TESTS CHARACTERISTICS

Nombre de la alumna: Oriana Acosta

Nombre del profesor: Luis Silvester

Asignatura: Didáctica del Inglés I

Carrera: Profesorado de Inglés

Curso: Tercer año

Villa María

2020
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Tests Characteristics

1. Why good tests should be valid? What is the meaning of validity?

A good test should be valid because in this way, is does what it says it will. In other

words, if we say that a certain test is a good measure of a student’s reading ability, then

we need to be able to show that this is the case.

A test is valid if:

- It tests what it is supposed to test.

- It produces similar results to some other measure – that is if we can show that

Test A gives us the same kind of results as Test B.

- A test is only valid if there is validity in the way it is marked.

2. Why good tests should be reliable? What does reliability mean?

A good test should have marking reliability and give consistent results. Not only

should it be fairly easy to mark, but everyone marking it should come up with the same

result as someone else.

In practice, reliability is enhanced by marking the test instructions absolutely clear,

restricting the scope for variety in the answers and making sure that test conditions

remain constant.

3. What is the meaning of washback effect?

Tests have a marked washback/backwash effect, whether they are public exams or

institution-designed progress or achievement tests. The washback effect occurs when

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teachers see the form the test their students are going to take and then, as a result, start

teaching for the test.

The washback effect has a negative effect on teaching if the test fails to mirror our

teaching because then we will be tempted to make our teaching fit the test, rather than

the other way round.

4. What are direct test items? Name some examples.

A test item is direct if it asks candidates to perform the communicative skill which is

being tested. This test item tries to be as much like real-life language use as possible.

For direct test items to achieve validity and to be reliable, test designers need to do

the following:

- Create a ‘level playing field’: in the case of a written test, teachers and

candidates would almost certainly complain about an essay question, for

example, or provide clear instructions and guidelines to ensuring that all

candidates have the same chance of success.

- Replicate real-life interaction: in real life when people speak or write, they

generally do so with some real purpose. More modern test writers now include

tasks which attempt to replicate features of real life. Tests of reading and

listening should also, as far as possible, reflect real life. This means that tests

should be as realistic as possible, even where they are not authentic.

5. What are indirect test items? Name some examples.

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Indirect test items try to measure a student’s knowledge and ability by getting at

what lies beneath their receptive and productive skills. This test item tries to find out

about a student’s language knowledge through more controlled items.

There is a wide range of indirect test possibilities:

- Multiple-choice questions: These ones were considered to be ideal test

instruments for measuring students’ knowledge of grammar and vocabulary.

MCQs are still widely used, but though they score highly in terms of practicality

and scorer reliability, their validity and overall reliability are suspect.

- Cloze procedures: These ones seem to offer us the ideal indirect but integrative

testing item. They can be prepared quickly and, if the claims made for them are

true, they are an extremely cost-effective way of finding out about a teste’s

overall knowledge.

- Transformation and paraphrase: a common test item ask candidates to re-

write sentences in a slightly form, retaining the exact meaning of the original.

- Sentence re-ordering: getting students to put words in the right order to make

appropriate sentences tells us quite a lot about their underlying knowledge of

syntax and lexico-grammatical elements.

- There are many other indirect techniques, too, including sentence fill-ins,

choosing the correct tense of verbs in sentences and passages, finding errors

in sentences, and choosing the correct form of a word. All of these offer items

which are quick and efficient to score and which aim to tell us something about

a student’s underlying knowledge.

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6. What are the differences between discrete point testing and integrative testing?

Whereas discrete-point testing only tests one thing at a time (such as asking

students to choose the correct tense of a verb), integrative test items expect students to

use a variety of language at any one given time – as they will have to do when writing a

composition or doing a conversational oral test.