Susanna Asatryan PhD, professor assistant

The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology

Testing The aim of this lecture . To think about language testing as a tool . To provide information about language testing . To reflect on testing language competence and communicative skills1. A definition of a “language test” is a tool for measuring language performance in learners (Bachman, L., and Palmer, A. 1997. Language Testing in Practice. p. 8) A fundamental principle in language testing is “correspondence between language test performance and real world language use”. It is important to understand the difference between testing and teaching. In some ways the two are so interwoven and interdependent that it is difficult to tease them apart. Every instructional sequence, has a testing component to it, whether the tests themselves are formal or informal. That is, teachers measure or judge learners' competence all the time and, ideally, learners measure and judge themselves2. Whenever a student responds to a question or tries out a new word or structure, you might be testing that student. Written work is a test. Oral work is a test. Reading and writing performance are tests. How, then, are testing and teaching different? The difference lies in what we'll call formal and informal testing. Pedagogically, it is very important to make the distinction between teaching and formal testing, especially from the point of view of principles of intrinsic motivation. For optimal learning to take place, students must have the freedom in the classroom to experiment, to try things out, to "test" their own hypotheses about language without feeling that their overall competence is being "judged" in terms of these trials and errors.

The Principles Towards Creating Intrinsically Motivating Tests 1. The principle of giving students advance preparation This may sound simple, but much too often teachers do little to help students to prepare for a test. Tests, by their very nature, are anxiety-raising experiences. Students don't know what to expect. And they may not be aware of test-taking strategies that could help them. So, the teacher's task in creating intrinsically motivating tests is to be an ally in the preparation process. He can do even more: . Provide information about the general format of a test . Provide information about types of items that will appear . Give students opportunities to practice certain item types . Encourage a thorough review of material to be covered . Offer advice on strategies for test preparation . Offer advice on strategies to use during the test itself . Give anxiety-lowering reassurance. 2. The principle of face validity Sometimes students don't know what is being tested when they tackle a test. Sometimes they feel, for a variety of possible reasons, that a test isn't testing what it is "supposed" to test. Face validity means that the students, as they perceive the test, feel that it is valid. You can help to foster that perception with: 1. a carefully constructed, well thought-out format 2. items that are clear and uncomplicated 3. directions that are crystal clear 4. tasks that are familiar, that relate to their course work 5. a difficulty level that is appropriate for your students 6. test conditions that are biased for best-that bring out students' best performance. 3. The principle of authenticity Make sure that the language in your test is as natural and authentic as possible. Also, try to give language some context so that items aren't just a string of unrelated language samples. Thematic organization of items may help in this regard.

1 М. Н. Аверина, Современный урок иностранного языка, Ярославль, 2004 2 H. Douglas Brown, Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, San Francisco State University, 1994

1 Susanna Asatryan PhD, professor assistant

The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology

4. The principle of "washback" "Washback" is the benefit that tests offer to learning. When students take a test, they should be able within a reasonably short period of time to utilize the information about their competence that test feedback offers. Formal tests must therefore be learning devices through which students can receive a diagnosis of areas of strength and weakness. Their incorrect responses can become windows of insight about further work. Your prompt return of written tests with your feedback is therefore very important to intrinsic motivation.

2 Susanna Asatryan PhD, professor assistant

The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology

Some Practical Steps to Test Construction 1. Test toward clear, unambiguous objectives You need to know as specifically as possible what it is you want to test. Sometimes teachers give tests simply because it's Friday or it's the third week of the course. This is no way to approach a test. Carefully list everything that you think your students should "know" or be able to "do," based on the material that students are responsible for. 2. Draft your test A first draft will give you a good idea of what the test will look like, how students will perceive it (face validity), the extent to which authentic language and contexts are present, the length of the listening stimuli, how well a story line comes across, how things like the cloze testing format will work, and other practicalities. 4.Revise your test At this stage, you will work through all the items you have devised and ask a number of important questions: . Are the directions to each section absolutely clear? . Is there an example item for each section? . Does each item measure a specified objective? . Is each item stated in clear, simple language? . Does each multiple choice item have appropriate distracters, that is, are the wrong items clearly wrong and yet sufficiently "alluring" that they aren't ridiculously easy? . Does the difficulty of each item seem to be appropriate for your students? . Does the sum of the items and and test as a whole adequately reflect the learning objectives? 5. Utilize your feedback after administering the test. After you give the test, you will have some "information about how easy or difficult it was, about the time limits, and about your students' affective reaction to it and their general performance. Take note of these forms of feedback and use them for making your next test. 6. Work for washback. As you evaluate the test and return it to your students, your feedback should reflect the principles of washback discussed earlier. Use the information from the test performance as a springboard for review and/or for moving on to the next unit.

