Constructing Communicative Spoken Language Tests for the Language Learners in Pakistan

Abstract

The assessment of speaking skills calls for a systematicity in order to assure fairnessand impartiality in assessment. For the Pakistani students, English is doubly important as it ensures better grades during education and great chances of success in the job sector. In either case, oral proficiency is considered to be a fundamental requirement to access knowledge, and it supports personal and professional mobility in an ever-growing worldwide community.The usefulness of the spoken language test is based on how the test developers construct the test (Luoma, 2004). Using observations and semi-structured interviews, the data have been collected from various language institutes of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Having analyzed the data, the researchers find many loopholes in the test, and hence the researchersuse Bachman & Palmer (1996) model ofspoken language test to develop the spoken test.It has three phases, which are: design stage, operationalization stage and administration stage.Test development stage includes a) construct specification that consists of the purpose of the test, brief description of the test, characteristics of the testees, trait to be judged or measured; b) test task specifications – here we should know about rubrics to be used and administration plan; c) assessment specifications – analysis of the results. Only a well-constructed communicative language test can describe the true proficiency of the learners.