TESTING,ASSESSING, AND TEACHING

TESTING,ASSESSING, AND TEACHING

1. What is a Text?

   • is a method of measuring a person, ability, knowledge, or performance in a given domain.
     • METHOD
       • It is an instrument-a set of techniques, procedures, or itemsthat requires performance on the part of the test-taker.
     • MEASURE
       • Some tests measure general ability, while others focus on very specific competencies or objectives.
     • INDIVIDUAL´S ABILITY, KNOWLEDGE, OR PERFORMANCE
       • A test measures performance, but the results imply the test-taker's ability, or, to use a concept common in the field of linguistics, "competence".

2. Assesment and Teaching

   • Testing
     • 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.
       • subset of assessment
         • useful devices
           • Norm-Referenced and Criterion-Referenced Tests
             • Norm-Referenced Tests. The purpose in such tests is to place test-takers along a mathematical continuum in rank order. Scores are usually reported back to the test-taker in the form of a numerical score
               • Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT)
                 • Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL)
             • Criterion-referenced tests, on the other hand, are designed to give test-takers . feedback" usually in, th~ form of grades, on specific course or lesson objectives. Classroom tests involving the students in only one class, and connected to a curriculum, are typical ofcriterion-referenced testing
   • Assessing
     • is an ongoing process that encompasses a much wider domain.. Whenever a student responds to a question, offers a comment, or tries out a new word or structure, the teacher subconsciously makes an assessment of the student's performance.
       • For optimal learning to take place, students in the classroom must have the freedom to experiment, to try out their own hypotheses about language without feeling that their overall competence is being judged in terms of those trials and errors.
         • 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 ofskills and knowledge. They are systematic, planned sampling techniques constructed to give teacher and student an appraisal of student ackievement.
         • Formative and Summative Assessment
           • formative assessment: 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. A summation of what a student has leamedimplies looking back and taking stock of how well that student has accomplished objectives, but does not necessarily point the way to future progress.
   • Teaching
     • sets up the practice games of language learning: the opportuni.ties for learners to listen, think, take risks, set goals, and process feedback from "the coach" and then recycle through the skills that they are trying to master.

3. Approaches to Language testing: A brief History

   • In the· 1950s, an era of behaviorism and special attention to contrastive analysis
     • Testing focused on specific language elements such as the phonoiogical, grammatical, and lexical contrasts between two languages.
   • In the 1970s and 1980s
     • Communicative theories of language brought with them a more integrative view of testing in which specialists claimed that "the whole of the communicative event was considerably greater than the sum of its linguistic elements" (Clark, 1983, p. 432).
       • Discrete-Point and Integrative Testing
         • Discrete-point tests are constructed on the assumption thatmlanguage 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 (discrete points} of phonology/graphology, morphology, lexicon, syntax, and discourse. It was claimed that an overall language proficiency test, then, should sample all four skills and as many linguistic discrete points as possible.
         • Integrative text
           • cloze tests and dictations.
             • A cloze test is a reading passage (perhaps 150 to 300 words)'1ii which roughly every sixth or seventh word has been deleted; the test-taker is required to supply words that fit into those blanks.
             • Dictation is a familiar language-teaching technique that evolved into a testing technique. Essentially, 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. The listening. portion usually has three stages: an oral reading without pauses; an oral reading with long pauses between every phrase (to give the learner time to write down what is heard); and a third reading at normal speed to give test-takers a chance to check what they wrote.
   • Today, test designers are still challenged in their quest for more authentiC, valid instruments that simul~te real-J world interaction.

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