Three Criteria of a Good Test 1. A good test will seem fair and appropriate to the students (and to anyone who needs to know the results, e.g. head teacher, other teachers, employers, parents, etc.). 2. It will not be too troublesome to mark. 3. It will provide clear results that serve the purpose for which it was set.

Types of Tests and Testing Generally we distinguish two main categories of tests: You could test: . the students' progress over the course so far (a progress test /achievement test); . their general level of English, without reference to any course (a proficiency test) 3. Most internal school tests tend to be progress tests; most external ones (e.g. state or international exams) are usually proficiency tests. You can test anything that has been studied; this usually means the four language systems and the four language skills. Remember your students' course has probably included not only reading and writing, grammar and lexis, but also speaking, listening, phonology and function. Somehow tests often seem to focus far more on the first four than the last four. Traditional 'pen-and-paper' tests are usually made up of two types of questions: . discrete item tasks (i.e. testing specific individual language points); . integrative tasks (i.e. a number of items or skills tested in the same question). These can be marked in two ways:

3 Jim Scrivener, Learning Teaching, Macmillan Books for Teachers, 2007

3 Susanna Asatryan PhD, professor assistant

The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology

. objectively (i.e. there is a clear correct answer, and every marker would give the same marks to the same question); . subjectively (i.e. the marking depends largely on the personal decision of the marker; different markers might give different marks for the same question). Language systems are easier to test objectively; language skills tend to be tested subjectively. Let’s consider proficiency tests, progress or achievement tests, diagnostic tests and placement tests. Proficiency tests Proficiency tests measure learners’ language ability regardless of the training they may have had or the vocabulary and topics they may have studied. Proficiency tests are not based on the contents of a language course but rather on the general knowledge of the target language and culture. Achievement tests Achievement tests are directly related to the language courses taught to the examinees. The purpose of achievement tests is to judge upon the success of individual learners or groups in achieving the objectives of the language course. Achievement tests are always “course related” meaning course contents and objectives. Diagnostic tests Diagnostic tests identify students strengths and weaknesses. They provide the teachers with the information on what further teaching is necessary and what problems the students might have in coping with the instruction demands. Placement tests Placement tests provide information that helps to place the students at the most suitable stage of the teaching curriculum, bearing in mind their level of the language achieved so far. (Adapted from Hughes, A., 1996. Testing for Language Teachers. p. 9-21).

Performance-based testing Instead of just offering paper-and-pen-cil single-answer tests of possibly hundreds of discrete items, performance-based testing of typical school subjects involves: . open-ended problems . hands-on projects . student portfolios . experiments . labs . essay writing.

Interactive language tests The language version of performance-based testing comes in the form of various interactive language tests. Students are assessed in the process of creatively interacting with people. This means that tests have to involve people in actually performing the behavior that we want to measure. Paper and pencil multiple choice tests certainly do not involve test takers in speaking, requesting, responding, interacting, and in combining listening and speaking, or reading and writing. Interactive testing involves them in all of the above rather than relying on the assumption that a good paper and pencil test taker is a good overall language performer.

Testing Techniques Gap-fill4 Gap filling refers to tasks where the test-takers are given separate sentences with some words or phrases deleted. The task is to restore the missing words. In these tests answer keys can sometimes have more than one answer for a space. Some missing words can have a structural value for the sentence (e.g. prepositions or conjunctions). Other words can have full lexical meaning. Sometime a list of the words can be given to the test-takers to be used in filling in the gaps. In such cases the number of words in the list is usually larger than the number of gaps in the text.

