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