TESTING STUDENTS

DIFFERENT TYPES OF TESTS

1. Placement test- it facilitates placing students in the right class; it is usually based on the syllabuses and materials students will follow and use once their level has been decided on; some schools ask students to assess themselves as part of the placement process, adding this self-analysis into the final placing decision; it is designed to show how good studens' English is in relation to a previously agreed system of levels

http://bell.pl/placement-test.html

2. Diagnostic test- it is used to expose learner's difficulties, gaps in knowledge and to pinpoint skill deficiencies during a course; when the problems are known, teachers can do something about them

http://elt.oup.com/student/practicegrammar/test;jsessionid=9D26C049F1DA47AC758B9ECCCE735D3E?cc=pl&selLanguage=pl

3. Progress or achievement test- it is designed to measure learners' language and skill progress in relation to the syllabus they have been following; it is successful only when it contains item types which the students are familiar with; if students are faced with completely new material, the test will not measure the learning that has been taking place but general language proficiency; the tests should reflect progress, not failure

4. Proficiency test- it gives a general picture of a student's knowledge and ability, rather than measure progress; such tests are frequently used as stages people have to reach if they want to be admitted to a foreign university, get a job, obtain some certificate

http://www.cambridgeenglish.org/exams-and-qualifications/

http://www.ets.org/toefl

http://sat.collegeboard.org/home

5. Portfolio assessment- many educational institutions allow students to assemble portfolios of their work over a period of time and the student is assessed by looking at three or four of the best pieces of work over this period

CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD TEST

• Validity - it is valid when it tests what it is supposed to test; it will not be valid if we want to check listening comprehension using a text which requires specialist knowledge on history or chemistry

• Reliability- a good test should give consistent results; for example, if the same group of students took the same test twice within two days-without reflecting on the first test before they sat it again- they should get the same or very similar results on each occasion; reliability of the test is enhanced by making the test instructions absolutely clear and making sure that the test conditions remain constant; reliability also depends on the people who mark the tests- the scorers;

• Practicality- it should be easy to administer, write and correct

THINK OF THE TESTS YOU HAVE WRITTEN SO FAR. MAKE A LIST OF TASKS/ACTIVITIES YOU CONSIDER:

1. Always problematic

2. Likely to cause problems for some students

3. Difficult for Polish native speakers

4. Trivial

TYPES OF TEST ITEMS

1. An INDIRECT test item tries to measure a student's knowledge and ability by getting at what lies beneath their receptive and productive skills; it tries to find out about a student's language knowledge through more controlled items;

1. multiple choice questions

For many years they were considered to be ideal test instruments, they are easy to mark, they can be corrected by computers; however, they are extremely difficult to write well, especially to create incorrect choices; simultaneously, students who were taught how to take and pass such tests, generally perform better than those who were not, as a result, difference is technical and not linguistic

2. Cloze procedures

Cloze in its purest form is the deletion every nth word in a text (somewhere between every fifth or tenth word)

Because of the randomness of the deleted words, anything can be tested, and the task checks many things. Nevertheless, there is often more than one correct answer

3. Transformation and paraphrase

It asks students to rewrite sentences in a slightly different form, retaining the exact meaning of the original

4. Sentence re-ordering

It aims at getting the students to put words in the right order to make appropriate sentences

2. A DIRECT test item asks candidates to perform the communicative skill which is being tested; it tries to be as much real-life language use as possible

Teachers must try to:

• Create a `level playing field'- by ensuring that all candidates have the same chance of success, without requiring specialist knowledge

• Replicate real-life interaction

WRITING AND MARKING TESTS

1. Writing tests

Before designing a test, the teacher should:

• Assess the test situation- decide how much time should be given to the test-taking, when and where it will take place, and how much time there is for marking

• Decide what to test- decide what to include in the test- teachers have to include representative and not all items taught within the year

• Balance the elements-teachers have to decide what test items to include, how much space and time should be given to each exercise

• Weight the scores- teachers have to plan the marking procedure (how many points each item should get)

• Make the test work-it is important that the test be tried out on fellow teachers or students before administering them to real candidates; they may spot problems we have overlooked, point out spelling mistakes, show us that the test it too long or too little time has been given

MARKING TESTS

Teachers have to be objective in marking. To ensure this they can try by:

• Training- if scorers have seen examples of scripts at various levels and discussed what marks should be given, their marking is likely to be less erratic than if they come to the task fresh

• More than one scorer-reliability can be greatly enhanced by having more than one scorer; the more people look at a script, the greater the chance that its true worth will be located somewhere between the various scores given; many public examination boards use moderators-they check samples of individual scorers' work to see if it conforms with the general standards laid down for the exam

• Global assessment scales- it is a way of specifying scores that can be given to productive skill work and to create `pre-defined descriptions of performance'; they say what students need to be capable of in order to gain the required marks:

Global assessment does not check pronunciation!

• Analytic profiles- marking gets more reliable when a student's performance is analysed in much greater detail

• Scoring and interacting during oral tests- to make a scorer in the oral test more reliable, the roles of the scorer and interlocutor should be separated; in many tests of speaking, students are now put in pairs or groups to ensure genuine interaction and will help to relax students

http://www.edulandia.pl/edulandia/1,124849,6916391,FCE___przykladowy_Speaking.html

TEACHING THE TEST

While preparing students for tests, teachers should try to:

• Training for test types- to analyse the test, to establish students' strong and weak points, clarify things that are not clear' to show them what examiners expect and how they evaluate tasks

• Discussing general exam skills- teachers should remind students about general test and exam skills, e.g. how to study questions properly, how to check students' work properly, etc

• Doing practice tests- students have a chance to practise taking the test or exam and get to know its format

• Promoting autonomy- teachers should emphasise the role of individual revision at home

• Having fun- teachers should pick funny exercises to show students that taking exams can be FUN!

• Ignoring the test- in order not to get bored to death students should have the opportunity to work on general language issues

MISTAKES TEACHERS MAKE WHILE PREPARING TESTS

• The test tests the things that are easy to test and not those that are worth testing

• The test checks many skills but is very superficial

• Tasks are too easy or too difficult

• Tasks are not cross-sectional

• Teachers give points for the same skill in many tasks

• Teachers do not use a clear evaluating system

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