Language Testing: Issues of fairness
The task for this first week of my Language Testing class was to think of a context where language testing is used, and reflect on what issues of fairness may be raised.
I chose language testing for determining citizenship.
One's mental state, anxiety and health at a particular point in time may impact performance on the test. Placing so much reliance on a single test is likely to make this test a huge pressure and stressor for the test taker, and they may spend a lot of time, money and resources on preparation. It is questionable why a individual or family who are already going through the tumultuous experience of acclimating to a new country must also bear the additional financial and cognitive strains of preparing for a test.
Such a test does not holistically take into account one's actual participation within a community; integration into society; or contribution politically, culturally or economically. Thus it may be considered a rather arbitrary determiner for assessing whether one should become a citizen.
It inherently also privileges one particular language (i.e. English) and one particular standard and presentation of the language, which may be at odds with the supposedly multicultural aspirations of the country. It highlights the injustice of enforcing monolingualism on a population, rather than fostering language diversity and multilingualism. If focuses the burden of overcoming communication obstacles on the individual with a different language background, rather than developing collaborative approaches to communication.