TESTING, ASSESSING, and TEACHING

1.Definition of A Test
A Test is a method of measuring a person’s ability, knowledge, or performance in a given domain.

2.Assessment and Teaching
The difference between test and assessment:
•Tests are prepared administrative procedures that occur at identifiable times in a curriculum when learners muster all their faculties to offer peak performance, knowing that their responses are being measured and evaluated.
•Assessment is an ongoing process that encompasses a much wider domain. Teaching sets up the practice of language learning.

3.Informal and Formal Assessment
•Informal assessment can take a number of forms, starting with incidental, unplanned comments and responses, along with coaching and other impromptu feedback to the student.
•Formal assessments are exercises or procedures specifically designed to tap into a storehouse of skills and knowledge. They are systematic, planned sampling techniques constructed to give teacher and student an appraisal or student achievement.

4.Formative and Summative Assessment
•Formative assessment is evaluating students in the process of “forming” their competencies and skills with the goal of helping them to continue that growth process.
•Summative assessment aims to measure, or summarize, what a student has grasped, and typically occurs at the end of a course or unit of instruction.

5.Norm-Referenced and Criterion-Referenced Test.
•Norm-Referenced Test: each test-taker’s score is interpreted in relation to a mean (average score), median (middle score), standard deviation (extent of variance in scores), and/or percentile rank.
•Criterion-Referenced Tests: are designed to give test takers’ feedback, usually in the form of grades, on specific course or lesson objectives.

6.Discrete-Point and Integrative Testing
a.Discrete-Point Tests are constructed on the assumption that language can be broken down into its component parts and that those parts can be tested successfully. These components are the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing and various units of language.

b.Integrative Test: Two types of tests claimed to be examples of integrative tests. They are cloze test and dictation.
•Cloze Test is a reading passage (150 to 300 words) in which roughly every sixth or seventh word has been deleted; the test taker is required to supply words that fit into those blanks.
•Dictation: learners listen to a passage of 100 to 150 words read aloud by an administrator (or audiotape) and write what they hear, using correct spelling.

7.Computer-Based Testing.
Computer-based testing offers these advantages:
•Classroom-based testing
•Self-directed testing on various aspects of a language
•Practice for upcoming high-stakes standardized tests.
•Some individualization
•Administered easily to thousands of test-takers.

Computer-based testing also has disadvantages:
•Lack of security
•Occasional “home-ground” quizzes that appear on unofficial websites may be mistaken for validated assessment.
•Potential for flawed item design (multiple –choice format)
•Open-ended responses are less likely to appear
•The human interactive element (especially in oral production) is absent

(Source: H. Douglas Brown, 2004)