4 М. Н. Аверина, Современный урок иностранного языка, Ярославль, 2004

4 Susanna Asatryan PhD, professor assistant

The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology

. Single sentence Fill in the blanks. Use only one word in each space. I'd ……. go to the cafe than the pub. Answer: rather (If answers of more than one word are allowed, then other answers are possible; instructions need to be clear!). . Using given words Put one word from the list below in each gap. thought switched unlocked arrived He (1) ………. home late that night. As he (2) ………..the front door, he (3)…….__ he heard a noise in the sitting room. He tiptoed carefully into the room and (4)….. on the light. Answers: 1 arrived 2 unlocked 3 thought 4 switched . Using other clues (e.g. pictures, anagrams, first letters, lines indicating how many letters in word, etc.) He looked through the …………… and was amazed to see that she had finally come ……….. .(Students have pictures of a window and a house.) Answers: window, home. . Transformation of a given word He could produce no ……………. evidence to support his argument, (photograph) Answer: photographic

Cloze A cloze test is a gap-fill exercise using a longer text and with a consistent number of words between gaps (e.g. every ninth word). The word 'cloze' is often incorrectly used to describe any gap-filling task. Cloze procedure involves deleting a number of words in the whole text, requiring the test-takers to restore the original words. The procedure of based on the assumption of gestalt psychology that human psyche tends to “complete the closures” in the elements of the surrounding world that is being perceived. This makes the cloze procedure authentic to cognitive processes. The first short passage of the text is usually left not mutilated. After this brief “lead-in” approximately every seventh word is deleted. Disadvantages of the test are that some words prove more difficult to restore than others. There could be more than one answer for any one gap. It is not always easy to say what language area (grammar, lexis, prepositions etc) or skills (receptive or productive) are actually measured by the cloze procedure. Exploratory task: Do the cloze procedure and comment on the difficulties that you have experienced The amount of physical education taught in primary schools is decreasing because of the government's emphasis on the "three R’s", according to a survey. It shows that half a million hours of …lessons were lost in the past year because more …was spent on literacy and numeracy. Teachers have warned that more PE time could be… from September, as schools concentrate more on … numeracy.

Multiple choice Choose the word or phrase which best completes each sentence. If I went to Jakarta, ………. buy some jewellery. a I'll bl c I will dl'd Answer: d (Multiple choice is, of course, a very widely used testing technique and can be used for more than simple gap-filling tests.) Multiple-choice tests have a “stem” (the basic and unaltered part of the sentence) and a number of “options” , only one of which is correct. The other options are wrong in the particular context and are called “distracters”. The advantages of the multiple-choice test are that they can produce a reliable and economical scoring. A test can include a fairly long list of items and increase the reliability of procedure, thus decreasing the randomness of the results. The disadvantages of the multiple-choice test are that it checks only recognition knowledge. Guessing can have an effect on the scores. The plausible (looking correct) distracters are not always available and this makes test writers include “fool-proof” distracters. The “correct answer” can in quite a few cases be 5 Susanna Asatryan PhD, professor assistant

The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology questioned. Exploratory task: Choose the correct answer of the multiple choice and comment on your difficulties  Why hasn’t your mother come? – A/ can’t Well, she said she ______B/ won’t leave the baby. C/ couldn’t D/ wouldn’t

