CHAPTER 3 : Designing
classroom language tests
TEST TYPES
The first task you will
face in designing a test for your students is to determine the purpose for the
test. Defining your purpose will help you choose the right kind of test, and it
will also help you to focus on the specific objectives of the test. We will
look first at two test types that you will probably not have many opportunities
to create as a classroom teacher-language aptitude tests and language
proficiency tests and three types that you will almost certainly need to
create-placement tests, diagnostic tests, and achievement tests,
1.
Language
Aptitude Tests
One
t e type of test-although admittedly not a very common one-predicts a person's
success prior to exposure to the second language. A language aptitude test is
designed to measure capacity or general ability to learn a foreign language and
ulti mate success in that undertaking Language aptitude tests are ostensibly
designed to apply to the classroom learning of any language. Two standardized
aptitude tests have been used in the United States: the Modern Language
Aptitude Test (MLAD (Carroll & Sapon, 1958) and the Pasteur Language
Aptitude Battery (PLAB) (Pimsleur, 1966). Both are English language tests and
require students to perform a number of language-related tasks. The MLAT for
example, consists of five different tasks.
2.
Proficiency
tests
A
proficiency test is not limited to any one course, curriculum, or single skill
in the language; rather, it tests overall ability. Proficiency test have
traditionally consisted of standardized multiple choice items in grammar,
vocabulary, reading comprehension, and aural comprehension. A typical example
of a standardized proficiency test is the Test of English as a Foreign Language
(TOEFL") produced by the Educational Testing Service. The TOEFL is used by
more than a thousand institutions of higher education in the United States as
an indicator of a prospective student's ability to undertake academic work in
an English-speaking milicu, The TOEFL consists of sections on listening
comprehension, Structure (or grammatical accuracy).reading comprehension, and
written expression.
3.
Placement
tests
Certain proficiency tests can act in
the role of placement tests, the purpose of which is to place a student into a
particular level or section of a language curriculum or school. A placement
test usually, but not always, includes a sampling of the material to be covered
in the various courses in a curriculum; a student's performance on the test
should indicate the point at which the student will find material 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
responses, selection (e.g., multiple-choice) and gap-filling formats.
4.
Diagnostic
tests
A diagnostic test is
designed to diagnose specified aspects of a language. A test in pronunciation,
for example, might diagnose the phonological features of English that are
difficult for learners and should therefore become part of a curriculum 
Usually. such tests
offer a checklist of features for the administrator (often the teacher) to use
in pinpointing difficulties. A writing diagnostic would elicit a writing sample
from students that would allow the teacher to identify those rhetorical and
linguistic features on which the course needed to focus special attention.
Usually. such tests
offer a checklist of features for the administrator (often the teacher) to use
in pinpointing difficulties. A writing diagnostic would elicit a writing sample
from students that would allow the teacher to identify those rhetorical and
linguistic features on which the course needed to focus special attention.
5.
Achievement
tests
An achievement test is
related directly to classroom lessons, units, or even a total curriculum.
Achievement tests are (or should be) limited to particular material addressed
in a curriculum within a particular time frame and are offered after a course
has focused on the objectives in question- Achievement tests can also serve the
diagnostic role of indicating what a student needs to continue to work on in
the future, but the primary role of an achievement test is to determine whether
course objectives have been met—and appropriate knowledge and skills
acquired—by the end of a period of instruction. Achievement tests are often
summative because they are administered at the end of a unit or term of study.
They also play an important formative role. An effective achievement test will
offer washback about the quality of a learner's performance in subsets of the unit
or course. This washback contributes to the formative nature of such tests.
SOME PRACTICAL STEPS TO TEST CONSTRUCTION
1. Assessing Clear, Unambiguous Objectives
In
addition to knowing the purpose of the test you're creating, you need to know
as specifically as possible what it is you want to test. Sometimes teachers
give tests simply because it's Friday of the third week of the course, and
after hasty glances at the chapter(s) covered during those three weeks, they
dash off some test items so that students will have something to do during the
class. This is no way to approach a test. Instead, begin by taking a careful
look at everything that you think your students should "know" or be
able to "do." based on the material that the students are responsible
for. In other words, examine the objectives for the unit you are testing.
2. Drawing Up Test Specifications
Test
specifications for classroom use can be a simple and practical outline of your
test. (a) a broad outline of the test, (b) what skills you will test, and (c)
what the items will look like. Let's look at the first two in relation to the
midterm unit assessment already referred to above. (a) Outline of the test and
(b) skills to be included. Because of the constraints of your curriculum, your
unit test must take no more than 30 minutes. This is an integrated curriculum.
so you need to test all four skills. Since you have the luxury of teaching a
small class (only 12 students!), you decide to include an oral production
component in the preceding period (taking students one by one into a separate
room while the rest of the class reviews the unit individually and completes
workbook exercises). You can therefore test oral production objectives directly
at that time. You determine that the 30-minute test will be divided equally in
time among listening, reading. and writing. 
