Teacher Training

Ameen S Al Wazzn

A How testing helps students learning English?

Tests can help create positive attitudes towards about language among your students. Tests help students to master the language.

B- How testing helps teachers of English?

It helps teachers to answer the following questions:

Have I been effective in my teaching? Are my lessons on the right level? Am I teaching some skills effectively but others less effectively? What areas do we need more work on? Which points need reviewing? Should I spend more or less time on this material with next year students?

Purposes of Language Testing or Assessment

These tests are used to determine the learners potential, talent or capacity for learning languages. Aptitude tests do not test ones skill in a particular language, rather they are intended to assess the persons ability to learn any language.

Such tests usually involve assessing potentially bilingual children in both languages they have been exposed to, in order to see which is the stronger (dominant) language for purposes of instruction.

These tests involve testing the overall language use in a variety of circumstances involving all four language skills and all levels of language. The difficulty in designing these tests is in selecting stimulus materials and tasks that will allow us to elicit an appropriate sample of the language to evaluate such a broad construct fairly. Hence, proficiency tests are not meant to be tied to any particular curriculum.

An admission test is intended to provide information about whether a candidate is likely to succeed in a particular program. These tests are sometimes referred to as Screening Tests.

These are intended to define students language skills relative to the levels of a particular program they are about to join.

Such tests are designed to identify the subjects strengths and weaknesses. Diagnostic tests are very closely related to the syllabus of a specific class; so that a teacher can decide precisely how to gear the instruction to be most appropriate for students in the class.

Tests or quizzes that are used as a part of an ongoing assessment procedure during the course of instruction are referred to as

progress tests.

These tests are meant to assess each students achievement based on the objectives of a particular course. Achievement tests are usually administered at the end of a course.

Diagnostic tests Placement tests Screening tests

progress tests

progress tests

Achievement & Proficiency tests

Needs Analysis

Curriculum development

Unit development

Lesson development

Program evaluation

learner training

materials

W O R K S H O P

Methods of Language Assessment

Test construct. The scoring system.

Direct Vs. Indirect Testing. Norm-referenced Vs. Criterion-referenced. Discrete point Vs. integrative Testing. Objective Vs. Subjective Testing.

Direct tests are tests in which the learners responses involve actually doing the skill being assessed.

She quickly .. her lunch.

a- drank b- ate c- drove d- slept

Indirect tests are defined as the procedures designed to assess the enabling skills underpinning the macro skills.

Assessing the grammatical ability through composition writing.

These two terms have to do with how test scores are interpreted. In norm-referenced tests, scores are based into a comparison of the test takers to one another.

In criterion-referenced testing, a given score is interpreted relative to a pre-set goal or objective ( the criterion ) , rather than to the performance of other test takers.

In discrete-point testing, each item on a test is intended to measure one and only one linguistic element, such as a preposition or a vocabulary item.

Extract means: a- take out b- find out c- look out d- put out

Integrative testing tests a combination of many language abilities altogether. A good example of integrative testing can be the cloze test ( a reading test in which random words have been omitted).

These two concepts have to do with the scoring system. An objective item is one for which there is a specific correct response.
Multiple-choice items are good examples of objective tests.

Subjective tests have the advantage of measuring the language skills naturally, almost the way English is used in real life. However, many teachers are not able to score such tests quickly and consistently. Essay writing can be used as a clear example for subjective tests.

subjective
Essay Shortresponse Multiplechoice

objective

Ameen S Al Wazzan