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The Use of Situation Tests as Measures of Communicative Ability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2008

Tina Raffaldini
Tina Raffaldini
Affiliation:
DePaul University
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Abstract

In recent years, universities and secondary schools have increasingly used the ACTFL/ETS Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) to measure the ability of learners to communicate in a foreign language. This article discusses the OPI in relation to current models of communicative skills and argues that the OPI fails to measure important aspects of communicative ability. Two Situation Tests, one written and one oral, are proposed as alternative measures of communicative ability and are described in detail. The two tests as well as the OPI were administered to American university students who had spent a year abroad studying French. This article reports on the changes in the communicative skills of the students during the year after their return to the United States. Statistical comparisons between the OPI and the Situation Tests are presented showing that the OPI is primarily a measure of grammatical competence. The article concludes with the claim that Situation Tests can provide a more complete assessment of communicative ability than the OPI.

Type
Articles
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , June 1988 , pp. 197 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

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