6 Assessing productive and interactive skills Personal refl ection

Behaviour or ability?
In addition to the holistic/analytic distinction, scales can also be 
categorised according to whether they are more ‘real world’ and 
‘behavioural’ in orientation or whether they are more ‘ability/interaction’ 
and ‘normative’ (Bachman, 1990; Council of Europe, 2001). Real world 
behavioural scales focus on specifi c task types (e.g., describing a picture, 
purchasing a ticket, engaging in a discussion, etc.) and tend to describe 
the kinds of language behaviour that learners display when carrying out 
these tasks. Ability/interaction scales focus on the test taker and describe 

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