- Alderson J C & Hughes A [Eds] [1991] Language Testing in the 1990s [Basingstoke: Macmillan]
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Easier said than done. A test writer has very few friends and often finds that it is impossible to do the job to everyone’s satisfaction.
But it is clear that it is imperative for test writers to be very clear in their own minds what it is that they want to test and what the purpose of the test is. Too often, teachers decide that they will write a test for their learners, so they sit down and begin writing it, stopping when they feel the test is sufficiently long. Read the rest of this entry »
It is useful to view testing from a historical perspective for two reasons:
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?
These are crucial aspects of testing. There is perhaps a constant dynamic tension and balance between validity and reliability. Validity is perhaps the central quality. Reliability is a necessary but not sufficient condition for validity: valid tests are necessarily reliable, but reliable tests are not necessarily valid.
Having established the purpose of a test (see the post: Types of test - why are we testing?), other factors will then affect the general approach. Whereas in the past the focus was almost exclusively on the techniques of testing, how to test, the main issues and concerns in testing today are much more to do with what we want to test. Read the rest of this entry »
Fundamental to any discussion of testing is the purpose of the test. If you don’t know why you are testing, then you probably shouldn’t be testing in the first place. The appropriateness of a test in any given context will depend to a large extent on the reason the test is being given and the uses to which the test results may be put.
Traditionally, we recognize five types of test [although the precise labels may vary from one tester to another]. Read the rest of this entry »
Think back to your own experience as a language learner and ponder these questions: Read the rest of this entry »
I am happy to offer, as an Open Source project, the Babel Placement Test. You may use the test for whatever you like, you may alter it, edit it and even burn it if you like, see: creativecommons.org -Attribution-Share Alike 3.0.
The Babel English Language Placement Test was closely based on the Nelson Quickcheck Placement Tests. These have generally been used for base-line language assessment of company employees in order to benchmark their language level against an established external reference [the ALTE and CEF levels]. They have been used at Liverpool City Council, A4E Language and Basic Skills Training, Kuwait Petroleum Corporation and subsidiaries, Chevron Texaco, Liverpool and Everton Football Teams, IdioMaster (Spain), and Liverpool Language Academy. The testing cycle should require no more than 70 minutes of trainee time and does not require any specialist testers to administer it. Read the rest of this entry »
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