Assessment Methods: 1 Assessing assessment methods

Teaching another language is inevitably tied with testing. Teachers have to assess the learners ’ linguistic ability, their progress and achievements. In this respect pronunciation is no different from other language skills; if we regard it as an important element of communicative competence which deserves a place in language instruction, we should also be able to evaluate the process of teaching/learning it as well as its outcome. Yet, as pointed out by Celce-Murcia et al. (1996: 341), ‘in the existing literature on teaching pronunciation, little attention is paid to issues of testing and evaluation. ’ The major reason for this negligence is the fact that, as argued by Heaton (1988: 88), speaking, which obviously comprises pronunciation, is a very complex skill ‘to permit any reliable analysis to be made for the purpose of objective testing.’ The present paper addresses the issue of the reliability of the most frequently employed assessment methods of EFL learners ’ pronunciation. First we examine impression-based pronunciation testing in the internationally recognized Cambridge English Examinations and point to its various shortcomings. Next we present a repor