Crossing the Barriers in English Language Testing: a Historical Overview
Crossing the Barriers in English Language Testing: a Historical Overview

Summary/Abstract: In her article the author presents the historical overview of language testing. She stages of the development of testing methods and techniques as well as three main approaches to language testing proposed by Spolsky in 1975and following them, the communicative approach which continues to this day: Pre-scientific period (traditional) – in the second half of the 19th century, closely associated with the traditional approach to teaching – grammar translation method; psychometric-structuralist period – beginning in the 1920s – until 1960s, in which testing of individual language elements was introduced –so-called atomic testing; psycholinguistic – sociolinguistic period – mainly in the 70's of the last century, when integrative /global testing was introduced; communicative period – in which the concept of communicative competence appeared;In the article the author also describes basic types of language tests and then presents the characteristics of a good test – that is the concepts of accuracy, reliability, impact and practicality.

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