What is a test?

A test is a yardstick a teacher uses to measure the performance of a student. Some tests are given under examination conditions, with invigilators and special conditions. These are formal tests. Formal tests, however, are not the only kinds of tests. Continuous assessment goes on all the time. When teachers listen to pupils reading aloud, when they observe pupils working in groups, when they mark written work, teachers are making judgements about performance

Characteristics of a good test.

Validity
A good test should possess validity: that is should measure what it is intended to measure and nothing else. If a test does this, it is said to be valid. To what extent is an oral interview a valid test of the oral skills, for example, if the tester is influenced by the personality of the tester

Type of validity
Face - Looks like a good one to learner/layman
Content - Accurately reflects the syllabus it is based on
Predictive - Accurately predicts future performance
Concurrent - Gives similar results to already validated tests or other immediate external
criteria (e.g. teacher’s subjective assessment)
Construct - Reflects closely a valid theory of foreign language learning that it takes as its model


Reliability
A test cannot be valid unless it is reliable. If the test puts several students in a different order of merit when it is administered a second time (provided that neither teaching nor learning has taken place in the interval), then the test lacks reliability. Furthermore, if two or more examiners award different marks for the same answer, the test also lacks reliability.

Discrimination
Many classroom tests are not constructed with the primary purpose of
discriminating between testers, since their aim is to assess the extent to which the
class as a whole has mastered a particular syllabus. However, most of tests
(e.g.school-leaving examinations) are designed to show the differences in
performance of the individual testers and thus aim to discriminate as widely as
possible among the testers.


Backwash
The term backwash (also sometimes referred to as washback) refers to the effects
of a test on teaching. If a test has good backwash effects, it will exert a good
influence on the learning and teaching that takes place before the test.


Types of test.

Progress tests
Most classroom tests take the form of progress tests, since they assess the
progress which students have made in mastering the material taught in the
classroom. Progress tests are often given to motivate the student. They also enable
the teacher to assess the degree of success of his teaching, helping him to identify
areas of weakness or difficulty.

Achievement tests
The term achievement are generally used to refer to more formal tests which have
been designed to show mastery of a particular syllabus (e.g. end-of –year tests,
school-leaving examinations, public test). These tests are similar to class progress
tests in the sense that they are generally based on a syllabus and measure what has
been taught and learnt. However, they are rarely constructed by the classroom
teacher for the particular class and they are designed primarily to measure
individual performance rather than to act as a means of motivating the student or
reinforcing learning.

Proficiency tests
Proficiency test measure a student’s achievement in relation to a specific task
which he will later be required to perform. For example, does a student know
enough English to follow a particular course given in the medium of English or to
do a particular job requiring a use of English? Proficiency tests rarely take into
account any syllabus which the students has followed, since they are concerned
with the future performance rather than past achievement and are often
administered to students from various language learning backgrounds.

Aptitude tests
Aptitude tests measure the student’s probable performance in learning a foreign language, showing whether the student has any special aptitude for learning a new language. Will he experience difficulty in identifying the sounds of the new language or its grammatical structures?

Diagnostic tests
Many progress, achievement and proficiency tests can be used as diagnostic tests to some degree, enabling the teacher to identify specific areas of weakness and difficulty so that he is able to plan the most appropriate remedial programme. A diagnostic test is primarily designed to assess the student’s knowledge and skills in particular areas before a course of study is begun.

TYPES OF TESTS AND THEIR PURPOSES

Beginning
- Placement test which tests pupils’ entry level proficiency
- To help put pupils into groups according to ability

During (Formative)
- Topic/Progress tests which test how well pupils have learnt what has been taught thus far
- Diagnostic tests which attempt to diagnose areas of difficulty
- To evaluate effectiveness of teaching and teaching material.
- To obtain information about individual pupils’ level of mastery of skill taught.
- To obtain information about pupils’ strengths and weakness in a specific area. This information
would be an important input for decisions on material design, provision of remedial classes, etc.

End (Summative)
- Achievement tests which test what has been thought throughout the course/year.
- To evaluate effectiveness of teaching and teaching materials and methods.




TESTING READING SKILLS

Specifying what the candidate should able to do

Content

1. Operations

These may be at different levels of analysis. Thus the following may be thought of as macro-skills, directly related either to needs or to course objectives:
-scanning text to locate specific information
-skimming text to obtain the gist
-identifying stages of an argument
-identifying examples presented in support of an argument

Underlying these are “micro-skills”, such as :
-identifying referents of pronouns,etc
-using context to guess meaning of unfamiliar words
-understanding relations between parts of text by recognizing indicators in discourse,
especially for the introduction, development, transition and conclusion of ideas.

Then there is what would be recognized as the exercise of straight-forward grammatical and lexical abilities, such as :
-recognising the significance of the use of the present continuous with future time adverbials
-knowing that the word ‘brother’ refers to a male sibling

And finally, low-level operations, like distinguishing between the letters m and n, or b and d.

2. Types of text

These might include textbook, novel, magazines, newspaper (tabloid or quality), academic journal, letter, timetable, poem, etc. they might be further specified, for example newspaper report, newspaper advertisement, newspaper editorial.

