Integrating Language Skills in Testing Persian Language

This presentation will be on integrating Language Skills in Testing Persian Language. As communicative language teaching is based upon integrating different language skills, in turn, the skills of Persian language should be tested in an integrated fashion rather than testing each skill individually. This approach not only encourages language learners to perform communicatively but also enables a tester to evaluate two or more integrated language skills. To this end, examples will be given to demonstrate how different skills can be evaluated in an integrated approach of Persian testing. This is similar to producing language skills in real life instead of being evaluated in an isolated manner.
Testing reading comprehension can be accompanied with a listening section followed by open-ended questions that require response in either oral or written form. Testing writing skill can be associated with reading a text and/or listening to a text. Afterwards, producing the written form is asked. Testing listening skill can be combined with reading a text while producing the response in written or oral form. Speaking skill can be evaluated in conjunction with reading or listening to materials first. Subsequently, producing the spoken form is required.
Based on the traditional approaches, some Persian language skills have been assessed through either recognition, such as multiple-choice items, matching items, true/false items, or minimum of production, such as fill-in-the-blank items. Consequently, the production skills, either in oral or written form, have been used as little as possible. For instance, while testing grammar, the maximum of production can be providing the written grammatical form, such as the correct form of a verb. Nevertheless, in the integrated approach of language testing, this task can be performed in response to an open-ended question either in written or oral form. Some open-ended questions require an examinee to produce more than one sentence. Therefore, the answer can be at sentence or paragraph level, which can be led to focusing on function while producing the form, rather than at word or phrase level. If the Persian language skills are checked in more productive manners, some factors such as vocabulary, structure, register, discourse, and pronunciation that are distinguishing factors in Persian language can be checked better.
All these factors can help a tester to evaluate the skills of a Persian language learner in an integrated combination of skills.