Matching (pictures, words, sentence pieces, labels, etc.) Matching is a test format when students are given a list of items, which they have to match with the other list of words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs or visual images. The disadvantage of it is that once the test-takers have successfully made sufficient amount of matches, the remaining pairs can be guessed more easily and the last pair will be correct by default. . Pictures and words Write the correct word under each picture (sketches of transport) car bike ship motorbike van lorry caravan plane . Placing words in correct sets, lists, etc. Put the following words in the correct list: water, cheese, wine, lemonade, lunch, bread, butter, supper . Grammatical labelling Mark each sentence a, b or c depending on the tense used, a = present perfect; b = past simple; c = present progressive 1. He's just come back. 2. I've never been to the Andes. 3. When did you go there? 4. I'm living in Vienna at the moment. Answers: la 2a 3b 4c . Putting jigsaw pieces together Which beginning goes with which ending? 1.He planted a. the stones and weeds. 2.She picked b. some beautiful red apples. 3.She dug up c. the seeds in three separate rows. Probable answers: 1 c 2 b 3 a Note that some other answers are linguistically possible (e.g. 3b), though they make less sense or seem more unlikely. Sentence transformation . Using given words Starting with (or making use of) a given word or words; changing the form, but keeping the meaning He liked the theatre but hated the play. Although... Answer: Although he liked the theatre, he hated the play. . Following a given instruction Change this sentence so that it describes the past. She's looking closely at the sculpture, trying to decide if she likes it. Possible answer: She looked closely at the sculpture, trying to decide if she liked it.

Sentence construction and reconstruction . Rearranging words brother / much / he's / than / his / taller Answer: He's much taller than his brother. . Using given words Although /1 / bad headache / go / concert Possible answer: Although I have a bad headache, I'll still go to the concert. . Finding and correcting mistakes o Cross out the incorrect word. 6 Susanna Asatryan PhD, professor assistant

The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology

When I will visit you, I'll see your new baby. Answer: When 1wUl visit you, I'll see your new baby. o Rewrite this sentence in correct English. I am enjoy swimming at the swimming pool of the sports centre. Possible answer: I enjoy swimming in the sports centre swimming pool. . Situational You want to borrow some money from a colleague. What question would you ask? I wonder………. borrow……______? Possible answer: I wonder if I could borrow ten dollars?

Two-option answers . True/false Often used after a reading passage e.g. Paul wanted to visit the cattle. True/False?) . Correct/incorrect Write * if the following sentence is in correct English. If it is incorrect put a X. They always play football on Sundays. Answer: . Defined options Jill is a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl. Mary is a one-year-old baby. Write J next to the things that belong to Jill. Write M next to the things that belong to Mary. (List of words: teddy, Walkman, calculator, cot.)

Information transfer Information transfer means that the test-takers have to transfer material from the text on to a chart, table or map. Such like tasks are sometimes performed in real life settings (arranging information during a lecture or finding out the details of the train timetable) and therefore can be viewed as authentic. Exploratory task: Do the following information-transfer test and comment on your experience. “You are a road-safety officer. Listen to the story about a road accident and draw a sketch picture of the situation” (After Hughes, A. 1996. Testing for Language Teachers. CUP. P. 138) I was riding along the street and a little boy ran into the road from my right. He ran out from between the two buildings on my right. One building is on the corner. The next one to it is the Post Office. When the boy ran out, I turned left away from him and hit one of the parked cars. It was the second car back from the cross road on the left. It was parked right outside the police station. The policeman heard the bang and came out at once. Draw your sketch map here:

The main road

Ordering tasks (sequencing) Ordering tasks (sequencing) are typically used to test the ability of arranging a discourse (stretch of an oral or written utterance) in a logically organized chain. The students are presented with a mutilated text, in which the order of elements is jumbled. The task is to restore the logical sequence. The problem with “sequencing tasks” is that in some cases there can be more than one way of ordering the textual elements.

Editing tests Editing tests consist of sentences or text passages, in which errors have been introduced. Test- takers are to identify the errors and to write out the missing or erroneous elements at the end of each line. The

7 Susanna Asatryan PhD, professor assistant

The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology main difficulty with this type of test is to ensure that an element deemed as erroneous by test writers should indeed be erroneous with all exceptions excluded.

