Name: Pebriani Kella (F022201008)
Indah Yuliana Muhtar (F022201006)
Subject: Language Testing
Summary
Introduction
• Testing and evaluation enables to have a better understanding of the progress or shortcoming
of the teaching-learning process and achievement of the intended learning outcome.
• Language testing and evaluation primarily focuses on the acquirement of the four basic
skills of language, namely: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Three Components Concept of Evaluation:
Md. M. Rahman gives three major components that constitute the concept evaluation and testing:
Method
Content and
Purpose.
Types of Evaluation and Testing
M. Scriven (1967) in his work, "The Methodology of Evaluation", first distinguished between
formative and summative evaluation.
• Formative evaluation is done to gather feedback that can be used by the instructor or the
learners to guide improvements in the ongoing teaching and learning context.
For example: classroom interactions, question-answer sessions, discussions, etc.
Summative evaluation is employed to assess the level of success or proficiency obtained at
the end of an instructional unit by comparing it with some benchmark.
• Language tests assess the student's language skills and can be distinguished on the basis of
its design and purpose.
• Based on design, the test can either be in the form of grammatical exercises, reading
comprehension, vocabulary, etc. or a performance test that assesses the student's
communicative ability.
• Based on purpose. test can be either an achievement test or a proficiency test.
Criteria of a Good Test
As per Md. M. Rahman there are three main stages of preparation of a test: Planning,
Composition and Analysis. A good test can be created keeping in mind the objective of the
course or module for which it is being made, the teacher has to determine the objectives of the
test as well as prepare and plan in advance, language tests assess the students' language skills and
comprehension from their performance.
Testing, Evaluation and Assessment
Testing is a more specific instrument employed to assess the student's performance: specific tests
are used with a specific objective depending on the skill or ability that is to be tested.
Criteria of a Good Test
In order for the test to be reliable, valid and practical it is necessary that one should: Reliability,
Validity and Practicality.
Importance of Testing and Evaluation
1) Finding out about student strengths and weaknesses.
2) Determining learning styles that would be more effective for students.
3) Learning about student inclination and interests.
4) Classifying students into different levels: they can be divided into groups as per their learning
abilities, interests, characteristics and achievements.
5) Monitoring and following the progress of individual students.
6) Providing feedback about students' achievement.
7) Specifying suitable teaching materials and activities.
8) Discovering what students have learned and what they still need to learn.
9) Deciding what to teach next.
10) Determining how to adapt lesson content to student need and learning styles. 11)Evaluating
the effectiveness of teaching methods.
12) Assigning grades and feedback to students.
13) Giving feedback to parents.
14) Giving feedback to other teachers in the school and the principal.
15) Communicating with other professionals to provide more effective courses.
16) Revising previous lesson content.
What is `communicative' language testing?
Spolsky (1976) suggested that the history of language testing could be divided into three
distinctive periods:
- The Pre-scientific
- The Psychometric-structuralist
- The Psycholinguistic-sociolinguistic
Morrow (1979, p. 144) translated these periods into:
- The Garden of Eden,
- The Vale of Tears
- The Promised Land.
The Promised Land was the advent of 'communicative' language testing (as Morrow
christened it) at the end of the 1970s and the early 1980s.
But what was communicative' language testing?
The approach was primarily a rejection of the role that reliability and validity had come to
play in language testing.
The following statements are typical of claims in the literature: It is generally accepted that
public examinations influence the attitudes, behavior, and motivation of teachers, learners
and parents. –Pearson
The following statements are typical of claims in the literature: It is common to claim the
existence of washback (the impact of a test on teaching) and to declare that tests can be
powerful determiners, both positively and negatively, of what happens in classrooms.
-Wall & Alderson
These authors also note that
"educationalists often decry the 'negative' washback effects of examinations and regard
washback as an impediment to educational reform or 'progressive' innovation in schools"
Tests are often perceived as exerting a conservative force which impedes progress.
As Andrews and Fullilove (1994) point out,
"Not only have many tests failed to change, but they have continued to exert a powerful
negative washback effect on teaching"
Swain (1985) succinctly states the prevailing opinion:
"It has frequently been noted that teachers will teach to a test: that is, if they know the content of
a test and/or the format of a test, they will teach their students accordingly"
