Kinds of Test and Testing

Musfera Nara Vadia1300925

K4-13

Kinds of Tests and Testing

•Proficiency tests•Achievements tests•Diagnostic tests•Placements tests

• Direct and indirect testing• Discrete point and

integrative testing• Norm-referenced and

criterion-referenced testing• Objective testing and

subjective testing• Computer adaptive testing• Communicative language

testing

Proficiency Tests• Proficiency tests are designed to measure

people’s ability in a language, regardless of any training they may have had in that language.• This test is based on a specification of what

candidates have to be able to do in the language in order to considered proficiency.• This test is not based on courses that candidates

may previously taken.• For example: TOEFL test, FCE and CPE.

Achievement Tests• Achievement tests are directly related to

language courses, their purposes being to establish how successful individual students, group of students or the courses themselves have been in achieving objectives.• Two kinds of this tests: • Final Achievement Tests• Progress Achievement Tests

… Final Achievement Tests

• Final Achievement Tests are those administrated at the end of course of study. They contribute to summative assessment.• These tests have been referred to as

syllabus-content approach which the tests’ content based directly on a detailed course syllabus or on the books and other materials used.

…. Progress Achievement Tests

•Progress Achievement Tests are intended to measure the measure the progress that students are making. (Formative assessment)• One way of measuring progress would be

repeatedly to administer final achievement test, the increasing scores indicating the progress made.

Diagnostic Tests•Diagnostic tests are used to identify

learners’ strengths and weaknesses. They are intended primarily to ascertain what learning still needs to take place.

Placement Tests• Placement tests are intended to provide

information that will help to place students at the stage (or in the part) of the teaching program most appropriate to their abilities. • Typically used to assign students to classes

at different levels.

Direct and Indirect Testing• Direct test requires the candidate to perform precisely

the skill that we wish to measure.• Indirect test attempts to measure the abilities that

underlie the skills in which we are interested.• The main problem with indirect tests is that the

relationship between performance on them and performance of the skills in which we are usually more interested tends to be rather weak in strength and uncertain in nature.

Discrete Point and Integrative Testing

• Discrete point testing refers to the testing of one element at a time, item by item. For example, take the form of a series of items, each testing a particular grammatical structure.• Integrative testing requires the candidate to

combine many language elements in the completion of a task. For example, writing composition, making notes, etc.

Norm-referenced and Criterion-referenced Testing

• Norm-referenced testing relates to one candidate’s performance to that of other candidates, and not told directly what the student is capable of doing in the language.• For example: student A obtained score that place

him in the top 10 per cent of candidates who have taken that test.

...cont..

…Cont Criterion-

referenced Testing•Criterion-referenced test is classify

people according to whether or not they are able to perform some task or set of task satisfactory.• The tasks are set, those who perform them

satisfactorily ‘pass’; those who don’t, ‘fail’.

Objective testing and Subjective testing

• Objective test is if no judgment is required on the part of the scorer.

A multiple choice test, with the correct responses unambiguously identified, would be a case in point.• Subjective test is if judgment is called for.

The less subjective the scoring, the greater agreement there will be between two different

scorers.

Computer Adapting Testing• All candidates are presented initially

with an item of average difficulty. Those who respond correctly are presented with a more difficulty item; those who respond incorrectly are presented with an easier item.

Hughes, Arthur. 2003. Testing for Language Teachers (2nd ed.). Cambridge. Cambridge University Press