Education of the republic of uzbekistan termez state university foreign philology faculty

Designing Good Tests: Principles into Practice
Testing goes on in almost every educational institution in the world, and is familiar to both teachers and students. “On Thursday we’ll have a vocabulary test”. “I want to get good marks in the end-of-year exams”.
Despite this, teacher training programs often pay very little attention to the role, purpose, and nature of testing in the classroom. As a result, many teachers feel insecure about the principles and practice of testing, and so they put together tests based on what they have always done – or just use tests from published sources.
For example, what is testing? Is it the same as assessment)? Why do we test? To help the students or to frighten them? Is it a carrot or a stick? How is a test made? What are the different forms a test might take? What are the different focuses a language test might have? And most importantly, of course, how can we design better tests in our own context and for our own purposes?
These are some of the areas we will be looking at in my webinar on 31st January. Please come and join me, to meet colleagues from all over the world online, and to have a chance to share ideas and insights about testing.
After the webinar on this topic that I gave earlier this month, there were a lot of questions that I didn’t have time to answer online. So here are some quick thoughts on some of them.
Can the selected response task test both elements of language and communicative skills?
A multiple-choice test can be a good way of finding out what students know. But finding out what students can do is rather more difficult. If you are thinking of communicative skills in terms of production (speaking and writing), I think you have to see how well they can actually speak or write. And you can’t do that with multiple choice.
How about testing reading skills in the student’s own language?
I think this is a really interesting idea. If you want to find out how well students have understood a reading text, ask them some questions on the text and let them answer the questions in their own language. After all, it is their reading you are interested in assessing, not (in this case) their writing in English. But there are problems. What do you do if you have a class with ten or twenty different “own languages” which you do not speak? And will you be able to persuade parents and the school authorities that this is a good idea?
Can we use a mix of both selected and created responses in the same reading, for example?
In principle there is no problem with this. But you need to ask yourself ‘why’? Why am I using a selected response here, why am I using a created response there? If you have good answers to these ‘why?’ questions, by all means mix the formats.
When a student has only two options – A or B, does that stop them analyzing the question/ choices at all?
This is an interesting question about all multiple choice questions – not just A / B (True / False) questions. Some students find the answer to the question in the way you would like them to – by reading the question carefully and thinking about the right choice; others try to “outsmart” the teacher (the answer to the last three questions was A so this one must be B); others just guess without bothering to think at all. There are some advantages to multiple choice questions (as we discussed in the webinar) but this is a big disadvantage.
What should we focus on in a speaking test?
That depends what you want to find out!! Do you want to test spoken production (how well the student can give a mini-presentation or a little talk about something – a monologue) or spoken interaction (how well the student can take part in a conversation). In judging what the student says, you might want to focus on areas like ‘communication’ (does the student get his / her message across?); ‘accuracy’ (is the language the student uses accurate and correct?); ‘range’ (is the student able to draw on a good range of vocabulary and grammar?). The important thing is not to turn a speaking test into a form of grammar test, penalizing the student for each and every grammar mistake and not looking at other aspects of his/her performance.
As we know, nowadays the innovation has generated the extensive preparatory work at schools. Educational institutions have been provided with teachers. An extensive work has been carried out to advance teachers’ skills and train them to work with first-graders.
Teaching of certain subjects in foreign languages in higher education institutions is another this year’s innovation. They are mostly technical subjects and international disciplines. Experts believe that this approach will further help the graduates to communicate with foreign colleagues, to read and analyze foreign editions. As today, teaching and learning foreign languages are very important we have known that everybody who teaches, must know how to assess and evaluate his/her pupils or students.
Assessment is the process of gathering information on student learning.
Evaluation is the process of analyzing, reflecting upon, and summarizing assessment information, and making judgements and decisions based on the information collected. When we talk about assessing and evaluation process just we think about testing or taking a test or the ways of testing and also its advantages and disadvantages.
A test may be defined as an activity whose main purpose is to convey (usually to the tester) how well the testee knows or can do something. This is in contrast to practice, whose main purpose is sheer learning. Learning may of course, result from a test, just as feedback on knowledge may be one of the spin-offs of a practice activity: the distinction is in the main goal.
It is often conventionally assumed that tests are mostly used for assessment:
the test gives a score which is assumed to define the level of knowledge of the testee. This may be in order to decide whether he or she is suitable for a certain job or admission to an institution, has passed a course, can enter a certain class. But in fact testing and assessment overlap only partially: there are other ways of assessing students (an overview of assignments over a long period, for example, or the teacher’s opinion, or self-evaluation) and there are certainly other reasons for testing.
As a teacher we should know how to design our own test. This should be for a learner population we know: a class we, as a new teacher or as an experienced, teach or have taught, or the kind of class we have in the past been a member of ourselves. Ideally, of course, the test should be one that can be integrated into our own teaching program with our own class, and that you will have a chance to administer in practice.
The material to be tested should, similarly be part of a syllabus and teaching program we are familiar with: perhaps a section of a course book, or certain elements of a set curriculum.
As a new teacher or even experienced we have to know how to design a test or testee. Below we have tried to analyze some designing ways of test. We’ve opened the essence of designing a test according to some stages:
Stage: Preparation
Prepare your test. It is a good idea to list in writing all the material that you want your test to cover: you can then refer back to the list during and after the test-writing to see if you have included all you intended.
Stage: Performance
If possible, administer your test to a class of learners; if not, ask colleagues to try doing it themselves.
Stage: Feedback
Look at how your test was done, and ask the testee and how they felt about it.
So, we have use the period leading up to the test in order to do all we can to ensure that my students will succeed in it. Thus, the tests are announced at least a week in advance in order to give them plenty of time to prepare and details are given of when, where and how long the test will be. The class is also told as precisely as possible what material is to be tested, what sort of items will be used, and how answers will be assessed.