Testing grammar
Control of grammatical
structures was seen as the very core of language ability and it would have
been unthinkable not to test it. But times have changed. As far as
proficiency tests are concerned, there has been a shift towards the view
that since it is language skills that are usually of interest, then it is these
which should be tested directly, not the abilities that seem to underlie
them. For one thing, it is argued, there is more to any skill than the sum of its parts; one cannot accurately predict mastery of the skill by measuring control of what we believe to be the abilities that underlie it. For another, as has been argued earlier in this book, the backwash effect of tests which measure mastery of skills directly may be thought preferable to that of tests which might encourage the learning of grammatical structures in isolation, with no apparent need to use them. Considerations of this kind have resulted in the absence of any grammar component in some well known proficiency tests.
But most proficiency tests which are administered on a large scale still
retain a grammar section. One reason for this must be the ease with which
large numbers of items can be administered and scored within a short
period of time. Related to that, and at least as important, is the question of
content validity. If we decide to test writing ability directly, then we are
severely limited in the number of topics, styles of writing, and what we
earlier referred to as ‘operations’, that we can cover in any one version of
the test. We cannot be completely confident that the sample chosen is truly representative of all possibilities. Neither can we be sure, of course, that a (proficiency) grammar test includes a good sample of all possible
grammatical elements. But the very fact that there can be so many items
does put the grammar test at an advantage.
Even if one has doubts about testing grammar in a proficiency test,
there is often good cause to include a grammar component in the
achievement, placement and diagnostic tests of teaching institutions. It
seems unlikely that there are many institutions, however ‘communicative’
their approach, that do not teach some grammar in some guise or other.
المادة المعروضة اعلاه هي مدخل الى المحاضرة المرفوعة بواسطة استاذ(ة) المادة . وقد تبدو لك غير متكاملة . حيث يضع استاذ المادة في بعض الاحيان فقط الجزء الاول من المحاضرة من اجل الاطلاع على ما ستقوم بتحميله لاحقا . في نظام التعليم الالكتروني نوفر هذه الخدمة لكي نبقيك على اطلاع حول محتوى الملف الذي ستقوم بتحميله .
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