Assignment 5

Summary Designing Clasroom Language Tests

A. TEST TYPES

1. Language Aptitude Tests
One type of test-although admittedly not a very common one-predicts a person's success prior 'to exposure to the second language. A language aptitude test is designed to measure capacity or general ability to learn a foreign language and ulti￾mate success in that undertaking. Language aptitude tests are ostensibly designed to apply to the classroom learning of any language.

2. Proficiency Tests  A proficiency test is not limited to anyone course, curriculwn, or single skill in the language; rather, it tests overall ability. ProfiCiency tests have traditionally consisted of standardized multiple-choice items on grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension, and aural comprehension. A typical example of a standardized proficiency test is the Test of English as a Foreign Language (fOEFL produced by the Educational Testing Service.

3. Placement Tests  Certain proficiency tests can act in the role of placement tests, the purpose of which is to place a student into a particular level or section of a language curriculum or school. A placement test usually, but not always, includes a sampling of the material to be covered in the various courses in a curriculum; a student's performance on the test should indicate the point at which the student will find material neither too easy nor too difficult but appropriately challenging.
 The English as a Second Language Placement Test (ESLP1) at San Francisco State University has three parts. In Part I, students read a short articre and then write a summary essay. In Part II, students write a composition in response to an article. Part III is multiple-choice: students read an essay and identify grammar errors in it. The maximum time allowed for the test is three hours.

4. Diagnostic Tests  A diagnostic test is designed to diagnose specified aspects of a language. A test in pronunciation, for example, might diagnose the phonological features of English that are difficult for learners and should therefore become part of a curriculum. Usually, such tests offer a checklist of features for the administrator (often the teacher) to use in pinpointing difficulties. A writing diagnostic would elicit'a writing sample from students that would allow the teacher to identify those rhetorical and linguistic features on which the course needed to focus special attention.
 
A typical diagnostic test of oral production was created by Clifford Prator (1972) to accompany a manual of English pronunciation. Test-takers are directed to read a ISO-word passage while they are tape-recorded. The test administrator then refers to an. inventory of phonological items for analyzing a learner's production. After multiple listenings, the administrator produces a checklist of errors in five separate categories, each of which has several subcategories. The main' categories include.
• stress and rhythm,
• intonation,
• vowels,
• consonants, and
• other factors.

5. Achievement Tests  An achievement test is related directly to classroom lessons, units, or even a total curriculum. Achievement tests are (or should be) limited to particular material addressed in a curriculum within a particular time frame and are offered after a course haS focused on the objectives in question
Achievement tests are often summative because they are administered at the end of a unit dr term of study. They also play an important formative role. An effec￾tive achievenlent test will offer washback about the quality of a learner's perfor￾mance in subsets of the unit or course. This washback contributes to the formative nature of such tests.
The specifications for an achievement test should be determined by
• the objectives of the lesson, unit, or course being assessed,
• the relative importance (or 'weight) assigned to each objective,
• the tasks employed in classroom lessons during the unit of time,
• practicality issues, such as the tinle frame for the test and turnaround time, and
• the extent to which the test structure lends itself to formative washback.

B. SOME PRACTICAL STEPS TO TEST CONSTRUCTION

1. Assessing Clear, Unambiguous Objectives
In addition to knowing the purpose of the test you're creating, you need to know as specifically as possible what it is you want to test.

2. Drawing Up Test Specifications
Test specifications for classroom use can be a simple and practical outline of your test.

3. Devising Test Tasks
You begin and end with nonscored items (wann-up and wind down) designed to set students at ease, and then sandwich between them items intended to test the objective (level cbeck) and a little beyond (Probe).

4. Designing Multipie-Choice Test Items
In the sample achievement test above, two of the five components (both of the lis￾tening sections) specified a multiple-choice format for items. Multiple-choice items, which may appear to be the Simplest kind of item to construct, are extremely difficult to design correctly. Hughes (2003, pp. 76-78) cau￾tions against a number of weaknesses of multiple-choice items:
• The technique tests only recognition knowledge.
• Guessing may have a considerabIe effect on test scores.
• The technique severely restrict what can be tested.
• It is very difficult to write successful items.
• Washback may be harmful.
• Cheating may be facilitated.

