TESTING: PRINCIPLES AND TECHNIQUES

1. TESTING: PRINCIPLES AND TECHNIQUES

2. Testing: Principles and Techniques • Tests are “inappropriate, mysterious, unreal, subjective, and unstructured.” • Certain basic questions need to be answered before applying any tests • What is my purpose in testing? • How is the test related to the objectives of this course? • What do I expect this test to show? • What precisely is being tested by this method of testing? • Am I really testing what my students have been learning? • Am I actually finding out what students know?

3. Why You Are Testing • Many aspects of language study may be tested. • The selection of material for a test and the way this material is to be tested will depend on the purposes and objective of the test and the course. • What are the objectives of this course? • What kinds of competencies do I want these students to be able to demonstrate? • Is the test being given with a special intent? • If the tests are to be effective in grouping or ranking candidates as required, decisions like these must be made before the test is designed. • The following tests can be administered: • Prognostic or aptitude tests • Proficiency Tests • Achievement Tests, or diagnostic tests

4. Aptitude Tests • Are designed to identify students who will have difficulties in learning another language. • They provide a chart of predicted strengths or weaknesses which may serve as a guide in determining students’ levels. • Useful for a teacher to help students with particular problems of the students. • Data from these tests can also aid the teacher in identifying underachievers in the foreign language class. • Some researchers has clearly been unsuccessful with many students exposed to it. Therefore, they intended to develop tests that could predict probable success or failure. • Traditionally, Success = general intelligence + achievement in studying the native language. • Paul Pimsleur discovered that these were less important than other measures. He developed a test system called Language Aptitude Battery. • Research into aptitude has been conducted with an aim to determine ability factors in active oral use of communication in a foreign language.

5. Aptitude Tests - MLAT • John Carrol and Stanley Sapon designed a Modern Language Aptitude Test(MLAT) in 1960s based on most important factors in learning a language such as phonetic coding, ability to handle grammar, rote memorization ability: and ability to infer linguistic forms, rules, and patterns from a new content. • These abilities has been test under 5 subtests. • Number Learning – learner to write the appropriate numbers for the numbers dictated. • Phonetic Script – learns the phonetic symbols of the English sounds looking at the script after hearing the word. • Spelling clues – learns had to recognize the word. For example, mblm for emblem, knfrns for conferences • Words in sentences – learner is expected to detect the function of the words in a sentence and identify the words with same function in other sentences. • Paired Associates - students select the English equivalents of the words in their language.