Task 1: Written report of Test Paper Analysis

In education, the term assessment refers to the wide variety of methods that
educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning
progress, and skill acquisition of students from preschool through college and adulthood.
Assessment is the process of gathering and discussing information from multiple and diverse
sources in order to develop a deep understanding of what students know, understand, and
can do with their knowledge as a result of their educational experiences; the process
culminates when assessment results are used to improve subsequent learning. While
assessments come in many complex forms and they are used for a wide variety of purposes.
In a word, the act of assessing student learning not only takes many forms, but it generally
requires an assortment of sophisticated strategies and techniques. Consequently,
when assessment is used without qualification, specific examples, or additional explanation,
it may be difficult to determine precisely what the term is referring to.
Basically, there are 5 principles to analyze a test. They are practicality, reliability,
validity, authenticity and washback. I analyzed on four characteristics of the basic principles
by the assessment that has been administered in an English Language primary classroom of
SJK (T) Lorong Jawa for Year 4. The four basic principles which I focussed on are
practicality, reliability, validity and authenticity. This essay also will include the strengths,
weaknesses, and suggestions for improvements of an English Language (Paper 2) of Year
4.
Firstly, practicality refers to the logistical, down-to-earth, administrative issues
involved in making, giving and scoring an assessment instrument (Brown, 2010). In regard
to practicality, at least we should think about time, place, people, equipment, cost, scoring
and giving feedback. I found that this paper didnt meet the criteria above. This paper
contains section A until Section H and total of 8 pages are printed. According to the
budgetary limits, this paper cost much to be photocopied. Furthermore, time allocated to
complete the test is 1 hour and 15 minutes. According to Brown (2010) a test that takes a

few minutes for a student to take and several hours for an examiner to evaluate is
impractical for most classroom instructions. So, The English Language Panel could set the
test paper by reducing it from 8 pages to 5 pages and simplify it from section A to Section D.
The panel should test the pupils by incorporating two skills in one section. As an example,
reading and writing skill can be tested together. Pupils read a passage and answer whquestions based on their understandings. Grammar also can be incorporated in the reading
comprehension.
On the other hand, Gronlund (1968) said that validity as the extent to which
inferences made from assessment result are appropriate, meaningful, and useful in terms of
the purpose of the assessment. In simple words, validity is testing what you intend to test
which the test covers the content you taught in a manner similar to the manner in which you
taught it. I strongly believe that, the content validity was not clearly shown on the test paper.
However, face validity was clearly shown. Face validity refers to the degree to which a test
looks right, and appears to measure the knowledge or abilities it claims to measure
(Mousavi, 2002). The test paper which was carried out shows clear instructions, logical
organization (Section A to Section H) and appropriate time management, enabling students
to find the test familiar with. From my opinion, the first impression of the pupils towards the
test paper will convince the pupils to do the assessment seriously. From my observation, I
realised that this test paper did not fulfil the criteria of content validity. Content validity deals

with whether the assessment content and composition are appropriate, given what is
being measured. The skills which were tested were repeated again and again. For
example, Section C tested the pupils on reading and the skill was tested again in Section
F. The English Panel should have prepared a test specification so that they are aware
what must be tested according to what they have thought the pupils in the class.
The third major principle of language testing is authenticity. Brown maintained an
authentic test should contain language that is as natural as possible and have items that are
contextualized rather than isolated (Clark, 2013). Usually, authenticity may be present when

the assessment items are likely to be enacted in the real world. I found that, this test paper
covers the real world-world tasks such as helping the elders at old folks home, having a
picnic at the beach and occupations. The questions covered few topics from the text book
and the questions were meaningful which tested on pupils ability on particular skills such as
transferring information from an email.
In my opinion, I personally feel that the paper set was reliable. This is due the reason
that all pupils especially the low achievers was able to participate in the assessment.
Besides that, the instruction given by the teacher was clear and precise. The pupils were
able to complete the assessment which shows that there was consistency in the instruction
given for better understanding of the pupils (Brown, 2010). Other than that, Pupils were
seated separately as they are sitting for a test. The classroom was fully ventilated and good
lighting ensured that pupils did their achievement test without any difficulties. Therefore,
under the principle of reliability the assessment can be considered reliable as it fulfilled most
of the criteria.
As a conclusion, good teaching and learning process will create perfect assessments
for the pupils as assessment plays an important and major role in the our new education
system which is the KSSR system.