Criterion‐Referenced Approach to Language Assessment

Abstract

The growing influence of outcomes assessment has raised an awareness of the need for language assessment that reflects the specific learning objectives of a program or the defined abilities needed for certification of language ability. This is the function of criterion‐referenced measurement (CRM) testing. This chapter discusses the types of interpretations that are made with CRM assessment and examines how CRM testing differs from norm‐referenced measurement (NRM) testing. This distinction reflects whether the examinee score is compared to a relative position within the scores of other examinees or to a defined set of material to be learned. The chapter provides an overview of issues concerning CRM assessment, particularly in terms of test purpose, test content and structure, and test development. It discusses CRM assessment as the primary type of assessment carried out by most teachers in classroom settings. That is, most language teachers are less interested in how their students rank in relation to other students than in what their students can do with the language feature that has been taught. Additionally, the chapter discusses the role of CRM testing as part of the standards movement for foreign and second language assessment in national, state, and local accountability practices. The role of CRM assessment concerns in the development and interpretation of foreign language rubrics and benchmark frameworks for assessing proficiency levels in foreign language learning is examined. The chapter discusses how CRM concerns are reflected in discussions of the World‐class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) standards, the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for languages, and the Assessment of Language Performance (ALP). The chapter ends with caveats about the use of CRM tests and CRM test development. Throughout the discussion, the chapter emphasizes that while we talk of CRM tests and NRM tests, we are actually concerned with CRM and NRM interpretations of test scores.