DEFINING ABILITIES TO BE ASSESSED

- You need to know as specifically as possible what you want to test. You should begin by carefully
reviewing everything you think your students should know or be able to do, which is based on
the material the students are responsible for at that point in the curriculum. In other words, you
have to define the abilities you intend to assess.
- Remember that every curriculum should have appropriately framed, so assessable constructs
should be stated in terms of performance by students. Therefore, your first task in designing a
test is to determine the abilities that you want students to demonstrate.

DRAWING UP TEST SPECIFICATIONS

- Test specifications or specs for classroom can be used as an outline of your test.
- To design or evaluate a test, you must make sure that the test has a structure that logically
follows from the unit or lesson it tests. The class objectives should also be present in the test
through a variety of appropriate task types and weights and a logical sequence.
- For classroom purposes, the specs are your guiding plan for designing an instrument that
effectively fulfills your desired principles.
- For Grammar Unit Test: 4 sequential steps:
+ a broad outline of how the test will be organized
+ which of 8 subskills you will test
+ what the various tasks and item types will be
+ how results will be scored, reported to students and used in the future classes.
- For Midterm Essay: Midterm essay specs:

+ provide clear directions

+ write a prompt for either a narrative or a descriptive essay

+ the prompt must be on a familiar topic

+ assign an expectation of a full page, handwritten, and so on

+ give time limit

+ include evaluation criteria: content, organization, grammar,..

+ the final grade is to include sub scores.