A. Communicative Testing
Communicative
competence is the development of learners'
communicative competence is defined as "expression, interpretation, and
negotiation of meaning involving interaction between two or more persons or
between one person and a written or oral text". The central characteristics of competence in communication
are associated with:
1. The
dynamic, interpersonal nature of communicative competence and its dependence on
the negotiation of meaning between two or more persons who share to some degree
the same symbolic system
2. Its
application to both spoken and written language as well as to many other
symbolic systems
3. The role of
context in determining a specific communicative competence, the infinite
variety of situations in which communication takes place, and the dependence of
success in a particular role on one's understanding of the context and on prior
experience of a similar kind
4. Communicative
competence as a relative, not absolute, concept, one dependent on the
cooperation of all participants, a situation which makes it reasonable to speak
of degrees of communicative competence.
Communicative testing is a learning tool,
providing evaluative information to both learner and teacher. The purpose of communicative testing is to Measures learners' ability to translate their
competence (or lack of it) into actual performance in 'ordinary' situations. CLT, the tests have to be communicative as well.
Incommunicative language tests (CL Tests), a test has to measure the CC
realized in the four language skills of listening, reading, speaking, and
writing each of which is led to other skill to make the test more integrative
in manner.
B. Characteristic of Communicative Testing
Communicative teaching uses authentic texts and situationally
authentic (life-like) tasks to generate authentic communication, so whatever is
communicative is authentic and the other way round. Here we cannot stop to
define the concept of communicative as against authentic; I should simply point
out that an authentic cloze test, as shown by the name, is an authentic task,
but not necessarily a communicative one.
Brown
(2005) suggests five core characteristics for designing a communicative
language test. These include meaningful communication, authentic situation,
unpredictable language input, creative language output, and integrated language
skills (p. 21). First, the purpose of language learning is communication so
language learners’ communicative ability should be measured. In other words,
language tests should be based on communication that is meaningful to students
and meets their personal needs. Authentic situations can help increase
meaningful communication. The usefulness of authentic situations in increasing
meaningful communication is emphasized by Weir (1990) when he states that,
‘language cannot be meaningful if it is devoid of context’ (p.11). By using
‘unpredicted language input’ and ‘creative language output’, Brown (2005) means
that in real situations it is not always possible to predict what speakers say
(unpredictable language input) so learners need to prepare for replying
(creative language output). The last characteristic is integrated language
skills. A communicative test should require test takers to show their ability
of combining language skills as in real life communication situations. These
above-mentioned characteristics should be paid attention to and included in
communicative language tests.
To sum up, much has recently been written about
communicative language testing. Discussions have focused on the desirability of
assessing the ability that takes part in the acts of communication. All
interests assume that it is communicative competence that teachers want to
test. Tests should therefore assess the learner’s communicative behavior and
not be based on linguistic items alone. In taking communicative tests,
student’s performance should be measured not only in terms of formal
correctness, but also primarily in terms of interaction, for the concern is not
how much the students know, but how well they can perform.
C.
Communicative Testing
1. Communicative
Testing in Listening skills
Communicative listening tests design requires (1)authentic texts e.g.
conversations, interviews, broadcasts, telecasts, extended talk, and
entertainment; (2) tasks e.g. transcoding, and scanning; (3) channel through
which messages are conveyed from the sender to the receiver and (4) response
mode which is usually oral but in some instances, could also be written or
nonverbal.
For example;
1.1.
Information Gap
is a type of communicative
activity in which each participant in the activity holds some information other
participants don't have and all participants have to share the information they
have with other participants in order to successfully complete a task or solve
a problem.
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Example;
There are two shuttles leaving Atlanta airport for Auburn, one at
11:00 am, and the other at 8:00 pm. Someone is coming to Auburn from
Chicago. She or he wants to find a flight that arrives in Atlanta airport
45 minutes to an hour before the shuttle leaves for Auburn so that he or
she can have enough time to catch the shuttle, but does not have to wait
for too long. Four students participate in this activity. Their task is to
find two flight they meet the above criteria. Each student has the flight
information for only one of the following four airlines, Delta, Northwest,
United, and American. They have to share the flight information they have
to identify two flights that best fit for this person's need.
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1.2.
Dictation
Dictation can be also an example of
communicative test, as long as the students have a role that teacher asked and
designed. The activity of taking down a passage that is read
aloud by a teacher as a test of spelling, writing, or language skills.
For
example;
Teacher gives a role to the
students, some of them as secretary and some of them as boss. Someone who acts
as secretary will listen a dictation
from their boss. Students should write something important what their boss
dictates to them.
2.
Communicative Testing in Speaking skills
The activities
that involve speakers in using language
for the purpose of
achieving a particular goal or objective in a particular speaking situation.
2.1. Role Play
Student
You missed class yesterday. Go to the teacher's office
and apologize for having missed the class. Ask for the handout from the class.
Find out what the homework was.
Examiner
You are a
teacher. A student who missed your class yesterday comes to your office. Accept
her/his apology, but emphasize the importance of attending classes. You do not
have any extra handouts from the class, so suggest that she/he copy one from a
friend. Tell her/him what the homework was.
2.2. Interviews
The
teacher will give a role to the students as Job interviewer who want to get a
job in job interview, and a teacher acts as someone who wants to interview them.
For example;
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Interview:
•
Teacher: Tell me about yourself?
•
Students: ……………………………….
•
Teacher: what is your strength?
•
Student : …………………………………..
•
Teacher: can you work in team?
•
Etc.
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2.3. Problem Solving
In problem
solving the teacher give a role for one student to be someone who has a
real-life problem, and another student will be an expert who can give an advice
to fix the problem.
For example;
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The students could be citizens
of a town on a river that is receiving so much pollution from the town that
neighbors downstream have requested that the town rein themselves in before
they are forced to involve a higher authority. Some could role-play farmers
whose crops need fertilizer. Others could represent the union of workers
from a factory that disposes of waste in the river.
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3. Communicative
testing in writing skills
Some
tests combine reading and writing in communicative situations. Testees can be
given a task in which they are presented with instructions to write a letter,
memo, summary, etc., answering certain questions, based on information that
they are given.
For example;
3.1.
Business Letter
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Read
the letter from the customer and the statement of the company policy about
returns and repairs below and write a formal business letter to the
customer.
Situation
Your boss has received a letter from a
customer complaining about problems with a coffee maker that he bought six
months ago. Your boss has instructed you to check the company policy on
returns and repairs and reply to the letter.
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3.2.
Personal Letter
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•
Write a short letter to one of the people in the
story.
Dear Mr. Eastwood,
I think you are a hero
because you saved your family from the fire in your house.
Sincerely,
Katie
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D. Summary
1.
Communicative
test should be in the form of open-ended questions
An OPEN question has more than one possible answer
Question:
Why did you like the
story?
Answer:
I liked the story
because…
Result:
All students answers
should be different. There are many
correct answers.
2.
Open questions usually ask WHY or HOW and require
original, unique answers from students.
REFERENCES
Miyata, Nick and Langham, S.
2000. Communicative Language Testing.
The British Council, Tokyo. Accessed on March 5th, 2013
Kitao, Kenji. 1996. Communicative Competence. TESL
Journal, Vol. II, No. 5. Accessed on March 5th,
2013
Skehan,
Peter. 1990. Communicative Language
Testing. TESOL Journal, Vol. X, No. 1. Accesed on 5th, 2013
Harsono,
M.Y. 2005. Developing Communicative Language Test for Senior High School.
TEFLIN Journal, Vol. 16, No. 2. Accesseed on March 6th, 2013
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