Testing Communicative skills Testing writing skills Testing writing pursues the goal of testing the ability to write. Testing writing can include the operations of completing, describing, explaining, comparing and contrasting, reasoning on paper in written form. Completion is done with the forms that may turn out to be useful in the real world. E.g. You want to join a travel club so that you can travel cheaper. Complete the application form: . Mr. or Ms.______. Family name______. Date of birth______. Nationality______. Present address______. Occupation______. Which UK airport will be most convenient to you?______. Which county/s are you intending to travel to?______. Proposed date of departure______. Proposed duration of stay outside the UK______. Reason for journey______. How do you intend to pay for your ticket (in cash, by check etc)?______. How did you hear of our travel club?______. Date Signature Describing format is used to test students’ abilities to describe their message to an addressee. E.g. You have got a picture that you want your friend to use as a logo. There is no way you can show the picture. Write a description of the image that you want to be used as a logo. Explaining format is often used in the “letter-of-complaint” task. The subject of testing in this case can be the ability of the test-takers to describe the matter of complaint and the ways to put it right. Contextual format means that the examinees are given brief notes of a public address and the task is to “unfold” these brief entries into full text. Written response format consists in the task to read a letter from an official or a clerk and to write a response, focusing on the chunks of the text, which have been underlined. The “legend” for the response is provided. This can be “biography data”, “previous letter sent to the clerk by the test-taker”, “background situation for this exchange of letters” etc. Reasoning is tested in writing essays (techniques of “testing writing” can be found in Hughes, A. 1996. Testing for language Teachers. p. 75-100).

Testing speaking skills Testing oral ability has the objective of measuring the language performance in oral interaction. Oral tests represent a population of oral tasks that the candidates are to be able to perform. These tasks are expected to elicit behavior, that exposes the oral ability of the test-takers and that can be scored validly and reliably. Oral behavior that is to be scored includes expression (thanks, apologies, attitudes, opinions), manipulation (directions, instructions, persuading, advising, warning, complaining, banning and permitting), eliciting (information, clarification, explanation), narrating (sequence of events, story-telling, eye-witness accounts). Oral test types can be a monologue, a dialogue and a multi-participant interaction. Criteria for scoring the performance at a certain level of language acquisition include accuracy, appropriacy, range (of the language), flexibility, size. Exploratory task: Ask your peer to share with you “the most memorable event of yesterday”. Use the criteria of the “top 8 Susanna Asatryan PhD, professor assistant

The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology performance” given below to assess the performance of your partner. Reflect on the criteria as the assessment tool. . Accuracy Pronunciation is clearly intelligible. Grammatical and lexical accuracy is generally high. There some errors that do not destroy communication. The language is generally appropriate to . Appropriacy function. The overall intention of the speaker is always clear. A fair range of language is available to the candidate. No overt search for words is . Range evident. A candidate is able to take the initiative in the conversation, to adapt to new topics, to change the subject. . Flexibility Language turns are fairly short but there is some evidence that more complex utterances and longer discourse can be produced. . Size (Hughes, A. 1996. Testing for language Teachers. CUP. P. 102) There are three general formats for testing oral ability: . interview, . interaction with peers . response to an image, written or heard text. Interviews can be structured and unstructured. Structured interview means having predetermined questions with limited possible answers. Unstructured interview means that the questioning is guided by the responses to the previous questions. Interviews can be administered on a certain topic or cover a wider range of themes. Interaction can be arranged between the two test-takers discussing a topic, giving explanations or making plans. E.g. “Discuss how you make an omelet”. “Describe a stapler”. “Explain how to use a public pay- phone”. Candidates can be asked to assume roles in a particular situation. A protracted exchange between the two candidates can be stimulated by the following task: “You want your mother to increase your pocket money, but she is resistant to the idea. Try to make your mother change her mind”. Discussion between the candidates can also be an important source of information about their language performance. E.g. “Your school can spend money on either of the items to improve facilities: video equipment, a mini bus, computer equipment, a sauna, library resources. Discuss with your partner all the advantages and disadvantages of each suggestion and try to reach agreement on the most suitable decision”. Response to a picture can take the form of description and comment (a picture is expected to be either vague in its form and reference, or deep in the message). A response can be given to a text for reading. Exploratory task: A response can be given to a recorded text of the telephone talk. A candidate is to restore what the other person on the phone is saying. Perform the activity and reflect on the difficulties  Hello. What can I do for you?  ___  Hold on a moment. What’s the name of the play?  ___  When’s it on exactly?  ___  Sorry, to mention it, but in what range are you prepared to pay for the ticket?  ___  Well, what night would you like to go?  ___  O.K. That’s all right. Hope you will have a nice evening out. Bye.

