Language Testing

Preparing a test is one of teacher's obligation to evaluate the teaching learning process. To be able to construct a good test, teacher should know the principles of designing a good test. A test must be valid, reliable, and practical.

Validity
Test is valid when it tests what is supposed to test. Therefore it is not valid, for example, to test students' speaking ability on delivering a persuasive speech whereas the teacher never taught them how to prepare a persuasive speech before. The test should look also valid on the 'face' . It means the test should contain information about the level of student, the day/date of test, the name of the subject. In addition, test should be readable.

Reliability
A good test should give consistent result. For example, if the same group of students took the same test twice within two days - without reflecting on the first test before they sat it again - they should get the same results on each occasion. Thus, the test instructions should be clear, the scope for variety in the answers should be restricted, and the test conditions should remain constant.

Practicality
A good test should be practical. It should be easy to administer in terms of time, finance and scoring. For example, the number of the pages should be reasonable. It will be impractical for both teacher and students when the test consists of 10 pages.

A a language teacher, I have written a lot of tests. Yet, I still find it extremely difficult to design a test which fulfills the above criteria. When I think I can not rely on the result of the test, I usually observe my students' achievement from their daily assessments. By doing this I can assure myself that they have understood what I have thought them.







Practical

Designing a syllabus

Last month, I recieved an email from my old student. She used to be my student in a secretarial academy. Now she is working in a company which supplies toiletries to several hotels and aviation industries. She was asking me to teach a group of employees in her office. She said that her boss asked her to find a teacher who has been experienced in teaching business English. And the choice went to me. I was elated. It's been several years since I taught a business English class. This will be a great opportunity to me to develop a syllabus.

My first encounter with business English class was in 1999 after I attended a workshop on designing a business English class held by The British Council. Since then, I feel more confident when I have to teach and design a syllabus for a business English class.

These are several steps I usually do :

1. Need analysis is done by giving a questionnaire and interviewing the students to find out their need and competence.
2. Determining the goals and objectives can be negotiated with the students. They should be told what the will have to do to achieve their goals and objectives.
3. Conceptualising content is done by selecting the backbone of the content.
4. Selecting and developing material and activities will be easier when I know the students' background of their proficiency, learning preference and objectives. I can select material and activities which will make them interested in learning.
5. Organisation and content of activities should be designed systematically so the students can follow the lesson easier.
6. Evaluation is done in accordance with the materials presented and activities done in the class. This will eventually assess what the students have learned.
7. Constraints which may occur in the class should also be anticipated by writing a journal teaching. With this, I can predict what obstacles I may find in the future and try to find a solution for them.

Teaching a group of adult with different education background and occupations is not only exciting but also challenging. They are usually more anxious to improve their English as they need it for their career advancement. However, they have limited time to do self improvement. Therefore, the activities in the class should be dynamic and related to their real world.