Thoughts on Bachman (2008): Brief Review of Language Testing Ideologies

I just finished the next chapter in Language Testing Reconsidered. Although nothing in particular caught my attention, I did appreciate Bachman’s comparisons among task, ability, and interaction approaches to language testing.

Bachman, L. F. (2008). What is the construct? The dialectic of abilties and contexts in defining constructs in language assessment. In J. Fox, M. Wesche, D. Bayliss, L. Cheng, and C. E. Turner (eds.), Language testing reconsidered (pp. 41-71). Ottawa, ON: University of Ottawa Press.

I found this discussion of ideaologies very relevant to my job this week. The Business school admissions committee has asked me to come speak on IELTS and help them understand how the test compares with TOEFL iBT. After doing some research, I was especially intersted in the fact that IELTS uses an interactional interview approach to speaking assessment. Having been ACTFL OPI trained, I saw a lot of similarities between IELTS speaking and ACTFL OPI. It has been good to learn about how differences in beleif about the nature of language have influences these different appraoches to speaking assessment. Now that I have read Bachman’s chapter, I think that I am better equipped to explain the differences between iBT’s task-based approach and IELTS’s interactional method.

One last note, as mentioned in the Alderson review post, both Bachman and Alderson refer to themselves in the third person when discussing their previous research. I find this bizarre, but perhaps it represents philosophical issue: Is a researcher the person he was when he wrote a previous article? Does our experience change us to the degree that we are not longer the person we were, and as such we should not refer to that formal self as “I” but rather as “he”? I’m sure this is not what Alderson and Bachman have in mind when taking this editorial approach to research writing, but it’s interesting nonetheless. I, personally, think that I would forgo this approach if I ever cited my own research, and instead I would discuss what “I/We” had done and what “my/our” results suggest. The alternative just seems confusing and could lead the reader to think that Bachman (the current author) and Bachman (the cited researcher) are two different men.

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Review of Mateo et al (2007): Summary versus Synthesis

I’m not quite sure how I happened across this article, which is often the case with that crazy web we call “The Internet.” I think it happened like this:

1. My Google Alerts sends me an email. I usually ignore these because they are usually filled with garbage and re-posted forum board questions. As I skim, I get excited since one of the links looks promising. And then I realize that the link is my own blog. This is not the first time this has happened.

2. I get another Google Alert email and almost decide to trash it because clearly I am choosing useless key words, or the internet is just not interested in my research topic. But then I notice something: an article in the Journal of English for Academic Purposes. Very promising.

3. I follow the link, but it only takes me to the abstract on the journal publisher’s website.

4. I try the link for “Find this article at a nearby library” and discover that the closest copy is at Georgetown U. Not making that trip.

5. I search for the journal at my university library’s website, and of course they don’t have it.

6. I do a websearch to see if it will come up. I get a long list of links, none of which contain the full article. However, I do find the official webpage for the author and an email to her proves very helpful (more on that in another post).

7. Another link brings up a list of various journals containing similar keywords as the target article. One of them catches my eye, and I search for it on my library’s website. Also a deadend.

8. I head to the interlibrary loan website and request both articles. No word yet on the first, by the tangential article shows up in my inbox in a matter of hours.

And that’s how I came across this article (I think).

Mateo, M., Martin, E., Villalon, R., & Luna, M. (2008). Reading and writing to learn in secondary education: Online processing activity and written products in summarizing and synthesizing tasks. Reading and Writing, 21, 675-697.

My review of the article follows.

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Review of Alderson (2007): A diagnosis on diagnostic testing

Alderson, J. C. (2007). The challenge of (diagnostic) testing: Do we know what we are measuring? In J. Fox, M. Wesche, D. Bayliss, L. Cheng, and C. E. Turner (eds.), Language testing reconsidered (pp. 21-39). Ottawa, ON: University of Ottawa Press.

In the second chapter of Language Testing Reconsidered, Alderson (who is a burly, wildly-bearded British Academic) questions the use of diagnostic tests. His thoughts focus primarily on the Common European Framework (CEF) for language ability. Alderson’s studies into CEF diagnostic testing suggested that either the diagnistic tests were inappropriate or the framework is not as refelctive of true language acquisition as it is designed to be. His greatest concerns focuses on what it is that diagnostic tests aim to measure and what it is that the CEF is designed to describe. Are task-based frameworks useful for diagnosing language proficiency? What does the diagnostic test measure, and how can that data be used?

Here my thoughts on how Alderson’s work relates to my research.

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A quick note on the value of professional development…

… it’s worth it.

I just got out of a meeting in which an ETS representative spoke to various admissions staff and ESL faculty at our institution. Having attending the language testing conference this summer in China and then having spent my bus rides over the past 4 weeks reading through a book on the TOEFL validation study (the review will be posted on the robblog soon), I felt very prepared for this meeting. In fact, I was able to answer quetsions about TOEFL that the representative could not, given the extra research I’ve read and conference session I’ve attended. There have been times over the past two months when I have questioned whether my interest and background in language testing would be useful to my current institution, but today’s meeting helped me to realize that to some degree, I am the resident expert on ESL testing issues here, and I can make a positive impact on the quality of our programs.

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