Validating the revised Test of Spoken English against a criterion of communicative success

Bibliographic Data

ID19380707
AuthorsDonald E Powers (Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ, dpowersects.org), Mary Schedl (Educational Testing Service), Mary A Schedl (Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ), Susan Wilson Leung (Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ), Frances A Butler (University of California, Los Angeles, CA)
Year1999
Volume16
Issue4
Pages399-425
Publication date1999-10-01
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguage Testing (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0265-5322 • E-ISSN: 1477-0946
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/026553229901600401
OpenAlexW2171150248
LanguageEN
Citations received6
References cited17

A communicative competence orientation was taken to study the validity of test-score inferences derived from the revised Test of Spoken English (TSE). To implement the approach, a sample of undergraduate students, primarily native speakers of English, provided a variety of reactions to, and judgements of, the test responses of a sample of TSE examinees. The TSE scores of these examinees, previously determined by official TSE raters, spanned the full range of TSE score levels. Undergraduate students were selected as ‘evaluators’ because they, more than most other groups, are likely to interact with TSE examinees, many of whom become teaching assistants. Student evaluations were captured by devising and administering a secondary listening test (SLT) to assess students’ understanding of TSE examinees’ speech, as represented by their taped responses to tasks on the TSE. The objective was to determine the degree to which official TSE scores are predictive of listeners’ ability to understand the messages conveyed by TSE examinees. Analyses revealed a strong association between TSE score levels and the judgements, reactions and understanding of listeners. This finding applied to all TSE tasks and to nearly all of the several different kinds of evaluations made by listeners. Along with other information, the evidence gathered here should help the TSE program meet professional standards for test validation. The procedures may also prove useful in future test-development efforts as a way of determining the difficulty of speaking tasks (and possibly writing tasks)

Active listening · Mathematics education · Communication · Computer Science · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning · Multilingual Education and Policy · Psychology · Second Language Learning and Teaching · Social Psychology

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