Language Testing: Current Practices and Future Developments

Abstract

Concepts of second language proficiency and how proficiency may be assessed have changed considerably over the last 20 years. New notions of validity with respect to the interpretation and uses of test scores have begun to shape discussions about test validity and quality assurance in college world language departments, in government, and in business, obliging us to revisit established methods of proficiency assessment. This article first discusses the evolution of the term proficiency, particularly in its use within the U.S. government starting in the 1950s and by ACTFL starting in the 1980s. It will then examine how test theory, especially the notion of validity, has changed in the last 30 years in the field of educational measurement, and it will argue that Evidence‐Centered Design (ECD) (Mislevy, Steinberg, & Almond, ), a model that grew out of task‐based language assessment (TBLA), may help us better conceptualize language proficiency assessment. After a discussion of what is currently known about proficiency levels of German students in U.S. colleges, some promising developments in proficiency assessment, which have the potential to considerably increase student proficiency levels, will be identified.

An Integrated Curriculum in Collegiate‐Level German Studies with Accompanying Proficiency Ratings

“…Fortunately, all interviews and writing samples remain available for a full analysis. Such analyses are important next steps, as Tschirner (1996, 2018) has repeatedly reminded us, in developing a nuanced understanding of how curriculum development and the professional knowledge of teachers influence students’ linguistic growth.…”

“…Clearly, local grades, course evaluations, student and alumni surveys, enrollment and retention numbers, performance on departmental exams, and literary, grammatical, or linguistic analyses of written output to judge the impact of curricular change are important, but they are difficult to compare. Some have expressed concerns that relying too heavily on proficiency ratings “reinforces inappropriate notions of the nonacademic nature of foreign language study at the college level” (Norris & Pfeiffer, 2003, p. 580), but others such as Tschirner (2018) continued to vouch for the exciting potential of proficiency assessment extended across multiple modalities. Authors in Norris and Davis's edited volume (2015) also raised essential questions on the issue, and as Tschirner (2018) pointed out, “the profession is just beginning to understand what levels of proficiency may be possible in a four‐year college German program and the relationship between curriculum and proficiency” (p. 118).…”

“…Some have expressed concerns that relying too heavily on proficiency ratings “reinforces inappropriate notions of the nonacademic nature of foreign language study at the college level” (Norris & Pfeiffer, 2003, p. 580), but others such as Tschirner (2018) continued to vouch for the exciting potential of proficiency assessment extended across multiple modalities. Authors in Norris and Davis's edited volume (2015) also raised essential questions on the issue, and as Tschirner (2018) pointed out, “the profession is just beginning to understand what levels of proficiency may be possible in a four‐year college German program and the relationship between curriculum and proficiency” (p. 118). This article joins the conversation by contributing to the general line of thought on curriculum offered in the above‐mentioned studies and by including global proficiency ratings.…”

Factors that Influence Proficiency Attainment in a College Language Program: A German Case Study

“…The Language Proficiency Flagship Initiative provided a new, current, and broader perspective on student proficiency, taking into account how teaching methodologies and student bodies have changed since Carroll's study in the 1960s. Publications that have resulted from this initiative range from a monograph (Winke & Gass, in press) and publications that focused solely on world language proficiency in higher education (Hacking & Tschirner, ; Isbell, Winke, & Gass, in press; Tschirner, , ; Winke, Gass, & Heidrich, in press) to articles that highlight the implications of large‐scale testing and assessment (e.g., Cox, Malone, & Winke, ; Hacking & Rubio, ).…”

Telling a Good Story: Proficiency‐Based Teaching, Advanced‐Level Literary Discussions, and Social Justice

“…If it is true that approximately half of U.S. college WL students do not reach Advanced Low upon graduation (Swender, 2003;Tschirner, 2016Tschirner, , 2018, then it is hardly controversial to assert that attention to the gap between achieved proficiency and the desired Advanced-level proficiency is an important area of focus for WL programs. I will use a significant portion of this article to describe how I created multilevel tasks for a literature course on Czech-German authors, a strategy generalizable to other content-based courses, as a contribution to bridging the proficiency gap.…”