Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1. LANGUAGE TESTING Language Testing is the practice and study of evaluating the
proficiency of an individual using a particular language effectively. Winning entry from
the 2009/10 Priscilla Allen, University of
Washington.http://washington.academia.edu/PriscillaAllen
2. The LANGUAGE TESTINGThe activity of developing and using language tests. As a
psychometric activity, language testing traditionally was more concerned with the
production, development and analysis of tests.Recent critical and ethical approaches to
language testing have placed more emphasis on the uses of language tests. The purpose of
a language test isto determine a persons knowledge and/or ability in the language and to
discriminate that persons ability from that of others. Alan Davies, University of
Edinburgh.
Types of Language Tests
Language tests work best when they are designed and developed to measure specific language
skills such as Speaking and Listening, Writing Proficiency, Reading Comprehension, the ability
to Translate text, or the ability to Interpret spoken language. ALTA language tests measure
language proficiency for a wide variety of jobs using one or more of our language test types. Our
testing team will help your organization match a bilingual position to the appropriate test type
and determine a legally defensible proficiency level, whether you hire bilingual customer service
representatives, nurse practitioners, law enforcement officers, sales representatives, flight
attendants, personal bankers, physicians, government linguists, legal document reviewers, or any
other position where language matters.
The Speaking and Listening Assessment: This test measures how well candidates can
speak and understand the language when spoken.
The Written Assessment: This test measures the candidates ability to write in the target
language.
The Reading Assessment: This test verifies whether or not the candidate can read the
language at the required skill level.
The Interpretation Assessment: This test verifies whether or not the candidate can provide
a consecutive interpretation between two speakers in English and the target language.
The Translation Assessment: This test verifies whether or not the candidate can translate
material written in English into the target language, or material written in the target
language into English.
4- Comprehensive:It covers all the items that have been taught or studied. It includes items from
different areas of the material assigned for the test so as to check accurately the amount of
students knowledge
5- Relevant:It measures reasonably well the achievement of the desired objectives.
6- Balanced:It tests linguistic as well as communicative competence and it reflects the real
command of the language. It tests also appropriateness and accuracy.
7- Appropriate in difficulty:It is neither too hard nor too easy. Questions should be progressive
in difficulty to reduce stress and tension
8- Clear:Questions and instructions should be clear. Pupils should know what to do exactly.
9- Authentic:The language of the test should reflect everyday discourse
10- Appropriate for time:A good test should be appropriate in length for the allotted time.
11- Objective:If it is marked by different teachers, the score will be the same. Marking process
should not be affected by the teachers personality. Questions and answers are so clear and
definite that the marker would give the students the score he/she deserves.
12- Economical:It makes the best use of the teachers limited time for preparing and grading and
it makes the best use of the pupils assigned time for answering all items. So, we can say that oral
exams in classes of +30 students are not economical as it requires too much time and effort to be
conducted.
I'll define a good test (and by extension a good test suite) as one that has the following virtues:
Fast. If a test is slow, developers won't run it locally. This will lead to broken CI builds,
and more time spent fixing the code that broke the test afterwards, more context
switching, lack of flow, and all the concomitant problems.
Selective. If a bug is introduced into the code under test, only one or a few test cases
should fail. If all cases start failing, then it will require a too much time to figure out
exactly what is wrong. Your tests should point you in the direction of what's wrong.
Repeatable. Tests should always give the same result if the code being tested hasn't
changed. Any reliance in a test on timing, randomness, or external state (databases, the
date or time, etc) will lead to wasted time spent investigating spurious failures.
Reliable. Your test should pass when the code is working, and fail when the code has a
bug. Perhaps this is self-evident, but it bears repeating -- a test should not give false
positives or false negatives.
As we'll see, the myths, and the mistakes they cause developers to make while writing tests,
come from good intentions, but can lead to violations of one or more of the above principles.
Refferences
1) Adediran A. Taiwo (1995) Fundamentals of Classroom Testing. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing
House PVT LTD
.
2) Aggarwal J. C. (1997) Essentials of Examination System Evaluation, Tests and Measurement.
New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House PVT LTD
.
3) Alderson, J.C. and Hughes, A (eds.) (1981). Issues in Language Testing. ELT Documents 111.
London: The British Council
.
4)Alderson, J. C. (2005). Diagnosing foreign language proficiency: The interface between
learning and assessment. London, UK: Continuum 5)Alderson, J.C., Clapham, C.M. and Wall, D.
(1995) Language Test Construction and Evaluation, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
.
6)Bachman, L. F., & Palmer, A. S. (1996). Language testing in practice: Designing and
developing useful language tests. Oxford: Oxford University Press
.
7)Bloxham, S., & Boyd, P. (2007). Developing effective assessment in higher education: a
practical guide. Maidenhead: Open University Press
.
8)Boud, D. (1998, 4-5 November). Assessment and Learning - Unlearning Bad Habits of
Assessment. Paper presented at the Effective Assessment at University Conference. Retrieved
from
http://damianeducationresearchlinks.wikispaces.com/file/view/unlearningassessment_Boud.pdf
9)Boud, D., & Falchikov, N. (2007). Rethinking assessment in higher education: Learning for
the longer term. London: Routledge 10)Braine, G. (Ed.). (2005). Teaching English to the world:
History, curriculum, and practice. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
.
11)Bryan, C. and Clegg, K. (eds.) (2006) Innovative Assessment in Higher Education.
Abingdon, Routledge
.
12)Coombe C. and Hubley N. (2003) Fundamentals of Language Assessment: A Practical Guide
for teachers in the Gulf 13)Cyril J. Weir (2005) Language Testing and Validation: An Evidencebased Approach. Palgrave Macmillan 14)Donna Heiland and Laura J. Rosenthal (eds.) (2011)
Literary Study, Measurement, and the Sublime: Disciplinary Assessment . New York: The Teagle
Foundation
15)Fulcher, G. (2010) Practical Language Testing. London: Hodder Education
.
16)Fulcher, Glenn, and Fred Davidson (2007). Language Testing and Assessment: An Advanced
Resource Book. New York : Routledg
.