(c)
Item types and tasks. The next and potentially more complex choices involve the
item types and tasks to use in this test. It is surprising that there are a
limited number of modes of eliciting responses (that is, prompting) and of
responding on tests of any kind. Consider the options: the test prompt can be
oral (student listens) or written (student reads), and the student can respond
orally or in writing.
(c)
Item types and tasks. The next and potentially more complex choices involve the
item types and tasks to use in this test. It is surprising that there are a
limited number of modes of eliciting responses (that is, prompting) and of
responding on tests of any kind. Consider the options: the test prompt can be
oral (student listens) or written (student reads), and the student can respond
orally or in writing.
3. Devising Test Tasks
Ideally,
you would try out all your tests on students not in your class before actually
administering the tests. But in our daily classroom teaching, the tryout phase
is almost impossible. Alternatively, you could enlist the aid of a colleague to
look over your test. And so you must do what you can to bring to your students
an instrument that is, to the best of your ability, practical and reliable.
In
the final revision of your test. imagine that you are a student taking the
test. Go through each set of directions and al] items slowly and deliberately.
Time yourself. (Often we underestimate the time students will need to complete
a test.) If the test should be shortened or lengthened. make the necessary
adjustments. Make sure your test is neat and uncluttered on the page,
reflecting all the care and precision you have put into its construction. If
there is an audio component, as there is in our hypothetical test, make sure
that the script is clear, that your voice and any other voices are clear, and
that the audio equipment is in working order before starting the test.
4.
Designing
Multiple-Choice Test Items
Multiple-choice
items, which may appear to be the simplest kind of item to construct, are
extremely difficult to design correctly. cautions against a
number of weaknesses of multiple-choice items:
• The
technique tests only recognition knowledge.
• Guessing
may have a considerable effect on test scores.
• The
technique severely restricts what can be tested,
• It
is very difficult to write successful items.
• Washback
may be harmful.
• Cheating
may be facilitated.
multiple-choice
items offer overworked teachers the tempting possibility of an easy and
consistent process of scoring and grading But is the preparation phase worth
the effort? Sometimes it is, but you might spend even more time designing such
items than you save in grading the test. Of course, if your objective is to
design a large-scale standardized test for repeated administrations, then a
multiple-choice format does indeed become viable. First, a primer on
terminology.
1) Multiple-choice
items are all receptive, or selective, response items in that the test-taker
chooses from a set of responses (commonly called a supply type of response)
rather than creating a response. Other receptive item types include true-false
questions and matching lists. (In the discussion here, the guidelines apply
primarily to multiple-choice item types and not necessarily to other receptive
types.)
2) Every
multiple-choice item has a stem, which presents a stimulus. and several
(usually between three and five) options or alternatives to choose from.
3) One
of those options, the key, is the correct response, while the others serve as
distractors
SCORING, GRADING, AND GIVING
FEEDBACK
1. Scoring
As you design a classroom test, you
must consider how the test will be scored and graded. Your scoring plan
reflects the relative weight that you place on each section and items in each
section. The integrated-skills class that we have been using as an example
focuses on listening and speaking skills with some attention to reading and
writing. Three of your nine objectives target reading and writing skills.
Because oral production is a driving
force in your overall objectives, you decide to place more weight on the
speaking (oral interview) section than on the other three sections. Five
minutes is actually a long time to spend in a one-on-one situation with a
student, and some significant information can be extracted from such a session.
You therefore designate 40 percent of the grade to the oral interview. You
consider the listening and reading sections to be equally important, but each
of them, especially in this multiple-choice format, is of less consequence than
the oral interview. So you give each of them a 20 percent weight. That leaves
20 percent for the writing section, which seems about right to you given the
time and focus on writing in this unit of the course.
2.
Grading
Your
first thought might be that assigning grades to student performance on this
test would be easy. just give an "A" for 90-100 percent, a
"B" for 80-89 percent, and so on. Not so fast! Grading is such a
thorny issue that all of Chapter 11 is devoted to the topie How you assign
letter grades to this test is a product of
• the
country, culture. and context of this English classroom,
• institutional
expectations (most of them unwritten),
• explicit
and implicit definitions of grades that you have set forth.
• the
relationship you have established with this class, and
• student
expectations that have been engendered in previous tests and quizzes in this
class.
3.
Giving feedback
A section on scoring and grading would not be
complete without some consideration of the forms in which you will offer
feedback to your students, feedback that you want to become beneficial
washback. In the example test that we have been referring to here—which is not
unusual in the universe of possible formats for periodic.
Brown, H. Douglas. 2004 . language assessment: princple and classroom practices. New York: Pearson Education.