In order to assess the fluency of oral ability, the following scales can be used: background knowledge, vocabulary sufficiency, grammar adequacy, message communication, interactive skills, logic of the utterance, fluency. Grades are given for every scale. Only when examines can be relied upon to score with consistent accuracy video-recordings, should they be entrusted with “live scoring” (Hughes, A. 1996. Testing for 9 Susanna Asatryan PhD, professor assistant

The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology language Teachers. p.101-115).

Testing reading skills The following operations are necessary to test if the task is to evaluate candidates’ language performance in reading: scanning the text to locate specific information, skimming the text to obtain the gist, identifying examples in support of an argument, restoring the sequencing relations between parts of the text, inferring from the text. Techniques for testing reading include multiple-choice, sequencing, cloze, information transfer, comments, drawing conclusions. In the multiple choice tests the candidates give evidence of successful reading by ticking off one out of a number of alternatives (usually out of three, four or five alternatives). True-False questions are just a variety of the multiple choice format. E.g. “Choose the picture (A, B, C, D), which the following text describes”. In the cloze test the task is to complete the gaps in the text. Exploratory task: Do the following cloze activity and reflect on the problems you had with completing the gaps in the text. “A man goes out of prison … twenty years. He decides to go … to the neighborhood where he lived. … he gets there he cannot … the place. Everything has changed a …. The places he used to … have all disappeared. Even the pub has ….He is very tired and would like to have … to eat. He goes into a small … and has a coffee and a sandwich. When he takes … his wallet he finds a … ticket in it. He then remembers that the … thing he had done before being arrested was to take a … of shoes to the shoemaker's. He … to go there and try. What a wonderful thing! The shoemaker is still at the … place. He gets into the shop and tells the … that about twenty years before he … him a pair of shoes to have them …. The shoemaker has a look at the ticket and …: "O.K. Come back tomorrow. They will be ready then." Some things … change” (Answer key: after, back, when, recognize, lot, know, moved, something, cafe, out, shoe, last, pair, decides, old, shoemaker, gave, fixed, says, never). Information transfer demands on the candidates to supply information from the text in a table, map, picture etc. Restoring the sequencing relations between the parts of the text can be done in at least two ways. Candidates can be given a rambled order of text fragments, which they are expected to rearrange in the correct sequence. As an alternative, the candidates are given a text and a separate passage. Their task is to decide where in the text this separate passage belongs.

Testing listening skills All the task that has been set for listening should be done “while-listening”. The tape is usually played twice. A couple of minutes are allowed after the tape has been stopped for the test-takers to go over their answers once again. The candidates are to perform the following operations: listen for specific details, obtaining a gist of what they hear, follow directions, follow instructions, interpret the text. Techniques for testing listening can include multiple-choice, sequencing, information transfer, instruction and direction following, comments, drawing conclusions (Hughes, A. 1996. Testing for language Teachers. CUP. P.134-140) (After Heaton, J. 1999. Classroom Testing. Longman. P. 50)

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The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology

Testing Language Means Testing grammar Testing grammar can be done with multiple choice items, paraphrase (say it differently using a different beginning of the sentence or a different word), sentence completion, cloze procedure (e.g. testing the knowledge of prepositions or articles), error correction etc. Exploratory task : Read the text below and look carefully into each line. Some of the lines are correct, and some have a word, which should not be there. If a line is correct, put a tick . If a line has a word that should not be there, write this word in the right column. Sentences Tick or word a) Last Sunday was definitely not a good day for me. b) It was all started when I got into my car and it refused to start. c) I immediately realized that I had left the lights on. d) I telephoned to my friend and he came round and helped me start it. e) I then drove into town to see my brother. f) I waited for him for an hour despite of the freezing weather g) There was nothing I could do but drive back home h) He did not even apologize himself for not waiting for me (After Paran A. 1996. First Certificate Gold. Practice Exam. Longman. p. 41).

