Language testing and assessment

Kalbos gebėjimų tikrinimas ir vertinimas

Spring term 2011

Course outline

• Assessment

• Testing

• What is a good test?– validity– reliability– feasibility/practicality– washback effect

Course outline

• Test development:– test specification– test developers– item writing, item banks etc.– trialling and validation– administration

Course outline

• Tests of different language skills:– listening and reading– speaking and writing– grammar? vocabulary? OR use of language?

• Development of test items

A few basic terms

• Evaluation

• Assessment

• Testing

• It is a broad term and it does not necessarily deal with language proficiency.

• It deals with the proficiency of the language user.

• It is a form of assessment.

A few basic terms

• Evaluation - vertinimas

• Assessment – vertinimas

• Testing – tikrinimas, testavimas

A few basic terms

• Competences and subcompetences

• Skills and subskills

• Performance (Lith. atliktis)

• Knowledge

Traditional assessment

• Traditional assessment cast the teacher as the assessor who set summative examinations, marked them in private and wrote a report about the student's success or failure in private, to be delivered to the student's parents or guardian. The student was largely kept out of the assessment. (Cohen et al. 1996: 424-5).

Traditional assessment: some critique

• Individual marks for formal exercises undertaken summatively (end-of-unit tests or homeworks) is unhelpful. Such feedback is already delayed as research suggests that learners benefit most from rapid feedback. Timing is crucial. The longer the time lag between performance and feedback, the less efficacious the feedback is likely to be in correcting errors and enhancing future performance. Though summative ass certainly has its own place in a teacher's repertoire.

Types of assessment

Achievement assessment Proficiency assessment

Norm-referencing Criterion-referencing

Subjective assessment Objective assessment

Continuous assessment Fixed assessment points

Formative assessment Summative assessment

Performance assessment Knowledge assessment

Holistic assessment Analytic assessment

Assessment by others Self-assessment

Types of assessment

• Week’s/term’s work – achievement a.

• Assessment of ability to apply the knowledge in the real world – proficiency

• Students in rank order – norm-referencing

• Ability irrespective of peers – criterion-referencing

Types of assessment

• Multiple choice – objective

• Judgement by an assessor – subjective

• Throughout a course – continuous

• What happened earlier is irrelevant; what a person does now is decisive – fixed points

Types of assessment

• Ongoing process feeding the course planning – formative

• Attainment at the end of the course with a grade – summative

• A learner provides a sample of language in speech or writing – performance

• A learner answers questions about sth. - knowledge

Types of assessment

• Global synthetic judgement done intuitively - holistic a.

• Considering different aspects – analytic a.

• Judgements by the teacher or examiner

• Judgements about your own proficiency

Types of assessments in AFK

• Achievement and proficiency• Criterion-referencing• Continuous and fixed assessment points• Knowledge rather than performance• Subjective rather than objective• Analytic rather than holistic• Assessment by other rather than self-

assessment