Language testing and methods of assessment

The objectives of aptitude, placement, diagnostic, achievement and proficiency tests

Index to Language Testing Objectives

This section contains questions on the principles and practice of language testing. Use the clues to help you formulate your own answers before clicking the link to check them.

1. Principles and Purposes of Language Testing

  1. Check your answer: What basic questions should a teacher or tester ask before setting a test?
    Clues: why? whether? what? how? quality? consequences?
  2. Check your answer: What are the relationships between learning, teaching and testing?
    Clues: purposes; content specification; influence.
  3. Check your answer: What are the main reasons for testing?
    Clue: identify the different types of test in terms of their purposes.
  4. Check your answer: What are the essential differences between a classroom test and an external examination?
    Clue: why do most external examinations grade, pass or fail candidates?
  5. Check your answer: Briefly describe the following types of test in terms of their objectives: (a) aptitude, (b) placement, (c) diagnostic, (d) achievement and (e) proficiency.
    Clue: can you give examples of these types of test from your knowledge and experience?
  6. Check your answer: How far is it possible to predict student success in language learning?
    Clues: for what purposes is language needed? Is linguistic performance the only ingredient of success?
  7. Check your answer: Can a student's progress in learning a second language (L2) be measured? What are the difficulties?
    Clues: clarity of the syllabus specification; quality of the test; factors outside the test.
  8. Check your answer: How does one specify test objectives? How far does the way objectives are defined influence subsequent assessment?
    Clues: why test? what to test? what consequences?

2. Language Skills and Approaches to Testing

  1. Check your answer: What are the main language skills and their components? Are there other skills that should be tested?
    Clues: the four skills; subdivisions such as different purposes; the way tasks may draw on a mixture of skills.
  2. Check your answer: What are discrete-point tests and what are tests of integrative skills? Discuss their relative advantages and disadvantages. Is the distinction valid?
    Clues: illustrate how language can be broken down; compare this with tests which depend on the completion of tasks.
  3. Check your answer: What factors influencing language learning should be tested, and how?
    Clues: constituents of language aptitude; factors other than aptitude.
  4. Check your answer: How has language testing been influenced by changing views of language and language learning?
    Clue: identify some of the newer approaches which have followed discrete-point testing.

3. Objective and Subjective Testing

  1. Check your answer: What is (a) objective testing and (b) subjective testing?
    Clue: consider the extent to which there is scope for variation in the answer.
  2. Check your answer: What are the main subjective testing techniques?
    Clue: consider ways of marking work where a single given answer—'right' or 'wrong'—does not determine whether the candidate gains the mark.
  3. Check your answer: What are the main objective testing techniques?
    Clue: review the 'closed' test types in which a single given answer gains the mark. Are such tests a good indicator of how a candidate really performs in a given language?
  4. Check your answer: What are standardised tests? What is meant by psychometric, objective and linguistic realism?
    Clue: explain each of the terms in the question and how they are connected.

4. Test Design and Item Analysis

  1. Check your answer: What are the main requirements of an efficient test?
    Clue: consider the ways in which a test can be efficient for an educational institution while still serving its intended purpose.
  2. Check your answer: The problem of test rubrics: how far do format and instructions affect assessment?
    Clue: how might a listening test be compromised by long written questions followed by A, B, C or D?
  3. Check your answer: What is test discrimination? When is it not needed?
    Clue: identify some test types used for different purposes before answering.
  4. Check your answer: What is item analysis? What is the facility value of an item? What is its discrimination index?
    Clue: explain why this form of test needs to be tried out on a large sample of people.

5. The Limitations of Language Testing

  1. Check your answer: What are the main difficulties and limitations of language testing?
    Clue: explain the problems of using multiple-choice tests with students training to become teachers of English, particularly in terms of the tension between validity and reliability.
  2. Check your answer: What are the problems of assessing communication in a second language?
    Clues: administrative factors; the nature of language; behavioural outcomes.

6. Norm-Referenced and Criterion-Referenced Testing

  1. Check your answer: What are norm-referenced tests and criterion-referenced tests?
    Clue: describe the usual purposes for which norm-referenced tests such as IQ tests have been used, for example the 11-plus examination.

7. Reliability and Validity

  1. Check your answer: What is test reliability? What aspects of reliability are most important for the teacher or tester?
    Clue: explain the concept of measuring with a 'tape measure' rather than a 'piece of elastic'.
  2. Check your answer: How can the reliability of a test be established? What can be done about the findings?
    Clue: justify the use of objective formats rather than simply asking a student's teacher how good he or she is.
  3. Check your answer: What is test validity? What aspects of validity are most important for the teacher or tester?
    Clue: 'face validity' means that 'the test looks good'. What does 'content validity' mean?
  4. Check your answer: How can the validity of a test be established? What can be done about the findings?
    Clue: why does the validity of an educational body's tests depend on careful work earlier in the process, particularly in syllabus design, content specification and the definition of aims?

See detailed examples of my own attempts to calculate validity in relation to the following test types: