Again Barry leaves us with a lot of food
for thought as Scott Thornbury did last IATEFL. Last year, Scott spoke about
the history of ELT, while this year Sullivan spoke about the history of
testing……. What an interesting correlation. Surprisingly, the history of
testing this time went back to old Chinese ages to start with the first king,
Gaw Zu from the Han Dynasty around 200 BC who decided to set up a system that
could identify who are the decent people of his kingdom. The exam lasted three
days, the results were announced publically which meant a lot to the people.
This went on for many years.
On the other hand, in Europe the church
held standardized education during the middle ages and visited China benefit
from its system. This was late controlled by military forces. Years later,
Oxford offered exams for gentlemen only until a man called Edwin Chadwick appeared in 1853 – 54 to introduce the concept of competitive exams. He was
followed by Francis Galton (Darwin’s nephew) who introduced a different idea:
psychometrics concept. Later on, Vilim Vunt appeared posing the question “What makes
us think? At the same time, one of his followers called Kitchener said if we
can identify the psychi or a person why can’t we measure them? Thus he invented
the whole idea of “structuralism” which is to take a skill, break it into its components,
you test each one and then bring it back to the skill. Unfortunately, Vunt
disagreed with him.
Along the way, there appeared the SAT
exam introduced by Edward J. Kelly, the first version of standardized tests.
This was followed by Edward Thorndike who posed the idea of standardized
“handwriting”. Then, the Courtis standard test appeared in 1914. Then, once
more Fredrick J. Kelly introduced the “silent reading test” and came up with
MCQs.
Time went by and by 1961 Banesh Hoffmann came to speak about “the tyranny of testing”. In the late 1920s Courtis Test
sold about 13 million copies in the USA. From this we see that the industry of
testing flourished within 15 years. Between 1913 and 1915, the Modern Language
Association of Merryland made the decision that “assessing language in modern
tests was impractical because there were too many people”. By 1942, the first
machine to count scores appeared.
Meanwhile, Henry Swed proposed a system
of learning languages called “The Direct Method” concerned with production
based on Speaking and Writing. CPE then, appeared in 1913. After that the
Americans went down to Psychological measurement route with ETS. While the
British Council went down to production route.
A new collaboration took place in 1941
between the British Council and Cambridge University. In 1942, a British
Council teacher suggested adding Speaking to the exam. In 1951, another teacher
suggested using pair students and by 1953, a rating scale was added.
In 1964, TOEFL stepped forward with MCQ.
In 1965 EPTB, English Placement Test Battery, was introduced by Alan Davis.
Followed by Brandon Carold who proposed ELTS, English Language Testing Service,
that cared about a broad understanding. Between 1989 and 1990, EAP exam appeared.
The first significant test based on needs analysis. Finally, by mid 1990s,
IELTS turned up. After that changes or developments took place for the TOEFL
and IELTS and the points of view between the two sides started coming closer.
Here, then, Barry started stating a
number of observations starting with the mid 1990s:
n People around
the world became more professional
n Other tests
appeared and are flourishing
n Language
industry began to Fragment
n Reliability
means consistency, but it doesn’t mean the test is good
n We need to have
concepts of standards that develop locally and regionally
n In a successful
system, Curriculum, Delivery and Assessment must be connected. They should be
driven by standards.
n If you don’t
have assessment, your system won’t work.
n Local doesn’t
just mean my country. It actually means something different. It means ME at the
individual level. That’s where education and assessment are moving. If there is
no Assessment, there is no future.
n The future is
technology driven. We have no choice. If we don’t
embrace what technology can
do for us in terms of learning and assessment, then there is no future. It has
to be human mediated.
Drucker said, “the best way to predict the future is to create it”. No
one group can do it alone. We have to work together.
n We have to open
the door for people who know technology
n We need to get
younger people involved, otherwise we have no future.
Finally, Sullivan ended us with the
following wrap up points, leaving us with a lot of food for thought and
reflections
n Localization is
critical. Everything should be locally appropriate.
n Personalization:
everything is moving towards personalization. That’s the ultimate goal using
technology.
n Technology: it
is the delivery mechanism plus human interaction
n Collaboration:
Everybody has got to work together because it we don’t, then we don’t get
anywhere
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