The two prinCiples that stand out in support of multiple-choice formats are, of course, practicality and reliability.
Since there will be occasions when multiple-choice items are appropriate, con￾sider the following four guidelines for designing multiple-choice items for classroom-based and large-scale situations (adapted from Gronlund, 1998, pp.60-75, and]. D. Brown, 1996, pp. 54-57).
• Design each item to measure a specific objective.
• State both stem and options as simply and directly as possible.
• Make certain that the intended answer is clearly the only correct one.
• Use item indices to accept, discard, or revise items

C. SCORING, GRADING, AND GIVING FEEDBACK

1. Scoring
As you design a classroom test, you must consider how the test will be scored and graded. Your scoring plan reflects the relative weight that you place on each section and items in each section. The integrated-skills class that we have been using as an example focuses on listening and speaking skills with some attention to reading and writing.

2. Grading  Your first thought might be that assigning grades to student performance on this test would be easy: just give an "A" for 90-100 percent, a "B" for 80-89 percent, and, so on.

3. Giving Feedback  A section on scoring and grading would not be complete without some considera￾tion of the forms in which you will offer feedback to your students, feedback that you want to become beneficial washback. Washback is achieved when students can, through the testing experience, identify their areas of success and challenge.

References:
Brown, H. Douglas. 2004. Language Assessment: Principle and Classroom Practices. New York: Pearson Education

Fourth Assignment

Summary Principles of Language Assessment

PRACTICALITY
And effective test is practical. This means that it
• is not excessively expe.nsive,
• stays within appropriate time constraints,
• is relatively easy to administer, and
• has a scoring/evaluation procedure that is specific and time-efficient.
A test that is prohibitively expensive is impractical. A test of language proficiency that takes a student five hours to complete is impractical-it consumes more time (and money) than necessary to accomplish its objective.

REIlABILITY
A reliable test is consistent and dependable. If you give the same test to the same student or matched students on two different occasions, the test should yield similar results.
The issue of reliability of a test may best be addressed by considering a ·number of factors that may contribute to the unreliability of a test. Consider the following possibilities (adapted from Mousavi, 2002, p. 804): fluctuations in the student, in scoring, in test administration, and in the test itself.

VALIDITY
By-far the most complex criterion of an effective test-and arguably the most important principle-is validity, "the extent to which inferences made from assessment results are appropriate, meaningful and useful in terms of the purpose of the assessment" (Gronlund, 1998, p. 226).
A valid test of reading ability actually measures reading ability not 20/20 vision, nor. previous knowledge ina subject, nor some other variable of questionable relevance. To measure writing ability, one might ask students to write as many words as they can in 15 minutes, then simply count the words for the fmal score.
Such a test would be easy to administer (practical), and the scoring quite dependable (reliable). But it would not constitute a valid test of writing ability without some consideration of comprehensibility, rhetorical discourse elements, and the organization of ideas, among other factors.

AUfHENTICITY
A fourth major principle oflanguage testing is authenticity, a concept that is a little slippery to define, especially within the art and science of evaluating and designing tests. Bachman and Palmer, (1996, p. 23) define authenticity as "the degree of correspondence of the characteristics of a given language test task to the features of a target language task," and then suggest an agenda for identifying those target language tasks and for transforming them into valid test items.

WASHBACK
A facet of consequential validity, discussed above, is "the effect of testing on teaching and learning" (Hughes, 2003, p. 1), otherwise known among language-testing , specialists as washback.  In large-scale assessment, washback generally refers to the effects the tests have on instruction in terms of how students prepare for the test. "Cram" courses and "teaching to the test" are examples of such washback. Anot;l1er form ofwashback that occurs more in classroom assessment is the information thAt "wa,shes back" to students in the form of useful diagnoses of strengths and weaknesses.

Reference
Brown, H. Douglas. 2004. Language Assessment: Principle and Classroom Practice. New York: Pearson Education

Third Assignment

Analysis Validity, Reliability, and Practicality

The test must be valid ie measure what must be measuredd or the extent to which the test measures what is meant to be measured (The higher the validity of the test, the more about the target and the more it shows what should be measured) for me, the questions above are valid, because these questions are able to measure aspects of a person's language. Marked by the number of readings. 

The reliability of the test is reliable, the intention is a test related to the consistency and accuracy of the test. Stability is obtained by means of after some time the subject is tested again with the same test. If you talk about reliability then the National Examination will fall? Why? Facilities in the city and village are different, with the same standard. Then it is certain that the value of students in the city must be higher than those in the village. If in the village the value is the same as the city or even higher then it makes the National Examination not reliable either because of the strange gap. 

