2.4. The communicative period
2.4.1. The controversy
Communicative testing is something controversial because, although it seems to characterize current trends, in accordance with the correspondent theories of language teaching that emphasize communication above all, at the same time it gives the impression of being something unattainable or attainable only up to a certain extent. As Alderson (1981b: 48) has clearly said, the settting of assessment disauthenticates most language tests. Opinions range from total commitment to it to the conviction that communicative testing is just impossible. A clear example to show the opposite feelings is Section 1 ('Communicative Language Testing') of ELT Document No. 111, Issues in Language Testing, where the seminal paper by K. Morrow (1979)
'Communicative language testing: revolution or evolution?' is discussed and reactions to it expressed by C. J. Weir, A. Moller and J.C. Alderson. Although a little old now, these articles are worth reading in order to understand the controversy that more than a
decade later still exists.
To begin with, let us define what is understood by communicative testing and we will spend some time later discussing the problem of authenticity.
2.4.2. What is communicative language testing?
A. Moller ( 1981: 39) provides the following definition:
An assessment of the ability to use one or more of the phonological, syntactic and semantic systems of the language 1) so as to communicate ideas and information to another speaker/reader in such a way that the intended meaning of the message communicated is received and understood and 2) so as to receive and understand the meaning of a message communicated by another speaker/writer that the speaker/writer intended to convey.
The difference with discrete and integrative tests is that in them the candidate is an 'outsider', while in communicative performance tests the candidate is an 'insider'. Another difference is that in the former we test 'usage' but in the latter it is 'use' which is tested. Of the several characteristics Morrow (1977) gives to identify a situation as communicative, the following can be listed for a testing activity to be communicative: search for information, creativeness, a purpose and authenticity; that is to say, students communicate something in the test. In addition, tests should be criterion-referenced (please see 4.2.2.) and assessment should be based on quality and not quantity. Bachman (1990: 107) defines communicative language ability as both knowledge of language and the capacity for implementing that knowledge in communicative language use. Brown (1987: 230 ff) mentions some primary criteria for the construction of communicative tests: concentration on content, providing something motivating, interesting and substantive and at the same time integrated and interactive, and grading the difficulty of the items (from easier to more difficult). Bestard Monroig and Perez Martin (1992: 201 ff) emphasize the importance of providing students with a physical context (the house, the bus ... ), a clear communicative activity and the sociocultural context, insisting on the relationship between the participants. As regards the difficulty of offering a completely real context (only possible in the foreign country) they suggest the use of an imaginary context in the classroom by means of drama, simulation, problem-solving activities and role-play and they insist on the need for a global, qualitative assessment.
2.4.3. The problem of authenticity
All the authors coincide in saying that language tests are by definition inauthentic: "Does not the very fact that the setting is one of assessment disauthenticate most language tests? Are there not some language tasks which are authentic in a language test, which would be inauthentic outside that domain?" (Alderson 1981b:
48). This is what Davies (1978) calls 'the quimera of authenticity' because "the
conditions for actual real-life communication are not replicable in an artificial and idealised test situation" (Weir 1981: 29). In addition, the more authentic the language task we test, the more difficult it is to measure reliably. We can say that the development of the communicative theory in language teaching and language materials, such as text-books, seems to have no parallel in communicative testing. Alderson (1981b: 54) even speaks of failure:
Testing is the testing ground for any approach to teaching. Ifwe cannot get the tests our theories seem to require, then we have probably not got our theories right (unless, of course, the theory implies the impossiblity of testing). Why has there apparently been such a failure to develop tests consistent with theories of communicative language use?
We think we should not probably go so far as to consider communicative tests as either inexistent or impossible. First of all, as Moller (1981: 83) recognises, some of the most traditional forms of language testing, the viva and the dissertation or essay, are both forms of communication. Secondly, if we agree that communicative tests should be an assessment of what a candidate can actually do with the language, performance-based tests containing the characteristics we mentioned for a communicative situation (Morrow 1977) will be communicative. Thirdly, we agree with Bachman (1990: 315) that authenticity should not be strictly identified with
'natural situations' and the RL approach but that test language is different from real•
life language and, in this sense, language tests have an authenticity of their own:
I find the authenticity argument somewhat sterile since it seems to assume that the domains of language teaching and language testing do not have their own set of specifications for authentic language use which are distinct from the specifications of other domains. Thus 'What is this? -It's a pencil' is authentic language teaching language, and so on. If one does not accept this, then authentic tasks are in principle impossible in a language testing situation and
communicative language testing is in principle impossible.
(Alderson 1981 b: 48)
Authenticity has to do with interaction and negotiation of meaning and, in this sense, it is very similar to Oller's description of a 'pragmatic test':
... any procedure or task that causes the learner to process sequences of elements in a language that conform to the normal contextual constraints of that language, and which requires the learner to relate sequences of linguistic
elements via pragmatic mapping to extralinguistic context.
(Oller 1979: 38)
In sum, tests that make students relate form and meaning in a relevant context and that contain meaningful and interesting tasks similar to those in real life can be considered communicative, although not completely authentic or real. As examples we can mention split dialogues, problem-solving activities or those tasks in which students have to choose from a series of communicative choices, according to the appropriate register.