NVA136-Teaching Methodology
Testing and Evaluation
Food for thought
• Do you agree that assessment is the sole
responsibility of the teacher? Why or why not?
Input Learning Use
Understanding
Memory
RESTRICTED EXPOSURE
Reading Re ection
Listening
AUTHENTIC EXPOSURE
Reading RESTRICTED
Noticing OUTPUT
Drills, gap- ll
Listening exercises, Simon
Speaking
Writing says, etc.
OTHER DATA
Coursebook information Preparing Discussions,
Teacher explanations (to speak/write) AUTHENTIC meetings, small
Grammar books, etc. OUTPUT
talk, writing a
Speaking
Writing postcard, etc.
fl
fi
Definition of key terms
Key terms
• Evaluation: making qualitative judgments about learners’
competence, data collection for decision making
• Assessment: an on-going process to assess students’
performance, to see whether learning outcomes have been
achieved
• Measurement: assigning a number (scores) to a performance
• Test: an instrument designed to measure a language ability
Food for thought
•How do you understand this statement:
“A test measures performance, but the results imply
competence.”
Test types in ELT
• Language aptitude tests
• Proficiency tests
• Placement tests
• Diagnostic tests
• Achievement tests
Direct and Indirect Testing
• Direct testing: asking test-takers to actually perform the
target task
• Indirect testing: asking test-takers to perform a task
related to the target task.
•What are the differences between indirect test items and
direct test items? Can you give some examples?
Direct and Indirect Testing
• Direct test items:
•Write a letter/postcard/invitation…
•Reply to a newspaper article
•Take part in a conversation
• Indirect test items:
• Multiple-choice questions
• Fill-in and cloze
• Sentence transformation
Assessment Paradigms
Old New
• Focus on language • Focus on communication
• Teacher-centered • Learner-centered
• Isolated skills • Integrated skills
• Emphasis on product • Emphasis on process
• One answer, one-way • Open-ended, multiple
correctness solutions
• Tests that test • Tests that also teach
• What are the requirements for a good test? Have you
experienced a bad test? Why and how it was bad?
What makes a good test?
Transparency Validity Reliability
• Is the test unbiased? •Does the test measure what • Is the test consistent in
it is supposed to measure? its measurement?
Validity
• “the degree to which a test actually tests what it is
intended to”
• Validity is a matter of “degree” - Tests are either valid
or invalid + There are degrees of validity.
• Tests are only valid or invalid in terms of their intended
use.
Types of Validity
• Internal validity:
+ content validity: the opinion of experts to whether the
test of representative of the skills you want to test. Is the
content a representative sample of what we want to test.
+ face validity: the opinion of non-experts about what a
test is really getting at. Does the test look like a proper
test?
Types of Validity
• External validity:
+ concurrent validity: the degree to which the test correlates
with other tests testing the same thing. Will the results be
similar to those of other tests administered at about the
same time?
+ predictive validity: the extent to which the test can be used
to make predictions about the future. Can we predict
performance from the results?
+ Construct validity: Can we describe what we are testing?
Reliability
“Would a candidate get the same result whether they took the test
in London or Kuala Lumpur or if they took it on Monday or
Tuesday?”
• Test- retest reliability
• Inter-item consistency
• Inter-rater reliability
The relationship between validity and reliability
• If a test is valid, it must also be reliable.
• However, it is possible for a test to be reliable without
being valid.
•A test that gives different results at different times
cannot be valid.
Common problems with test items
• Grammar items
1. (an item intended to test the Present Perfect)
Write a sentence containing “since”
—> _________________________
*** In this case, the item may not elicit the present perfect.
Common problems with test items
• Vocabulary items
Choose the word that has the same meaning as the given word:
1. catastrophe
a. cataract
b. conservation
c. contiguous
d. calamity
Common problems with test items
• Pronunciation items
Which two words are the odd ones out? Consider the vowel
sounds.
a. fail
b. male
c. land
d. reign
e. beak
Common problems with test items
• Testing language functions
Circle the letter of the function that each utterance serves:
Mike: Hey, give me back my coat.
A. command
B. complaint
C. accusation
D. request
Common problems with test items
• Testing reading
(After a text on how Japan and the U.S. are different)
One way in which the United States and Japan are different is
a. Japan is a smaller country.
b. b. The U.S. has a more hetrogeneous population.
c. c. There are more people in the U.S.
d. d. Japan has a longer history
Common problems with test items
•Read the passage and each statement that follows it. For each statement, indicate whether,
according to the reading passage, it is true (T), false (F) or whether there is insufficient
information to answer the question (I),
• In a course I took at junior high school in Los Angeles, we discussed such problems as world
hunger and homelessness, because those were problems that we thought were among the most
important world issues at the time
1. The students discussed important world issues.
2. The students in this class were 18 years old.
3. The students always discussed the topics they want to discuss.
4. The students discussed such problems as world hunger and homelessnes.
Testing Writing
• The ability to write involve at least 6 components skills:
•grammatical ability
•lexical ability
•mechanical ability
•stylistic skills
•organizational skills
•judgments of appropriacy
Types of writing tasks
• Gap-filling
• Form completion
• Making corrections
• Letter writing
• Essay writing
Alternative Assessment
• It actually asks students to show what they can do
• Main goal: gather evidence about how students are
approaching, processing and completing real-life
tasks in a particular domain.
• Examples: oral presentations, creative projects,
portfolios.
Reflection (Self-study)
• What are the differences between formative and summative
assessments?
•What are some strategies to ensure a test is fairly marked?
Which ones are more feasible in our context?
•What are the differences between teaching for tests and
teaching for learning? Do you think teacher should teach for
tests or teach for learning? In that case, how test designing is
different?
In your incoming lesson plan:
•Prepare an assessment plan for a sequence of lessons.
•Decide on the following information:
•assessment time
•test administration (physical or online, open or closed book, number of
assessors
•marking (rubric or not)
•how you plan to use the assessment result (how to improve students’
learning and your teaching)
References
1. Harmer, J. (2017). How to teach English. Essex, England: Pearson
Education Limited.
2. Harmer, J. (2015). The practice of English language teaching (5th
ed.). Pearson Longman.
3. Richard, J. C. and Renandya, W. A. (2002). Methodology in language
teaching: An Anthology of Current Teaching. Cambridge University
Press
4. Scrivener, J. (2011). Learning teaching: The essential guide to
English a Teaching. 3rd Ed. Macmillan Education.
5. Ur, P. (1991). A course in language teaching: Practice and theory in
Cambridge Teacher Training and Development. Cambridge
University Press.