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27 Apr 2013

COMMUNICATIVE TEST; SPEAKING,


WRITING AND READING SKILL
Posted by Fitria N

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.
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.

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


For example;
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;
Interview:
• Teacher: Tell me about yourself?
• Students: ……………………………….
• Teacher: what is your strength?
• Student : …………………………………..
• Teacher: can you work in team?
• Etc.

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;
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.

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
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.
3.2. Personal Letter

• 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

D. Summary

1. Communicative test should be in the form of open-ended questions


For example;
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

Category: Language Learning Assesment


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