Hi Doug,
I just happen to be reading a graduate student's comps in which the matter
of assessment of competence is being reviewed in relation to language
minority students. The sources I've picked out below, however, seem to me
likely to be applicable to the kind of argument you are making for
challenging the relevance of competency tests for any student.
Hope they are some use!
Cheers,
Wendy
Alderson, J.C. and Banerjee, J. (2001). Language Testing and Assessment
(Part 1). In Language Teaching, Vol 34, pp. 213-236.
Alderson, J.C. and Banerjee, J. (2002). Language Testing and Assessment
(Part 2). In Language Teaching, Vol 35, pp. 79-113.
Hamp-Lyons, L. (2001). Ethics, fairness(es), and developments in language
testing. In Studies in Language Testing…11. Cambridge; UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Wendy Strachan PhD.
Director, Centre for Writing-Intensive Learning
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, BC V5A 1S6
Office: AQ 6205
Tel: 604-291-3122
Fax: 604-268-6915
email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.sfu.ca/cwil
-----Original Message-----
From: CASLL/Inkshed [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Doug Brent
Sent: Thursday, March 18, 2004 1:40 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Literature on competence tests
A bit of a plea for help here.
I keep looking for literature that addresses the larger philosophical
and pedagogical issues surrounding mass writing competence testing. I
find that most of the literature seems to be written by people who more
or less approve of competence testing and want to discuss how it can be
improved or to share war stories. There seems to be a fairly large camp
of sentiment that suggests that the entire enterprise of mass competence
testing is flawed for a number of reasons,. the most common being that
it fails to take account of what most of us believe about writing being
centred in discourse communities, recursive, social, messy, and all
those things that no "competence test" can by its nature measure. But
as far as I can see (after searching ERIC, COMPILE, etc), most of this
material is "anecdotal," ie. argued on listserves like CASLL but seldom
shared in peer-reviewed papers. The people who have serious doubts
about competence testing seem to keep it to themselves, working against
these tests at home when they can but seldom writing seriously about
their misgivings, perhaps because they aren't interested in writing
about something they don't believe in.
Or do they? It seems to me that there was a thread on CASLL a long
while ago that was originated by the McGill crowd when they were trying
to fend off competence testing. Anthony, I think it was, asked whether
anyone had any literature on the subject that they could share. I don't
remember if any emerged, though plenty of discussion ensued.
Now I'd like to ask again. Does anyone have any references to published
work on the larger issue of whether we should test (not just how we
should test)? I'm particularly interested in the uneasy relationship
between competence testing and WAC, a subject which (not
co-incidentally) I want to address for my presentation at the CCCC
Canadian Caucus. (OK, you're right, I'm trying to shore up my anecdotal
resentation with a little more reference to published literature.)
Thanks!
Doug
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