Language Testing

The stages of test development

 What are they?
1 Stating the problems
 What do you want to test and for what purpose?
 What kind of test? (achievement, placement)
 What is the specific purposes?
 What abilities?
 How is the scoring?
 How important is backwash?
 Problems/difficulties you might face (construction,
administration, scoring)
2 Developing test specification
 Some considerations:
 Content (what skills, for whom, what topics, what texts,
what vocabulary range?)
 Structure, timing, medium (how many items, how long,
paper based, computer based?)
 Level of performance (how high the score should be in
order to pass?)
 Scoring procedures
3 Writing and moderating items
 Sampling (of all objectives?)
 Writing items
 Moderating items
4 Trialing / pilot study
 To native speaker?
 To non-native speaker?
5 Analysis of the results of the pilot
study
 Statistical – reliability
 Non-statistical
 Student responses
 Possible misinterpretation
Other steps
 Writing handbooks for test takers, test users, and staff
 Training staff
NOTES FROM THE PRESENTATION
 Calibration
 Training Staff – who are to be trained and what for?
 Backwash – how important it is?
 Class C
 Analysis of the instrument – quantitative and qualitative
 Staff training
 What do you mean “tes yang baik adalah yang bisa
diterima anak”
 Test should be “unpredictable”?
 Pretest – used