The Development of Task-Based Assessment in English for Academic Purposes Programs

Proposals for task-based approaches to syllabus design (Prabhu 1987, Nunan 1989, Long and Crookes 1992) have had little to say about the role of testing and evaluation procedures This paper suggests a role for ‘authentic measurement’ using performance measures in task-based approaches to assessment In particular, we describe the implementation of a task-based, performance-referenced test of English for academic purposes, developed for use in placing ESL students into an academic reading program at a university English language institute Results of the present study, based on contrastive discriminant analyses of systemic and mixed systemic/procedural placement bateries with an academic research task performance as the criterion variable, suggest that traditional skills-focused tests of EAP ability relate only weakly to learners' ability to act on such skills in authentic task conditions Indirect performance-referenced tests, when used in combination with system-referenced tests, are much clearer predictors of success in performing academic task simulations The relationship of performance-referenced testing to issues in placement and academic English course design are discussed in light of the present study