Communicative language testing in ESP context

• Author: Alma Cenkaj Vladi
• Position: Albanian Academy of Armed Forces
• Pages: 170-176

IIPCCL Publishing, Tirana-Albania

Academic Journal of Business, Administration, Law and Social Sciences Vol. 1 No. 3

November 2015

ISSN 2410-3918

Acces online at www.iipccl.org

170

Communicative language testing in ESP context

Alma Cenkaj Vladi

Albanian Academy of Armed Forces

Abstract

Language tests have always been important to people. Language is the most important means

of communication, and only through it we can convey and receive messages, as well as test

our cognitive abilities in different fields of knowledge. But while testing other cognitive areas

of human knowledge is considered relatively easy, testing language itself has resulted rather

difficult. Language testing theory has undergone several phases of development, from being

completely uninterested in reliability and validity, to becoming obsessed with statistical

formulae, which would have catered for the much wanted reliability. Swaying from one

extreme to the other, communicative language testing seems to have found a balance between

reliability through statistical analyses on the one hand, and validity through closely observing

elements of language competence and performance, as well as ethical issues which bring tests

closer to the social dimension. This article will give a general overview of how communicative

language testing came in place, the theory and pertaining elements of such tests, as well asissues

that have yet to be answered.

Keywords: communicative competence, communicative testing, real-life situations, specific

purpose test, target language use.

Introduction

Efforts of language theorists to define the communicative ability have been rewarding

in terms of concepts, principles, terminology and understanding. As a result, their

focus and scope of language testing is clearer, thus bringing forth a holistic testing

structure in which its three components: design, research, and interpretation of

performance are considered as very important and are very closely observed.

Fulcher (2000) believes that Hymes theory on communicative competence further

expanded on understanding concepts of language and the ability to use it in different

social contexts. Hymes realised that to know a language meant more than knowledge

of grammatical rules. Some of these rules include specific cultural knowledge linking

the use of language with communicative features of context; for example, the

appropriate style in conversational communication with friends in oral or written

texts is not the same as that in formal training, or when addressing to strangers.

Although Hymes theory gave a full picture of the context of testing and was accepted

immediately by the theorists of testing circuits, it took more than a decade since its

fruits be seen in concrete form of communication tests (Fulcher, 2000).

Although theorists of communicative testing attributed themselves the advent of

“breaking new ground,” Fulcher asks: “was this all so new?” (2000, p. 485) According

to him, many of the calls to change the way acquisition of language was perceived

and how tests were drafted, were echoed decades before communicative approach