formative assessment

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Two questıons to ponder:

1. The effect of a test on teaching or learning is known as washback [or backwash in testing in the USA]. [Alderson and Wall, 1993: 17]

The backwash hypothesis seems to assume that teachers and learners do things they would not necessarily otherwise do because of the test.

In their article [Does Backwash Exist], Alderson and Wall question whether testing does have as powerful an effect on teaching as has previously been assumed.

What is your view on this?

2. Baker [1989] has a section in his book entitled The Pass Mark Problem: Is Norm-Referencing Wicked?

When you set a class a test, how do you decide what the pass mark is going to be?

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