What Kind of Tests for Oral-Aural Courses?

Abstract

WHEN the War came to an end, it could clearly be seen that, with all the experience during the emergency period, the modern language courses on the high school and particularly the college level would definitely undergo a great, if gradual change in the direction of an oral-aural approach. If a survey made by the Education Department of the New York Times after the beginning of the fall term, 1946-47, may serve as an indication, the majority of the thirty leading colleges and universities under investigation have revised their language teaching methods by adapting, fully or in part, the Army teaching.techniques to their peace-time needs. In other words, without changing their basic teaching objectives or modifying the content of their more advanced courses, quite a few modern language departments are starting off their students by having them speak and listen rather than read and write. Whether or not they can afford an intensive or semi-intensive program, their students' progress in elementary courses is being measured primarily in terms of oral proficiency and auditory comprehension. However, the measuring instruments, the standard modern language tests, are not yet geared to this post-war development. In administering our large-scale testing programs in the middle or at the end of the term, we are, indeed, at a loss if we look around for objective tests based on the conversational material presented in class and related to the correspondingly revised teaching methods. To illustrate more fully what I have in mind, I am going to analyze the different sections of the modern foreign language tests as published by the Coaperative Test Service, which have rendered us such a fine service in the past. In this way we shall see what changes would have to be made to have them meet the needs of our new-