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DISTINCTIONS
Distinctions & Dichotomies explores pairs of linguistic
and pedagogic terms. Dave Allan differentiates
& DICHOTOMIES
language proficiency for each member of each group we teach.
The one proviso is that there should be adequate contact time to
make a reliable sampling of each learner’s language.
between testing and assessment.

Formative or summative

Testing and In typical school contexts, where teachers have a high level of
contact with learners, either on intensive courses, or less
intensively but over extended periods, assessment not only
offers much greater formative benefit to learners, but also

assessment
provides a basis for much fairer summative judgments.
(‘Formative’ means providing feedback to support the
teaching/learning process. ‘Summative’ is the term applied to
instruments and procedures used to measure attainment and
proficiency, typically reporting results in scores or grades.)

T
he terms testing and assessment are frequently used
together as a lexical ‘chunk’, as if they were a single Tests with a ‘Pass Mark’ can be likened to
entity like ‘law and order’. They do indeed have many
shared characteristics and areas of overlap, but they are not the
a high jump bar set at a fixed height.
same thing.
In reality, institutional tests and even national exams
The English language teaching world tends to refer to
sometimes produce scores that bear little relation to the learners’
‘testing and assessment’ rather than ‘assessment and testing’,
actual ability to function in the language in real-life situations.
because testing has a very long history and is a familiar part of
Examinations often do not test the full range of what has been
most teachers’ daily lives, whereas assessment is a much more
taught, frequently seeking to find out what learners don’t know,
recent arrival as a recognised, ‘respectable’ means of evaluating
rather than what they can actually do. At school level, tests often
performance. While a small proportion of academics and
fail to reflect learners’ abilities because very few teachers receive
language teachers favour different modes of assessment over
more than the most rudimentary training in test design and
testing, the majority of institutions worldwide have taken the
production. As a result, they know little about what makes tests
view that the only reliable way to determine progress, attainment
work, nor how to evaluate whether tests are actually working for
and proficiency is by using language tests.
particular purposes in particular contexts. Most teachers learn
about testing from their older colleagues. They follow existing
False assumptions practice, working within national and institutional traditions,
In fact, as language repeating the familiar and imitating the formats of language
teachers we assess all exams whose concerns are almost entirely summative.
the time. We do it
unconsciously in every Knowledge or skills
class we teach. Whether
Until relatively recently, most language testing around the world
we have made a deliberate
focused on knowledge of the target language as a language
decision to assess our
system, rather than on the skills and strategies which allow for
learners or not, after a term
effective communication; on grammatical and lexical accuracy
or two of teaching a class we
rather than discourse skills, fluency, flexibility, range and
have a pretty good idea of
delicacy; on the production of scores and grades rather than the
who the good ones and the
provision of feedback for the learners and the teacher. Tests
not-so-good ones are, and we
which purport to provide accurate measurement of learner
often hear teachers say, ‘She
shouldn’t have failed the exam –
she’s much better than that,’ or ‘The
Assessment procedures can allow the
test grades don’t reflect what I know them bar to be set at different heights.
to be capable of’. Yet for many years, test and exam results have
been assumed to have greater validity and reliability, and performance often fail to sample the learners’ range of language
therefore credibility and currency, than assessments done by adequately, making predictions of overall communicative
teachers, which were held to be necessarily subjective and language ability on the basis of tests which do not even attempt
unscientific, open to bias and favouritism. Tests and exams seem to target the learners’ spoken language, and which often neglect
more reliable due to their standardisation: all the candidates are key communicative skills. This situation is now starting to
required to do the same tasks in the same amount of time and change, most significantly due to the increasing use of
under the same conditions. But the assumption that tests are assessment rather than (or in addition to) testing. There is clear
always going to be more reliable than teacher assessment is evidence of this change at all levels: in the changing titles and
false. With careful planning, and the adoption of suitable topics of conferences and colloquiums; in the appearance of
frameworks and systems, the unconscious assessment that we ‘assessment’ in the titles and the content of publications of all
do anyway can be complemented by a range of well- kinds, particularly on the Internet; and in the renaming of the
documented assessment procedures, both formal and informal, IATEFL Testing Special Interest Group (SIG) as the Testing,
to provide reliable evidence of progress, attainment and overall Evaluation and Assessment SIG: TEASIG. 

