Bachman and Palmer (1996) discusses the need to have a clear framework to talk about language ability. Since we use tasks in test in order to make inferences about test takers' language abilities, or decisions about their future, we need to demonstrate how test tasks correspond to language use tasks in real life. To do this we need a framework that could efficiently and clearly describe language task characteristics, test task characteristics, test taker characteristics and language user characteristics.
What is language use?
Language use is the creation and interpretation of meaning in discourse by an individual, or dynamic and integrated negotiation of intended meanings between two individuals. It involves multiple interactions, and is complex. It involves multiple language use situations including testing situation. Since language use is made up of interactions, we need an interactional framework.
Language Skills
Traditionally, language skills meant the four language skills- listening, speaking, reading and writing. The new understanding suggested by Bachman and Palmer is that language skill is situated in particular contexts, in specific tasks. it is not part of language ability, but is a contextualised realisation of language ability to use language in specific language use tasks. Therefore, they urge us not to think of language performance in terms of 'skills', but in terms of specific tasks or activities. Therefore, 'skill' can be better seen as a combination of language ability and task characteristics.
Advantage of this view
The advantage of this view is that the above framework can be used to design new tasks, or select existing tasks for assessment using a checklist of language abilities. See the checklist below.
Language use is the creation and interpretation of meaning in discourse by an individual, or dynamic and integrated negotiation of intended meanings between two individuals. It involves multiple interactions, and is complex. It involves multiple language use situations including testing situation. Since language use is made up of interactions, we need an interactional framework.
As we can see in the figure, the inner circle has characteristics of the individual, outer circle has those of tasks and settings. They interact in language use. Thus the need for an interactional framework.
Individual characteristics are
- personal characteristics like age, sex, nationality, resident status, native language, level and type of general education, type and amount of preparation or exposure to the given test, etc.
- topical knowledge: real world knowledge. They are knowledge structures in long term memory. This information is used by language users in the task. Some tasks presuppose certain kinds of topical knowledge.
- affective schemata: It is the affective or emotional correlate of topical knowledge. On presentation of the task, test takers assess the task using this. Affective responses are determined by affective schemata and task characteristics.
- Language ability: The definition of language ability needs to be context specific. There is no universal definition. Our inferences will be based on this definition. This definition is known as 'CONSTRUCT DEFINITION'. The model of language ability presented here has two components. They are: 1. Language Knowledge and 2. Strategic Competence.
1. Language Knowledge
Language knowledge is what is used by strategic competence to create and interpret language discourse. It has two components: Organisational knowledge and Pragmatic knowledge. They are described in the following diagram from Bachman and Palmer (1996).
2. Strategic Competence
It is the set of metacognitive components or strategies. The elements are goal setting, assessment and planning as can be seen from the figure below from Bachman and Palmer (1996).
How is metacogntive strategies used in language use and language test? The following diagram from Bachman and Palmer (1996) will tell us.
Language Skills
Traditionally, language skills meant the four language skills- listening, speaking, reading and writing. The new understanding suggested by Bachman and Palmer is that language skill is situated in particular contexts, in specific tasks. it is not part of language ability, but is a contextualised realisation of language ability to use language in specific language use tasks. Therefore, they urge us not to think of language performance in terms of 'skills', but in terms of specific tasks or activities. Therefore, 'skill' can be better seen as a combination of language ability and task characteristics.
Advantage of this view
The advantage of this view is that the above framework can be used to design new tasks, or select existing tasks for assessment using a checklist of language abilities. See the checklist below.
This summary is from Bachman and Palmer (1996). I believe this summary is useful to you as a test designer and test user.
No comments:
Post a Comment