibility for different tests. It is a formative assessment tool. Test give us timely and precious information about planning and to support both the learning and teaching (Test of English language learning (TELL),(Pearson),2016). Assessment research addresses a diverse range of issues including identification of disciplinary content for assessment (e.g., subject-based concepts and knowledge in biology or English), principles of assessment, and means of charting students’ knowledge and understanding. Language testing and assessment research should evolve new insights about language use through multiple and diverse socially situated assessment practices discuss the implications for widening the construct that impart valid assessment practices, such as the assessment of interactional performance and multilingual in classrooms. In English as a second language’s assessment, students sometimes use qualitative methods along with quantitative methods to investigate issues. Breen (1997) conducted observations and interviews with teachers in classroom and the relationship between the framework and pedagogy is observed. Qualitative research can light up the complex issues as what counts as subject content. These types of information can be very helpful for the purpose of assessment and it can accomplished the nature of judgments in specific domains e.g. it is specifically design for formative assessment. It also points out different challenges of language assessment which need further research. For example some of the findings that become

prominent from the analysis were not easy to divide in different sections or categories and are not clearly labeled (Leung, Qualitative research in language assessment). When we assess language we desire to get absolute result, that is, an unimpeachable evidence of individual language ability. It is because it would make educational decision more direct and easy and results of the research more convincing. However, it is true that assessment results are not exact indicators of the abilities which we measure. This is because there are certain limitations in measuring mental abilities. In language assessment, an individual’s performance is affected by a number of factors including the context and type of assessment, the time of the day, his/her mental alertness at the time of assessment, and his/her personality characteristics. (Lyle F. Bachman, 1990) While measuring a given language ability, we must specify what it is. This specification is at two levels. At theoretical level, we must define it in order to distinguish it from other factors and language abilities in which we are not interested and which may affect test performance. However, it is almost impossible for us to do so, given the fact that there are multiple individual characteristics such as physical, affective, cognitive which could affect test performance. At the operational level, we are required to specify the instances of language performance which we intend to interpret as indicators of the ability we are going to measure. For Language assessment research, it implies that, if we develop any theory for language test performance, it is likely to be underspecified. (Lyle F. Bachman, 1990) In addition to the limitation of under specification, the process of quantification and observation also limit our interpretation of test results. All measures are incomplete, indirect, subjective, imprecise, and relative. (Lyle F. Bachman, 1990) There are ethical issues in language assessment as well. The primary and important factor by giving tests to student is to make certain types of decisions about students. Are they eligible for getting admission in the programme? In which class each student is placed we get to know the position of every student and according to their level we put them in the class. Sometimes we can make decisions that whether the student is able to sit in the specific programme or not. These are very important decisions for giving different tests just to check the students’ ability. Other level of test objective is to underlie these decisions on the basis of learners language abilities on test performance. We are not able to measure learners language ability but we can measure their performance and on the basis of these performances test takers make decisions about their ability of language. (Douglas, 2010)

Bibliography Lyle F. Bachman. Ongoing Challenges in Language Assessment by Lyle F. Bachman (University of California, Los Angeles, USA) Yen-Fen Liao. Issue of Reliability and Validity in Second Language Performance Assessment (Teachers College, Columbia University)

Gitsaki , Christina and Coombe, Christine (2016) . Current Issues in Language Evaluation, Assessment and Testing. Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Douglas, D. (2010). Understanding langugae testing . USA: Hodder education. Harding, L. (2014). Communicative language testing:Current issues and future research. London: Lancaster University. Harsh, C. (2014). General language proficiency Revisited:current and future issues. united kingdom: university of Warwick. Liying Cheng, J. F. (2017). Assessment in the language classroom:Teachers support student learning. London. Breen. (1997). Leung, C. (n.d.). Qualitative research in language assessment.