• Issue Eleven April 1999 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • 19

 DISTINCTIONS & DICHOTOMIES provide the ‘end users’ (learners, teachers, parents and
employers) with ‘results’ which are much more meaningful,
useful and informative than the marks and grades that are the
Testing and assessment typical products of tests. Recent examples of language
performance profiles and ‘Can-Do’ statements are testimony to
the increasingly widespread view that we should be less
 concerned with making language learning outcomes measurable
Advantages and disadvantages (the quantitative approach that has largely held sway since the
So what are the key differences between testing and early 1960s), than with finding modes of assessment which can
assessment, and what are the advantages and disadvantages of provide a basis for more detailed descriptions of language ability
these two ways of evaluating the performance of language which the target audience can understand and use.
learners? The most obvious (and very important) difference is
that ‘tests’ are events, snapshots, relatively brief moments in the
extended process of learning a language, whereas ‘assessment’ Assessment and testing
is a set of on-going processes, which can be formalised, A further benefit of assessing learners, rather than just testing
systematised, and reported on in a variety of ways as required. them, is that the variety of possible approaches allows a number
Assessment is potentially based on more extended samples of of wider educational objectives (learning-to-learn and attitudinal
objectives, as well as
language objectives) to
be reflected.
Assessment can include
not only the assessment
of learners by teachers,
but peer assessment,
self-assessment,
negotiated self-
assessment and
portfolio assessment.
Each of these formative
instruments involves
enormously powerful
developmental
processes, as well as
being a source of
detailed summative
information, including
marks and grades, when
required.
Assessment clearly
language performance and is likely, in that respect at least, to offers language teachers a major extension to their repertoire of
have greater content validity as a measure of overall language instruments and processes for evaluating learner performance,
proficiency and to be more reliable than the briefer and inevitably and often it will be perfectly appropriate to assess without
more limited sampling taken by tests. making any use of formal testing instruments. However, a test
While it is rare, for obvious reasons, for a language teacher still remains a valuable tool. As language teachers we can only
to create individual tests for each member of a group, the nature assess what we can see and hear. Assessment is most effective
of assessment means that the teacher can focus on the in relation to the productive skills, speaking and writing. While
individual differences between learners which all good teachers we can assess a learner’s reading and listening skills in broad
try to accommodate in their choice of materials and methods. terms, over time, we still need to use carefully designed tests if
Personalisation and individualisation are widely considered to be we are to determine in any detail the extent to which, for
positive features of what has been called learner-centred example, skills such as skimming, scanning, reading for gist and
language teaching. Assessment allows teachers to be sensitive ‘reading between the lines’ are developing.
to learners in ways that tests rarely do, in that tests are usually Good language teachers need an understanding of, and an
fixed and standardising instruments, which remain inflexible once ability to use, a wide repertoire of test instruments and
they have been constructed. Tests with a ‘Pass Mark’ can be assessment procedures. The effective evaluation of learner
likened to a high jump bar set at a fixed height. Assessment performance in language programmes does not require teachers
procedures can allow the bar to be set at different heights, as to make a choice between testing and assessment, but rather to
appropriate, so that accessible targets can be set and positive use the appropriate combination of both. E T p
progress registered at any given moment in an individual
learner’s development. In simple terms, assessment can provide Dave Allan is Director of the Norwich Institute for
Language Education (NILE) and a Fellow of the
the feedback to support each learner’s learning processes, while School of Education and Professional
maintaining motivation much more effectively than would be Development at the University of East Anglia,
possible by testing alone. where he runs a Masters Course in Testing,
Assessment and Evaluation. Author of the Oxford
Testing and assessment should both have formative and Placement Tests and for nine years Co-ordinator
summative objectives. We should operate with a range of of the IATEFL TEASIG, he runs courses and
procedures and instruments which we do for learners and not seminars worldwide.
just to learners. Assessment procedures are open to reporting in
much greater detail, with words as well as figures. Words can Illustrations by Hugo Ceravolo, an ex-NILE student

20 • ENGLISH TEACHING professional • Issue Eleven April 1999 •