Margaret E. Malone

The Essentials of Assessment Literacy: Contrasts between Testers and Users.

Language assessment literacy refers to language instructors’ familiarity with testing definitions and the application of this knowledge to classroom practices in general and specifically to issues related to assessing language. While it is widely agreed that classroom teachers need to assess student progress, many teachers and other test users have a limited understanding of assessment fundamentals. To help meet this need, a tutorial for foreign language instructors was developed (CAL, 2009) to describe the basics of language assessment and assist with test selection. In this project, group interviews and surveys were used to elicit feedback from two groups of experts, US language instructors (N = 44) and language testers (N = 30), on the content of the tutorial. The results of the project revealed the challenges of including the technical information considered essential by testers while meeting the real and practical needs of teachers. This paper investigates efforts to elicit language testers’ beliefs about measurement basics compared with those of language educators and suggests that expert beliefs about what is essential to include in such materials differ depending on the expert perspective.

Oral Proficiency Assessment: Current Approaches and Applications for Post‐Secondary Foreign Language Programs

Changes to oral proficiency instruction and assessment in post-secondary foreign language programs grew out of the proficiency movement of the 1970s and 1980s. The Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) became the major approach to oral proficiency assessment in the United States. Initially developed for government use, the OPI was originally rated according to the Interagency Language Roundtable Guidelines. Over time, the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines-Speaking were developed for use with the OPI in academic settings, particularly at the post-secondary level. In this paper, we discuss the strengths and limitations of the OPI and identify current controversies related to its use at the post-secondary level. In addition, we explore new approaches to oral proficiency assessment, including computer-mediated oral proficiency testing. We also examine the expected proficiency outcomes for foreign language students at different levels, an area that has been little researched. Finally, we recommend ways to increase the formal use of oral proficiency assessment and establish and publicize realistic expectations of outcomes for programs, instructors and students.

Book Review: The art of non-conversation: a re-examination of the validity of the oral proficiency interview

This book raises a number of issues regarding the Oral Pro®ciency Interview (OPI), a direct test of speaking pro®ciency widely used in the USA for government, academic and business purposes. It is an interesting discussion of a far-reaching test. The book provides an excellent picture of the strengths and weakness of using the OPI in the mid-1990s and suggests many possible improvements for the test. It also presents a thorough set of principles for oral pro®ciency test development. As a reviewer well-acquainted with the OPI as used by government agencies and the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), I feel it is important to point out that the OPI is not one standardized approach to oral pro®ciency testing. Rather, the term `OPI’ is used to refer to a variety of oral pro®ciency interview testing programs for different US government agencies, academia and business. Therefore, this book’s criticisms of the OPI apply sometimes to one US government agency’s approach to training testers and conducting the OPI, and, less often, to all OPI-type testing programs. Nevertheless, the book is well organized, and each chapter logically follows the other. Chapter 1 provides a thorough overview of the book and is helpful to the reader who is focused on one or two issues rather than the whole book. The remaining eight chapters are then divided into three general parts: the context and arguments addressed in the book; an analysis of two sets of data; and applications. In the ®rst part, Johnson provides a great deal of context. Chapter 2 describes `The genesis and evolution of the OPI system’ and provides much of the background needed to understand the issues being debated. Johnson appears to squeeze as many facts as possible into a short chapter, resulting in some confusion about her focus and some unfortunate inaccuracies. For example, Johnson refers to 1957 as the year the original OPI was used in US government organizations other than the State Department, and includes the Peace Corps (which was not established until 1961) as one of the agencies that began using the test in that year. There is a more problematic example. Johnson refers correctly to two aligned scales used to rate the Oral Pro®ciency Interview: the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages/Educational Testing Service (ACTFL/ETS) scale used in