designing classroom language test

DESIGNING CLASSROOM LANGUAGE TESTS

TEST TYPES

Defining your purpose will help you choose the right kind of test, and it will also help you to focus on the specific objectives of the test. 

Below are the test types to be examined:

• Language Aptitude Test
• Proficiency Test
• Placement Test
• Diagnostic Test
•  Achievement Test 

1.  Language Aptitude Test

· A language aptitude test is designed to measure capacity or general ability to learn a foreign language.

· Task in MLAT includes: Number learning, phonetic script, spelling clues, word in sentence, and repaired associates.

· There’s no unequivocal evidence that language aptitude test predict communicative success in a language .

· Any test that claims to predict success in learning a language is undoubtedly flawed

2     2. Proficiency Test

· A proficiency test is not limited to any one course, curriculum, or single skill in the language ; rather , it test overall ability.

· It includes: standardized multiple choice items on grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and aural comprehension.

· Proficiency test are almost always summative and norm-referenced.

· They are usually not equipped to provide diagnostic feedback.

· Their role is to accept or to deny someone’s passage into the text stage of a journey.

3    3. Placement Test

· The ultimate objective of a placement test is to correctly place a student into a course or level.

· A placement test usually includes a sampling of the material to be covered in the various courses in a curriculum.

· In a placement test , a student should find the test material neither too easy nor too difficult but appropriately challenging.

· The English as a Second Language Placement Test ( ESLPT ) at San Francisco State University has three parts, part 1: student read a short article and then write a summary essay. Part 2: student write a composition in response to an article. Part 3: multiple choice; students read an essay and identify grammar errors in it.

4     4.Diagnostic Tests

· A diagnostic test is designed to diagnose specified aspects of a language.

· A diagnostic test can help a student become aware of errors and encourage the adoption of appropriate compensatory strategies.

· A typical diagnostic test of oral production was created by Clifford prator (1972) to accompany a manual of English pronunciation.

- Test-takers are directed to read a 150-word passage while they are tape recorded.

- The test administrator then refers to an inventory of phonological items for analyzing a learner’s production.

-After multiple listening, the administrator produces a checklist for errors in five separate categories.

-Stress and rhythm.

-Intonation,

-Vowels,

-Consonants, and

 -Other factors.

5    5. Achievement Test

· An achievement test is related directly to classroom lessons, units, or even a total curriculum.

· Achievement tests should be limited to particular material addressed in a curriculum within a particular time frame and should be offered after a course has focused on the objectives in question.

· The primary role of an achievement test is to determine whether course objectives has been meet – end of a period of instruction.

· Achievement test are often summative because they are administered at the end f a unit or term of study. But effective achievement tests can serve as useful wash back by showing the errors of a students and helping them analyze their weaknesses and strengths.

· Achievement test range from five-or ten-minutes quizzes to three hour final examinations, with an almost infinite variety of item types and formats.

· Some practical steps in constructing classroom tests:

-     Assessing Clear, Unambiguous Objective.

Before giving a test; examine the objectives for the unit you’re testing. Your first task in designing a test, then, is to determine appropriate objectives.

Example: “ students will recognize and produce tag question, with the correct grammatical from and final intonation pattern, in simple social conversation.“

-    Drawing Up Test Specification

Test specifications will simply comprise

- A broad outline of the test

-What skill you will test

-What the items will look like

This is an example for test specification based on the objective stated above:

“Student will recognize and produce tag questions, with the correct grammatical form and final intonation pattern, in simple social conversation.”

Test specification

1. Speaking (5 minutes per person, previous day)

Format: oral interview, T and S

Task: T ask question to S

2. Listening (10 minutes)

Format: T makes audiotape in advance, with one other voice on it

Tasks: a. 5 minimal pair items, multiple choice

3. Reading (10 minutes)

Format: cloze test items (10 total) in a story line

Task: fill inn the blanks

4. Writing (10 minutes )

Format: prompt for a topic: why I like /didn’t like a recent TV sitcom

Task: writing a short opinion paragraph

- Devising Test Task

As you devise your test items, consider such factors as

-How students will perceive them (face validity)

- The extent to which authentic language and contexts are present

- Potential difficult caused by cultural schemata

- Designing Multiple-Choice Test Items

There are a number of weaknesses in multiple-choice items:

- The technique tests only recognition knowledge.

- Guessing may have a considerable effect of test scores.

- The technique severely restricts what can be tested.

- It is very difficult to write successfully items.

- Wash back may be harmful.

v Cheating may be facilitated

Some important jargons in Multiple-Choice Items:

1. Multiple-choice items are all receptive, or selective, that is, the test taker chooses from a set of responses rather than creating a response. Other receptive items types include true-false question and matching lists.

