A BRIEF HISTORY OF LANGUAGE TESTING

By wilvari
  • 581

    The early beginning

    Testing started with The Keju. The examination of the imperial officials and military officers to serve the impire in China.
  • Mar 23, 1500

    Testing moves to Europe

    Testing comes to France and Prussia. The governing elite in Britain has its own interpretation of testing.

  • A more formal testing

    Britain took testing seriously. They needed to select people according to their capability

  • Mass education-Mass assessment

    These terms were introduced by both Britain and the United States.
  • Period: to

    Testing as an industry

    The united Kingdom and The United States begin to introduce developments in testing. On the one hand, the UK witnesses the beginning of standardized tests like: (CPE) Cambridge proficiency Examination. On the other hand, in the USA Thorndike and others tried to standardized students´ written performance. The first Multiple-choice question was published by Kelly in 1915.

  • Testing English as a foreign language

    Standardization continues growing in the USA and (TOEFL) Test of English ass a Foreign Language comes to life.

  • The evolution of testing industry

    With CPE as a reference, both, the UK and the USA began to upgrade their tests to cover a larger range of people and to direct the tests into the examination of specific groups of people.

  • Changes - from classical testing to psychometric testing

    Testing reinforces its position as a big bussines. Elements of the U.S. assessment philosophy are introduced to language tsting worldwide by Bachman. There is a shift from a classical to a pyschometric view of testing in Europe.
  • Period: to

    Fragmention of the language testing

    The evolution of the language testing has led the industry towards the covering of specific groups in their specific environments.