The Art of Teaching Spanish: Second Language Acquisition from Research to Praxis

8 Testing Spanish

8 Testing Spanish Rafael Salaberry University of Texas-Austin Andrew D. Cohen University of Minnesota O ne of our major goals is to consider the design and administration of Spanish tests for students at U.S. universities in light of the social implications attached to any specific testing (and teaching) framework.A second goal is to substantiate the need for test administrators to engage in the type of reflective practice (Schon 1983) that will lead them to adapt and modify as needed currently available tests to make them more appropriate to accomplish their specific teaching/learning objectives. Currently, numerous methods are being used for assessing language in Spanish courses, including • traditionalfill-in-the-blank grammar tests; • nth word or rational-deletion cloze tasks; • multiple-choice and open-ended readingcomprehension questions on a seen or unseen text; • listening comprehension checklists of variouskinds; • structured and open writing tasks, usually in response to a prompt; • structured or improvised oral interviews. All of the above testing activities, as well as others, are regularly used in Spanish courses taught in most universities in the United States. The fact that these methods of assessment are used rather routinely, however, does not necessarily mean that they are reliable (i.e., that their use would produce the same results each time) or valid (i.e., measuringwhat they purport to measure). In fact, it may be a challenge to obtain an accurate measure of language ability in the classroom. Yetthe construction of reliable and valid assessment measures can have crucial relevance in supporting learners in their efforts to develop Spanishlanguageskills. Hence, it behooves languageteachers to enhance their knowledge of what assessing Spanish language ability can entail and to update their knowledge of ways to assess this ability. 1.0 Methods to Assess Classroom Learning In this section we will briefly describe some selected theoretical aspects of language testing in classrooms, concentrating on the qualities of a test and the models of language competence that inform the field of language testing. 1.1 Assessing the Usefulness and Relevance of a Test Just as assessment may benefit from the use of multiple measures of language proficiency like the ones described in the previous section, so the worth of any assessment 149 150 Salaberry and Cohen instrument depends on a combination of methodological factors. Bachman and Palmer (1996) have identified six qualities that they would argue will determine the value of a language testing instrument: 1. Reliability:the consistencyof measurement 2. Construct validity: an indicator of the abilitywe want to measure 3.Authenticity: the correspondence between the characteristics of the test task and the features of the real task 4. Interactiveness: the interaction between the test taker—including languageability , topic knowledge,and the affective situation—and the task 5. Impact: on society and the individuals 6. Practicality: the demands of test specifications can be met with existing resources Bachman and Palmer (1996) warn us that the evaluation of the usefulness of a test is essentially subjective, predicated on value judgments as well as specific goals and conditions for the test. For instance, they point out that for large-scale testing, reliability and validityare likely to be crucial, whereas for most types of classroom testing, authenticity, interactiveness, and impact are the likely factors to be most relevant (19). Therefore, national standardized tests should not necessarilybe viewed as better or more appropriate than locally produced tests. Furthermore, wespecifically highlight the importance of the impact of a test, a factor that is sometimes regarded as irrelevant to determine a test's ultimate overallusefulness. Consistent with Bachman and Palmer's list of test qualities, Byram (1997) would remind us that "foreign language teaching is a social phenomenon which is in part determined by the nature of the particular context in which it takes place.... The context includes the educational institution and the societal and geo-political factors to which educational institutions and the education system as a whole must respond" (87). Needless to say, Spanish instruction in the United States cannot remainoblivious to the realities of Spanish use in the United States (see Gutierrezand Fairclough, this volume). 1.2 Models of Communicative Ability In what has become the seminal work on communicative ability, Canale and Swain (1980) and Canale (1983) offered a four-component model of communicative competence in a second language: (1) grammatical competence (morphology, syntax, lexicon , phonology), (2) sociolinguistic competence (appropriate use of language), (3) discourse competence (cohesion and coherence), and (4) strategic competence (verbal and nonverbal coping mechanism used when communication breaks down...