An Evaluative Commentary of the Grade 1 EIKEN Test
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Volume one, Issue four
December 2011
An Evaluative Commentary of the Grade 1 EIKEN Test GABRIELLE PIGGIN Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University, Japan Bio Data: Gabrielle Piggin is a Junior Lecturer at the Centre for Language Education, Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. She has been a language teaching practitioner for the past nine years both in New Zealand and Japan. Her research interests include Critical Language Testing, Critical Discourse Analysis, Sociolinguistics; gender and identity and second language acquisition. Abstract This paper aims to analyse the fit between the “use” and “usefulness” of the EIKEN Grade 1 test as a valid and reliable instrument to measure second language proficiency. The recent re-positioning of the EIKEN Grade 1 test as an internationally recognised higher stakes test of English proficiency, which allows successful test taker’s access to higher education in international academic contexts, is discussed. The evaluation was based upon Bachman and Palmer’s (1996) model of test usefulness in order to critically ascertain whether such test use is one that could be justified. This empirical investigation explicitly purports the need for further quantitative and qualitative analysis to justify EIKEN Grade 1’s test usefulness. Introduction This paper evaluates Japan’s Grade 1 EIKEN test in regards to Bachman and Palmer’s (1996) seminal model of test usefulness. EIKEN is recognised as the most popular domestic public test of English language proficiency in Japan, and in recent years the Grade 1 level has ‘gained’ a new purpose; validating Japanese students entry into graduate and postgraduate programmes of over 300 international educational institutions (“EIKEN: Recognition,”2010). Despite the dominant use of EIKEN in Japan’s language testing context there is little evidence which can be
Language Testing in Asia
Volume one, Issue four
December 2011
looked to, to support Grade 1’s usefulness as an instrument to measure the English language proficiency of testees entering international educational programmes, or the claims of Grade 1’s equivalency to other large scale public language tests that EIKEN purports (“EIKEN: Grades,” 2010). Additionally, comprehensive test specifications are unavailable in English (“EIKEN,” 2010) thus; any evaluation of Grade 1 will remain somewhat ambiguous without undertaking considerable qualitative and quantitative research (Bachman & Palmer, 1996). To understand exactly what further research is required to identify and evaluate a contemporary suitable balance of test qualities for this particular language test (see Appendix 3), it is anticipated that by an informal appraisal of the usefulness, in light of the limited evidence available, this paper will attempt to highlight the problematic issues related to EIKEN Grade 1, its test tasks and their subsequent use as an overall measurement of testees’ language ability in relation to the target language use (TLU) domain of Western educational contexts (Bachman & Palmer, 1996). Bachman and Palmer’s (1996)
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