2. Every multiple-choice item has a stem, which presents several option or alternatives to choose from.

SCORING, GRADING AND GIVING FEEDBACK

A. Scoring

As you design a classroom test, you must consider how t test will be scored and graded. Your scoring plans reflect the relative weight that you place on each section and items in each section. The integrated skills class that we have been using as an example focuses on listening and speaking skills with some attention to reading and writing. Three of your nine objectives target reading and writing skills. How do you assign scoring to the various components of this test?

Because oral production is a driving force in your overall objectives, you decide to place more weight on the speaking (oral interview) section than on the other three sections. Five minutes is actually a long time to spend in a one-on-one situation with a student, and some significant information can be extracted from such a session. You therefore designate. 40 percent of the grade to the oral interview. You consider the listening and reading sections to be equally important, but each of them, especially in this multiple choice format, is of less consequence than the oral interview. So you give each of them a 20 percent weight. That leaves 20 percent for the writing section, which seems about right to you given the time and focus on writing in this unit of the course.

Your next task is to assign scoring for each item. This may take a little numerical common sense, but it doesn’t require a degree in math. To make matters simple, you decide to have a 100-point test in which.

-    The listening and reading items are each worth 2 points.

-   The oral interview will yield four scores ranging from 5 to 1, reflecting fluency, prosodic features, accuracy of the target grammatical objectives, and discourse appropriateness. To weight these scores appropriately, you will double each individual score and then add them together for a possible total score of 40.

-   The writing sample has two scores: one for grammar/mechanics (including the correct use of so and because) and one for overall effectiveness of the message, each ranging from 5 to 1. Again, to achieve the correct weight for writing, you will double each score and add them, so the possible total is 20 points.

Here are your decisions about scoring your test:

                                    Percent of                                                       Possible Total

                                    Total Grade                                                   Correct

Oral Interview                  40%            4 scores, 5 to 1 range x 2        = 40    

Listening                          20%            10 items @ 2 points each        = 20

Reading                            20%            10 items @ 2 points each        = 20

Writing                             20%            2 scores, 5 to 1 range x 2        = 20

Total                                                                                                        100

At this point you may wonder if the interview should carry less weight or the written essay more, but your intuition tells you that these weights are plausible representations of the relative emphases in this unit of the course.

After administering the test once, you may decide to shift some of these weights or to make other changes. You will then have valuable information about how easy or difficult the test was, about whether the time limit was reasonable, about your student’s affective reaction to it, and about their general performance. Finally, you will have an intuitive judgment about whether this test correctly assessed your students. Take note of these impressions, however no empirical they may be, and use them for revising the test in another term.

B. Grading

Grading doesn’t mean just giving “A” for 90-100, and a “B” for 80-89.

It’s not that simple . How you assign letter grades to a test in a product of

- The country, culture, and context of the English classroom,

- Institutional expectations (most of them unwritten),

- Explicit and implicit definitions of grades that you have set forth,

- The relationship you have established with the class, and

- Student expectations that have been engendered (cause) in previous test and quizzes in the class.

C. Giving feedback

Feedback should become beneficial wash back. Those are some examples of feedback:

1. A letter grade

2. A total score

3. Four sub scores (speaking, listening, reading, writing)

4. For the listening and reading sections

- An indication of correct/incorrect responses

- Marginal comments

5. For the oral interview

- Scores for each element being rated

- A checklist of areas needing work

- A post-interview conference to go over the results

6. On the essay

- Scores for each element being rated

-A checklist of areas needing work

- Marginal and end –of-essay comments, suggestions

- A post-test conference to go over work

- A self-assessment

7. On all or selected parts of the test, peer checking of results

8. A whole-class discussion of results of the test

9. Individual conferences with each student to review the whole test

Ways of Assessing Learners

Progress and achievement can also be assessed through written work (done in class or for homework), class activities such as simulations or oral presentations, group projects, and self assessment by the learners themselves. Clear assessment criteria are needed. If the results are to be included in the overall course assessment of the learners, the criteria should be understood and agreed upon by all the teachers involved.

CONCLUSION

There are five kinds of test types: Language aptitude tests, proficiency tests, placement tests, diagnostic tests, and achievement tests. Every test must be a wonderfully innovative instrument that will garner the accolades of the colleagues and the admiration of the students.

In the test, we have some practical steps to test construction, they are: assessing clear and unambiguous objectives, drawing up test specifications, devising test tasks, and designing multiple-choice test items.

Evaluation can fulfill two functions: assessment and feedback. Assessment is a matter of measuring what the learners already know. Any assessment should also provide positive feedback to inform teachers and learners about what is still not known, thus providing important input to the content and methods of future works.

 reference :  http://desvieta.blogspot.co.id/2010/04/designing-classroom-language-tests.html
 http://febbyeni.blogspot.co.id/2013/06/designing-classroom-language-test.html