Why aviation English testing is in such a poor state
Post 3: Generic test design
Why is language testing for the ICAO LPRs in such a poor state? One reason is a lack of assessment literacy among test service providers and regulators which has led to a prevalence of generic aviation English tests designed for both pilots and air traffic controllers.
Pilots and controllers share the radio, but they do different jobs and pursue different objectives. Consequently, the way they use language differs. This, from ICAO1:
- "While pilots and controllers are communication partners, they approach the task from different perspectives, and therefore their communication differs in purpose and standpoint".
- "Because of the high stakes involved, pilots and air traffic controllers deserve to be tested in a context similar to that in which they work. Test content should, therefore, be relevant to their work roles".
The purpose of English language testing in accordance with the ICAO LPRs is to make inferences about the ability of pilots and controllers to perform on-the-job language tasks in English. To make valid inferences, we need to elicit domain-specific language performances. It is not possible to elicit domain-specific language performances of different populations using the same generic test tasks.
Until regulators and test service providers abandon the flawed notion that generic test tasks can adequately capture the specific language use domains of different personnel, pilots and controllers will continue to take poorly-constructed language tests that fail to address aeronautical radiotelephony communication.
1 ICAO (2010) Manual on the implementation of ICAO Language Proficiency Requirements (2nd ed.) Doc 9835 AN/453
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