3. Addressees

These will obviously be related to text types, and it may not be necessary to specify further: for example we know the intended audience for quality newspapers. But textbooks, for instance, could be for school-children or university students.

4. Topics

It may often be appropriate to indicate the range of topics in only very general terms.


SETTING CRITERIAL LEVELS OF PERFORMANCE

In norm-referenced testing our interest is in seeing how candidates perform by comparison with each other. There is no need to specify criteria level of performance before tests are constructed, or even before they are administered.

SETTING THE TASK

1. Selecting texts

Successful choice of texts depends ultimately on experience, judgement and a certain amount of common sense. Clearly these are not qualities that a handbook can provide; practice is necessary. It is nevertheless possible to offer useful advice. While the points may seem rather obvious, they are often overlooked.

a) Keep specifications constantly in mind and try to select as representative a sample as
possible. Do not repeatedly select texts of a particular kind simply because they are readily
available.
b) Choose texts of appropriate length. Scanning may call for passages of up to 2,000 words or
more. Detailed reading can be tested using passages of just a few sentences.
c) In order to obtain acceptable reliability, include as many passages as possible in a test,
thereby giving candidates a good number of fresh starts. Considerations of practicality will
inevitably impose constraints on this, especially where scanning or skimming is to be
tested.
d) In order to test scanning, look for passages which contain plenty of discrete pieces of
information.
e) Choose texts which will interest candidates but which will not overexcite or disturb them.
f) Avoid texts made up of information which may be part of candidates’ general knowledge. It
may be difficult not to write items to which correct responses are available to some
candidates without reading the passage.
g) Assuming that it is only reading ability which is being tested, do not choose texts which are
too culturally laden.
h) Do not use texts which students have already read (or even close approximations to them)


2. Writing items

The aims must be to write items which will measure the ability in which we are interested, which will elicit reliable behaviour from candidates, and whish will permit highly reliable scoring. We have to recognize that the act of reading does not demonstrate its successful performance. We need to set tasks which will involve candidates in providing evidence of successful reading.

3. Possible techniques

It is important that the techniques used should interfere as little as possible with the reading itself, and that they should not add a significantly difficult task on top of reading. This is one reason for being wary of requiring candidates to write answers, particularly in the language of the text. They may read perfectly well but difficulties in writing may prevent them demonstrating this. Possible solutions to this problem include :

a) Multiple choice
The candidate provides evidence of successful reading by making a mark against one
out of a number of alternatives.

b) Unique answer
Here there is only one possible correct response. This might be a single word or
number, or something slightly longer (for example China; China and Japan).

c) Short answer
When unique answer items are not possible, short answer items may be used.

d) Guided short answer
The danger with short-answer questions is of course the one referred to above: a student
who has the answer in his or her head after reading the relevant part of the passage may not
be able to express it well (equally, the scorer may not be able to tell from the response that
the student has arrived at the correct answer).

e) Summary cloze
A reading passage is summarized by the tester, and then gaps are let in the summary
for completion by the candidate. This is really an extension of the guided short answer
technique and shares its qualities. It permits the setting of several reliable but relevant
items on a relatively short passage.

f) Information transfer
One way of minimizing demands on candidates writing ability is to require them to
show successful completion of a reading task by supplying simple information in a
table, following a route on a map, labelling a picture and so on.



TESTING WRITING SKILLS

The testing of writing, like the testing of the other language skills, can be done indirectly in the form of discrete feature tests or it can be tested directly by getting candidates to do tasks like writing a letter, a composition or a poster.

1. Discrete feature tests
Writing involves a number of component skills, e.g. mastery of punctuation,
knowledge of grammatical structures and vocabulary, knowledge of appropriate
rhetorical and organizational features, e.g. how to sequence and link ideas. Each of
these features can be tested separately.

a) Punctuation
In constructing tests of punctuation, make sure that :
Meaning and convention are both taken into account by the candidate. For this to happen, it
is best to test punctuation in context. Try to see that the meaning intended is very clear.
You and few others do the test and agree on all possible answers before you give the test to
the candidates.

(b) Grammatical structures
When constructing discrete feature grammar tests:
Make a list of the structures you want to test. You can do this by taking note of the
structures needed to fulfill the writing tasks the candidates are required to master and by
identifying common error candidates make in their written assignment.
MCQ tests of grammatical structure tend to test ability to recognize correct structure. They
may not give you adequate information on the candidates’ ability to produce such
structures. So make sure that at least some of your tests test production.
Make sure that the items you construct truly test the grammatical features you want to test.
Make sure that you include a good range of structures in your sample.

(c) Organizational skills
When constructing tests of organizational ability, keep the following guidelines in
mind :
- As organizational ability is the focus of your tests, make sure you choose texts which have a
very clear organizational structure.
- Make sure there is enough clues for the candidates to guess the missing cohesive device or
logical connector
- Make sure the kind of devise you blank out is one the candidate should know at his stage of
learning
- If your tests involves re-arrangement of sentences, it is best to fix the position of some
sentences because this makes marking a great deal simpler.