CHAPELLE - Validity in language assessment英文资料.pdfVIP

Annual Review of Applied Linguistics (1999) 19, 254-272. Printed in the USA. Copyright ® 1999 Cambridge University Press 0267-1905/99 $9.50 VALIDITY IN LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT Carol A. Chapelle INTRODUCTION All previous papers on language assessment in the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics make explicit reference to validity. These reviews, like other work on language testing, use the term to refer to the quality or acceptability of a test. Beneath the apparent stability and clarity of the term, however, its meaning and scope have shifted over the past years. Given the significance of changes in the conception of validity, the time is ideal to probe its meaning for language assessment. The definition of validity affects all language test users because accepted practices of test validation are critical to decisions about what constitutes a good language test for a particular situation. In other words, assumptions about validity and the process of validation underlie assertions about the value of a particular type of test (e.g., integrative, discrete, or performance). Researchers in educational measurement (Linn, Baker and Dunbar 1991) have argued that some validation methods—particularly those relying on correlations among tests—are stacked against tests in which students are asked to display complex, integrated abilities (such as one might see in an oral interview) while favoring tests of discrete knowledge (such as what is called for on a multiple choice test of grammar). The Linn, et al. review, as well as other papers in educational measurement and language testing over the past decade, has stressed that if new test methods are to succeed, it is necessary to rewrite the rules for evaluating those tests (i.e., the methods of validation). Exactly how validation should be recast is an ongoing debate, but it is possible to identify some directions. In describing them,