The test must be practical. If in the past the National Examination throughout Indonesia used paper and supervision to be brought from the central to all regions in Indonesia by the authorities, then now the government has begun to use a more practical method, saving costs, and certainly safe, and that is a computer-based National Examination, and most schools throughout Indonesia have implemented computer-based National Examination. If there is not yet implemented it, surely the schools are in remote areas, and that is something that the government must not ignore. 

Second Assignment

1).Types  and Objectives of Assessment

Achievement
An achievement test evaluates a learner's understanding of a specific course or study programmed. It can be compared with proficiency tests, which measure a learner's level of language, diagnostic tests, which identify areas learners need to work on, and a prognostic test, which tries to predict a learner's ability to complete a course or take an exam.

Diagnostic
Identify learner’s strengths and weaknesses. Help teacher to make decisions on what needs to be taught.

Placement
Used before the beginning of courses to determine learners' language levels' and based information ‘place' them in the classes most appropriate for them.

Proficiency
A proficiency test measures a learner's level of language. It can be compared with an achievement test, which evaluates a learner's understanding of specific material, a diagnostic test, which identify areas to work on, and a prognostic test, which tries to predict a learner's ability to complete a course or take an exam. Proficiency tests are uncommon within the classroom but very frequent as the end aim (and motivation) of language learning.

Aptitude tests
Aptitude tests are a series of tests aimed at examining a person’s potential or aptitude for a particular purpose. In general, to find out whether someone is suitable for a job, position and others or not.
Types of tests in general such as academic potential tests in the form of numerical reasoning, spatial, verbal, and mechanical, but more varied depending on the needs and objectives of the test.


2). Identify issues in language assessment.
• Behavior
In the middle of 20 century, teaching and testing were influenced by behaviorism. Testing focused sentence structure, translation from L1 to L2, grammar and vocabulary items.
• Integrative
The integrative approach refers to a test that seeks to integrate knowledge of systematic components of language (pronounciation, grammar, vocabulary) with an understanding of contex (McNamara, 2000). In an integrative test language is not viewed in a discrete component and isolated from its context. According to Heaton (1989), the integrative approach does not separate the skills like in discrete tests but requires students to use more than one skill simultaneously.
• Communicative language
Communicative language test is a test of learners’ language performance in meaning/real life situations. The test does not only test the learners’ competence, that is, what the learners know about the language and about how to use it, but also to the performance, that is, to what extent the learners are able to actually demonstrate in a meaningful or real life situations.
• Performance based assessment
Performance based assessment measures student’ ability to apply the skills and knowledge learned from a unit or units of study. Typically, the task challenges students to use their higher-order thinking skills to create a product or complete a process (Chun,2010).


3). Identify hot topics relating to classroom-based assessment.
Gardner groups student capabilities into eight broad categories (each student's unique learning style is a combination of these intelligences):
• Logical/mathematical (uses numbers effectively)
• Visual/spatial (is artistically or spatially perceptive)
• Bodily/kinesthetic (excels at tasks that require physical movement)
• Musical (perceives and/or expresses musical forms and patterns)
• Linguistic (uses words effectively)
• Interpersonal (responds well to others)
• Intrapersonal (is reflective and inner-directed)
• Naturalist (makes distinctions in the natural world)
According to Muller (2008), traditional assessment is an assessment that refers to choosing a response and more to measuring students' memories related to information obtained. This can be done through measurement of multiple-choice tests, cloze tests, true-false tests, matching and the like. Students typically choose an answer or memorize information to complete the assessment.
Authentic assessment is a form of task that requires learners to demonstrate meaningful performance in the real world, which is the application of the essence of knowledge and skills. Authentic assessment emphasizes the ability of learners to demonstrate their knowledge in a tangible and meaningful way. Assessment activities are not just asking or tapping knowledge that has been known to learners, but the real performance of knowledge that has been mastered.
Computer Based Test is a test conducted using a computer. Computer-based test items in the form of multiple choice (objective). For certain conditions, we can use this test to assess students.


Reference
https://educationcloset.com/assessment-strategies/
https://slideplayer.com/slide/700711/63/video/Assessment+types+and+activities.mp4
learners.html&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwiA1a29vfrnAhWWeisKHRujDT4QtwIwAHoECA4QAQ&usg=AOvVaw2D5zmBIUMMCZGOMM5AJDvu
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://singteach.nie.edu.sg/issue59-people02/&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwjpwZS3wPrnAhVLbn0KHX52CK4QFjAJegQICRAB&usg=AOvVaw2jB-T4zf-yW0z-t2BHkNsH