WELCOME

TO

OUR

PRESENTATION

CHAPTER 3:

DESIGNING CLASSROOM

LANGUAGE TESTS

• CAO THI KIM ANH

• PHAM NGA HOANG YEN

• NGUYEN DANG TRAM ANH

• NGUYEN THI NHU HUYNH

• TRAN THI THUY MUI

• NGUYEN THI THUY

Members of group

OUTLINE

• 1. TEST TYPES

• 2. SOME PRACTICAL STEPS TO

TEST CONSTRUCTION– ASSESSING CLEAR, UNAMBIGUOUS

OBJECTIVES

– DRAWING UP TEST SPECIFICATIONS

– DEVISING TEST TASKS

– DESIGNING MULTIPLE-CHOICE ITEMS

• 3. SCORING, GRADING, AND

GIVING FEEDBACK

TEST TYPES

• Determine the purpose of the test

choose the right kinds focus on the

specific objectives of the test

TEST TYPES

• Not have many opportunities to create

as a classroom teacher:

+ Language aptitude tests

+ Language proficiency tests

• Certainly need to create:

+ Placement tests

+ Diagnostic tests

+ Achievement tests

Language Aptitude Tests

• Not very common

• Predict a person’s success prior to exposure to

a second language

• Measure capacity/ general ability to learn a

foreign language & ultimate success in that

undertaking

• Ex:

• Modern Language Aptitude Test (MLAT)

• Language Aptitude Battery (PLAB)

Language Aptitude Tests

• Provide learner with information about:

– their preferred styles

– their potential strengths and weaknesses

– follow-up strategies

• Predicting success in learning a language is

undoubted flawed with appropriate

strategies, everyone can succeed eventually.

Proficiency Tests

Proficiency Tests

• Test global competence in a language

• Traditionally consist of :

– standardized multiple – choice items on

grammar vocabulary

– reading comprehension

– aural comprehension

– ( written expression & oral production

performance)

• Always summative & norm-referenced

Placement Tests

• Place a student into a particular level of

a language curriculum or school

• Neither too easy nor too difficult but

appropriately challenging

Placement Tests

• Come in many varieties:

– assessing comprehension and production

– responding through written and oral

performance, open-ended and limited

response, selection (multiple choices)

– gap-filling format

Diagnostic Tests

• Diagnose specified aspect of language

• Elicit information on what students need to

work on in the future

• Offer more detailed subcategorized information

on the learner

Achievement Tests

Achievement Tests

• Be related directly to classroom lessons, units, or

even total curriculum

• Be administered at the end of a unit/ term of

study summative

• Determine whether course objective have been

met offer washback about the quality of a

learner’s performance in subsets of a unit/

course

Achievement Tests

• Range from five- or ten-minute quizzes to

three-hour final exam

• Have infinite variety of item types and

formats

SOME PRACTICAL STEPS TO TEST

CONSTRUCTION

1• ASSESSING CLEAR,

UNAMBIGUOUS OBJECTIVES

2• DRAWING UP TEST

SPECIFICATIONS

3• DEVISING TEST TASKS

CLEAR,

UNAMBIGUOUS

OBJECTIVES

• Know the purpose of the test

• Determine appropriate objectives

DRAWING UP

DRAWING UP TEST SPECIFICATIONS

2.1 Outline of the test

2.2 Skills to be included (speaking,

reading, writing, listening)

2.3 Items types and tasks

Classroom-oriented specifications

The objectives

The implied elicitation and

response formats

The number of items

The time

DEVISING

TEST TASKS

Oral test : have an oral interview format

• A. Warm-up

• B. level-check questions

• C. Probe

• D. Wind-down

Test items (listening, reading,

writing)

• Choose an appropriate audio and story

(meet with the objectives you want to

test, provide a sense of authenticity and

interest).

• Give the clear direction for each part.

• Choose the appropriate distractors for

multiple choice item.

- Create the holistic scale for speaking section

and the analytic scale for writing section.

- Have double-checked to make sure that none

of the answer items confuse your students.

• Check the tape

• In the final revision, imagine you are the

student taking the test. Go through each

part slowly.

EXAMPLES:

ψ May appear to be the simplest kind of item to

construct, are extremely difficult to design

correctly

ψ Offer overworked teachers the tempting

possibility of an easy and consistent process of

scoring and grading

Multiple-Choice Items

WeaknessesᴥThe technique tests only recognition knowledge

ᴥGuessing may have a considerable effect on test

scores

ᴥThe technique severely restricts what can be

tested

ᴥIt is very difficult to write successful items

ᴥWashback may be harmful

ᴥCheating may be facilitated

(Hughes-2003,pp. 76-78)

Terminology

• All receptive, or selective (choose from a

sets of responses rather than creating them)

• Stem: presents a stimulus, and several

options or alternatives

•Key – distractor: correct-incorrect response

Guidelines

1. Design

each item

to measure

a specific

objective

2. State

both stem

and options

as simply

and directly

as possible

3. Make certain that

the intended answer is clearly the

only correct one

4. Use item

indices to

accept,

discard, or

revise items

1.A Specific Objective

EXAMPLE:

Voice: Where did George

go after the last night

party?

S reads:

a.Yes, he did

b.Because he was tired

c.To Elaine’s place for

another party

d.Around eleven o’clock

2.Simply

and Directly

Simply and directly

stem: get directly to the point, don’t give

potentially confounding lexical items

distract Ss

option: remove needless redundancy

Ex. Textbook, pp 57-58

3.The intended answer is clearly

the ONLY correct one.

EXAMPLE:

Where did George go after the party

last night?

a. Yes, he did

b. Because he was tired

c. To Eline’s place for another party

d. He went home around eleven

o’clock

4. Use item indices to

accept, discard, or revise

items

1.Item facility (IF)

3.Distractor efficciency

2.Item discrimination

(ID)

Item

indices

Slide master

Print master

Question 1:

. What is the key and distractor in multiple-

choice test?

Question 2

• Giving some practical steps to

test construction

Question 3

Give us the four guidelines for

designing multiple-choice items .

SCORING, GRADING, AND GIVING

FEEDBACK

• Integrated-skill class:

- the oral interview: 40% (fluency, prosodic features,

accuracy of the target grammatical objectives, and

discourse appropriateness)

- the listening and reading items: 20%

- the writing sample: 20% (grammar, overall effectiveness

of the message)

Scoring

Grading

The country, culture, and context of the

English classroom

Institutional expectations

Explicit and implicit definitions of grades

The relationship with the class

Student expectations

Giving feedback

1. a letter grade

2. A total score

3. 4 subscores

4. For the listening and reading sections

a. an indication of correct/incorrect responses

b. marginal comments

Giving feedback

5. For the oral interview

a.Scores for each element rated

b.A checklist of areas needing work

c.Oral feedback after the interview

d.A post-interview conference to go over the

results

Giving feedback

6. On the essay

a.Scores for each element rated

b.A checklist of areas needing work

c.Marginal and end-of-essay comments,

suggestions

d.A post-test conference to go over work

e.A self-assessment

Giving feedback

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 conference with each student to

review the whole test