The vast majority of second language teachers feels confident about their instructional performance and does not usually have much difficulty with their teaching thanks to their professional training and accumulated classroom experience. Nonetheless, many second language teachers may not have received sufficient training in test development to…

Examines objectivity as a criterion for excellency in language tests through a critical presentation of the characteristics of objective tests. This examination leads to a discussion of what the best approach to testing language might be, endorsing a combination of integrative and objective techniques. (Author/MES)

As a reaction to the popularization of so-called "discrete point" tests of language proficiency, that is, tests that evaluate control of a sample of specific linguistic items, a number of testing formats which provide a more global, integrative measure of language proficiency have been proposed or revived in recent years. Some of these measures…

Data from 77 ninth-grade Spanish students who took an objective test, a performance assessment, and a measure of perceptions of control indicate that control perceptions predict scores on performance assessments, not objective tests. Performance assessments thus reflect motivational variables beyond the constructs being tested. (SK)