Authors Miguel Guzman and Jose Antonio

1. Miguel Guzman
Section 002

2. What is communicative language testing?
 Communicative language testing is
intended to provide the tester with
information about the testee’s ability to
perform in the target language in certain
context-specific tasks

3. Difficulties to develop communicative tests
 Developing useful assessment instruments
 Developing a framework which is based on attending
to the theoretical requirements of both
communicative teaching goals and test design
principles
 It is inevitable that rating communicative tests may be
subjective as it is difficult to distinguish right from
wrong responses in real life situations.

4. Tests requirements
 Validity is concerned with how well a test measures
what it is intended to measure.
 Reliability is concerned with the dependability of
results, or the extent to which performance is
consistently measured
 Practicality means that a test must be practical in
terms of financial limitation, time constraints, ease of
administration, scoring and interpretation

5. Tips to develop communicative tests
 Starting from somewhere
 Concentrating on content
 Working for washback
 Communicative tests may be context
specific
 Any communicative testing should consider
the multi-dimensional nature of language

6. Examples of communicative tests
 Information gap
 Letter writing
 Note taking

7. Thanks for your attention