English Language Testing

A COMPILATION MATERIAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TESTING Compiled By: BERTARIA SOHNATA HUTAURUK Prodi PendidikanBahasaInggris FAKULTAS KEGURUAN DAN ILMU PENDIDIKAN UNIVERSITAS HKBP NOMMENSEN PEMATANGSIANTAR 2015 English Language Testing 1 INTRODUCTION This book is a compilation material for English Language Testing. General outlines of material as an introduction to English Language Testing that has been compiled for the students in S1 degree. This collection of material consists of Testing, Assessment, Meassurement, Evaluation, Kinds of Testing, Validity and Reliability of the tests, and Interpreting the test Score. Hopefully, this compilation will be useful for the students and yet not perfect, so any critism is welcomed. Compiled by: Bertaria Sohnata Hutauruk English Language Testing 2 CONTENS 1. What is the difference between assessment and evaluation?…………. 1 2. Testing, Assessment, Measurement and Evaluation…………………... 4 3. Informal vs. Formal Assessments: Tests are not the only end-all-be-all of how we assess.………………………………………………………….. 6 4. Norm-referenced test and Criterion-referenced test…………………... 11 5. Discrete Point Testing and Integrative Testing………………………… 19 6. Communicative Language Testing……………………………………… 22 7. Testing Communicative Competence…………………………………… 24 8. Testing Reading and Writing……………………………………………. 30 9. Performance-Based Assessment……………………………………….... 32 10. Validity and Reliability…………………………………………………... 42 11. Constructing Tests……………………………………………………….. 61 12. Types of Listening Testing………………………………………………. 75 13. Testing Grammar………………………………………………………… 97 14. Interpreting Test Score…………………………………………………... 103 English Language Testing 3 1 What is the difference between assessment and evaluation? There is a lot of confusion over these two terms as well as other terms associated with assessment, testing, and evaluation. The big difference can be summarized as this: assessment is information gathered by the teacher and student to drive instruction, while evaluation is when a teacher uses some instrument (such as the CMT or an end-of-unit test) to rate a student so that this information can be used to compare or sort students. Assessment is for the student and the teacher in the act of learning while evaluation is usually for others. “If mathematics teachers were to focus their efforts on classroom assessment that is primarily formative in nature, students’ learning gains would be impressive. These efforts would include gathering data through classroom questioning and discourse, using a variety of assessment tasks, and attending primarily to what students know and understand” (Wilson & Kenney, page 55). Assessment is a lot more important because it is integral to instruction. Unfortunately, it is being hampered by the demands of evaluation. The biggest demand for evaluation is grading or report cards. There shouldn’t be a problem with that, except historically evaluation (grades) were determined exclusively by computing a student’s numeric average on paper and pencil assessments called quizzes or tests. “Most experienced teachers will say that they know a great deal about their students in terms of what the students know, how they perform in different situations, their attitudes and beliefs, and their various levels of skill attainment. Unfortunately, when it comes to grades, they often ignore this rich storehouse of information and rely on test scores and rigid averages that tell only a small fraction of the story. English Language Testing 4 The myth of grading by statistical number crunching is so firmly ingrained in schooling at all levels that you may find it hard to abandon. But it is unfair to students, to parents, and to you as the teacher to ignore all of the information you get almost daily from a problem-based approach in favor of a handful of numbers based on tests that usually focus on low-level skills” (Van de Walle and Lovin, page 35). The reason this is a problem is that students learn what is valued and they strive to do well on those things. If the end-of-unit tests are what are used to determine your grade, guess what kids want to do well on, the end-of-unit test! You can do all the great activities you want, but if the bottom line is the test, then that is what is going to be valued most by everyone: teachers, students, and parents, alike. What we need to get better at is valuing the day-to-day activities we do and learn how to use them for both assessment and evaluation. This will not be an easy task. It is very different from what we are used to doing. We are used to teaching and then assessing. In reality, the line between teaching and assessment should be blurred (NCTM, 2000). “Interestingly, in some languages, learning and teaching are the same word”(Fosnot and Dolk, page 1). We need to assess on a daily basis to give us the information to make choices about what to teach the next day. If we just teach the whole unit and wait until the end-of-unit test to find out what the kids know, we may be very unhappily surprised. On the other hand, if we are assessing on a daily basis throughout the unit, we do not need to average all those assessments to come up with a final evaluation. Instead, we could just use the most recent assessments to make that evaluation. In this way, we do not penalize the student that did not know much at the beginning of the unit and worked really hard to learn what you felt were the big ideas. Instead we rate them on where they are when you finished the unit. This gives a more accurate report or evaluation of where they are performing when the evaluation is made. English Language Testing 5 English Language Testing 6 2 Testing, Assessment, Measurement and Evaluation The definition for each are: Test: a method to determine a student’s ability to complete certain tasks or demonstrate mastery of a skill or knowledge of content. Some types would be multiple choice tests, or a weekly spelling test. While it is commonly used interchangeably with assessment or even evaluation, it cab be distinguished by the fact that a test is one form of an assessment. Assessment: The process of gathering information to monitor progress and make educational decisions if necessary. As noted an assessment may include a test, but also includes methods such as obeservations, interviews, behavior monitoring etc. Evaluation: Procedured used to determine whether the subject (i.e. student) meets a preset criteria such as qualifying for special education services. This uses assessment (remember that an assessement may be a test) to make a determination of qualification in accordance with a predetrmined criteria. Meassurement, beyond its general definition, refers to the set of procedures and the principles for how to use the procedures in educational evaluations would be raw scores, percentiles ranks, derrived scores, standard scores etc. English Language Testing 7 English Language Testing 8 3 Informal vs. Formal Assessments: Tests are not the only end-all-be-all of how we assess. Formal assessment Formal assessment uses formal tests or structured continuous assessment to evaluate a learner's level of language. It can be compared to informal assessment, which involves observing the learners' performance as they learn and evaluating them from the data gathered. Example At the end of the course, the learners have a final exam to see if they pass to the next course or not. Alternatively, the results of a structured continuous assessment process are used to make the same decision. In the classroom Informal and formal assessments are both useful for making valid and useful assessments of learners' knowledge and performance. Many teachers combine the two, for example by evaluating one skill using informal assessment such as observing group work, and another using formal tools, for example a discrete item grammar test. Formative assessment Formative assessment is the use of assessment to give the learner and the teacher information about how well something has been learnt so that they can decide what to do next. It normally occurs during a course. Formative assessment can be compared English Language Testing 9 with summative assessment, which evaluates how well something has been learnt in order to give a learner a grade. Example The learners have just finished a project on animals, which had as a language aim better understanding of the use of the present simple to describe habits. The learners now prepare gap-fill exercises for each other based on some of their texts. They analyse the results and give each other feedback. In the classroom ,One of the advantages of formative feedback is that peers can do it. Learners can test each other on language they have been learning, with the additional aim of revising the language themselves. It has been once said that ““Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Our students must be assessed relative to what their skills are. It could be done by doing formal assessments or informal assessments or combination of both. I realized that beyond giving formal assessments (i.e. Summative assessments: Quizzes, long tests, periodical exams, etc.), our main role as teachers is determined by English Language Testing 10 how we recognize our students’ progress/stagnation through informal assessments (i.e. formative assessments: port folios, role play, record tracking, etc.) These methods allow the teacher to easily maneuver where and how his/her instuction is going. The result of a formal test (e.g. long test) alone would not necessarily dictate the entire academic ability of our students. It does not mean that when a student fails a formal test (e.g. periodical test), we could already conclude that he’s entire learning capabilities for that subject failed as well. Assessing students is not monopolized by just doing it formally (e.g.

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