Testing vocabulary Testing vocabulary is essential to demonstrate linguistic skills. Test tasks can include synonyms (Choose the alternative ABCD, which is closest in meaning to the given words. E.g. Gleam: a/shine, b/glitter, c/glare, d/glittering. Answer key: “gleam” has the implication of feeling joy. That is why “shining” is closest in meaning to it). Definition task can have a multiple choice format (“Loathe” means a/ to dislike intensely, b/ to hate the look of, c/ to feel sick at the smell of. Answer key: “to dislike intensely” is the best definition). Gap filling or cloze procedure can also be used in testing the vocabulary. Tasks with pictures can be as follows: Write down the names of the objects that you see in the picture. This technique is restricted to concrete nouns. Another technique is elicit words from definitions (E.g. … is a person who performs operations on patients. … is what becomes of boiling water. … is what a coward needs. Answer key: surgeon, steam, courage). Exploratory task : Read the text below and decide which answers ABCD best fit each space Text Answers The findings of a 1 … survey showed that 1. a/late b/recent c/latest d/fresh teenagers do not spend as much money 2. a/included b/contained c/counted as their parents suspect. The survey 2 … d/numbered three hundred teenagers from 3 … Britain. 3. a/entire b/all over c/complete d/the Although they have more cash, worry whole about debt is 4 … among the teenagers. 4. a/gaining b/heightening c/increasing The economic recession seems to have d/building encouraged 5 … attitudes to money. 5. a/careful b/suspicious c/reserved d/cautious (After Paran A. 1996. First Certificate Gold. Practice Exam. Longman. P.16-17)

Psychological Testing Psychological testing is sometimes used in teaching English. The purpose of psychological testing in the communicative language lessons is to boost the discussion about learners individual characteristics.

Advantages of Good Testing

11 Susanna Asatryan PhD, professor assistant

The Chair of pedagogy and language teaching methodology

It is quite obvious that tests have a useful place in an interactive, communicative curriculum. Tests need not violate any of the principles of cooperation and student-centeredness. They in fact become indispensable components of a curriculum. Tests can aid learning in a number of ways: . Tests can increase motivation as they serve as milestones of student progress. . Tests can spur learners to set goals for themselves, both before and after a test. . Tests can aid the retention of information through the feedback they give on learners' competence. . Tests can provide a sense of periodic closure to various units and modules of a curriculum. . Tests can encourage students' self-evaluation of their progress. . Tests can promote student autonomy as they confirm areas of strength and areas needing further work. . Tests can aid in evaluating teaching effectiveness.

Glossary Achievement tests measure the command of the course studied Cloze tests offer the test-takers a task to complete the gaps in a coherent discourse Concurrent validity is coincidence of the testing results with the results obtained by other means including teacher’s continuous assessment Consistency is agreement between parts of the text in terms of difficulty and results Construct validity is the ability of the test to measure what it claims to measure (e.g. a test claiming the ability to measure speaking performance is not to measure lexical or grammar competence instead) Contextualization tests offer the test-takers a task to produce an oral or written discourse out of a graphical form (tables, graphs, charts etc) Diagnostic tests measure strengths and weaknesses of the test takers Gap-filling tests offer the test-takers a task to complete the gaps in sentences Information-transfer tests offer the test-takers a task to transfer information from a text into a graphical form (tables, graphs, charts etc) Interactive tests consider the background knowledge and other individual traits of the test-takers Matching tests offer the test-takers a task to find consistent pairs of language samples (another option is to find consistent pairs of language and pictures) Multiple choice tests offer the test-takers a choice of the correct answer out of a number of “distracters” Ordering tests offer the test-takers a task to sequence correctly randomized parts of a discourse Placement tests are used to find the right stage of the curriculum for the learners and to teach them the adequate language difficulty level Practicality is convenience of the test as a measuring tool (time saving etc) Proficiency tests measure general language competence Reliability is permanence of measuring results produced by the same test in different circumstances (testing speaking and writing is less reliable, than testing reading and listening) Test is a tool for measuring success of performance or ability to do it Testing format is the design of a test

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