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TOPIC 4 STAGES OF TEST CONSTRUCTION
TSL 3112 – LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT TOPIC 4 STAGES OF TEST CONSTRUCTION
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STAGES OF TEST CONSTRUCTION
Determining the purpose of a test Designing clear, unambiguous objectives Drawing up test specifications Test construction / Item writing Pre-testing Test administration Scoring and reporting Test interpretation Item analysis
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1. DETERMINING THE PURPOSE OF A TEST
What kind of test is it going to be? Achievement, general proficiency, diagnostic, etc. What skills do I want to test. What kind of backwash effect do I want? What do I want to be able to say or do with the results I obtain. What are the practical constraints I have to work with? Samples of a test with its purposes Phase when test is administered Types of Test Purpose of Test During (Formative) Topic/Progress test which test how well pupils have learnt To obtain information about individual pupils level of mastery of mastery of skills taught. End (Summative) Achievement test To evaluate effectiveness of teaching/material/ methods
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2. DESIGNING CLEAR, UNAMBIGUOUS OBJECTIVES
Every curriculum should have appropriately framed, assessable objectives, stated in terms of overt performance by students. In designing a test, determine appropriate objetives, stated as explicitly as possible. State the possible elements of both comprehension and production (read Brown page 57 – 58)
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3. DRAWING UP TEST SPECIFICATIONS
A test should have a structure that follows logically from the lesson or unit you are testing. Think of your test specs as a blueprint of the test that include the following A description of its content Item types (such as mcq, cloze) Tasks (eg. written essay, short passage) Skills to be included How the test will be scored How it will be reported
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3. DRAWING UP TEST SPECIFICATIONS
1. Tasks to give a good indication of the skills tested. 2. Types of text refer to what the candidate has to process (reading and listening) and to produce (writing and speaking) number of texts need to be specify 3. Topics Select topics from syllabus specifications or Topic within the maturational level of the students How long the task would take.
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3. DRAWING UP TEST SPECIFICATIONS
4. Format The number of items in each sub-test should be specified. Use format familiar to students. 5. Weightage Not all skills are equally important Allocate different marks to different sections of the test 6. Time allocation How important the skill is How long the task would take
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3. DRAWING UP TEST SPECIFICATIONS
Many tests have a design that: Divides them into a number of sections Offer students a variety of test types Gives an appropriate relative weight to each section Sec-tion Skill Format Number of items Marks A Listening: Main idea inference MCQ 10 20 B Speaking: describing people Interview : using picture Stimuli to describe people 15 C Reading for meaning 150 word test Rational cloze Open-ended questions 5 D Writing: description of places 150-word guide composition 20 blank cloze
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4. TEST CONSTRUCTION / ITEM WRITING
Guidelines for test construction: Work as a team Vet each other’s work at every juncture Vet the stimulus/input material Appropriateness Balance and bias After the test items are written, vet each component. Finally, look at the test as a whole. Common test format: MCQ Cloze test
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5. PRE-TESTING PURPOSE Helps to identify poor distractors
Gives the test writer a chance to improve poor items PRINCIPLES FOR PRE-TESTING The tester should administer the newly-developed test to a group of examinees similar to the target group and the purpose is to analyze every individual item as well as the whole test. Numerical data (test results) should be collected to check the efficiency of the item, it should include item facility and discrimination.
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6. TEST ADMINISTRATION Guidelines to consider to ensure that the actual administration of the test accomplishes everything you want to: when and where the test will be administered? how will it be administered? who will administer the test? what facilities/apparatus would be necessary for the successful administration of the test?
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7. SCORING AND REPORTING Scoring
The scoring plan reflects the relative weight place on each section and on the items on each section. Objective tests have a pre-determined answer, however in subjective tests many decisions have to be made. Reporting The most common way is in terms of grades. Sometimes pupils are ran ordered according to the scores they obtained and a class position is recorded.
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8. TEST INTERPRETATION Mean/average-a measure to find out how the class as a whole fared in the test. Mean/average = sum of all scores numbers of all candidates STUDENTS TEST A 1 70 2 67 3 68 4 66 5 65 mean 67.2 STUDENTS TEST B 1 17 2 45 3 30 4 20 5 65 mean 35.4 Interpretation:- If the mean score is high (test A), the students may have mastered the skill(s) taught or the test was too easy. If the mean is low (test B), the students may have not learnt what was being taught or the test was too difficult.
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8. TEST INTERPRETATION 2-Range-It is used when there is an extremely influences in the average score between two tests. E.g:- Range = Highest score – lowest score In order to correct mistaken view that mean score gives, range and mean score should be looked at together to get true picture of students performance. STUDENTS TEST A TEST B 1 70 2 67 3 68 4 66 5 65 mean 54 67.2 This extreme mark of O has made the average for the group drop by 13.2
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8. TEST INTERPRETATION 3-Mode-the score that most candidates obtained.
Median-the score that separates the top half of the class from the bottom half. CANDIDATES SCORES DILLA 75 RINA 90 NAD 85 ZAIDI 65 ASIF AMER CANDIDATES SCORES RINA 90 ASIF AMER NAD 85 DILLA 75 ZAIDI 65 median mode
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What you can interpret for these graphs?
8. TEST INTERPRETATION What you can interpret for these graphs? f f x x f f x x
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ITEM ANALYSIS Item analysis is done to find out two things:
How well teaching and learning have taken place How well each item within a test has worked in relation to the test as a whole. Two criteria are generally used: The difficulty or facility index to determine how easy or difficult a test was. the ideal/expected level of difficulty if % but 30 – 90% is considered acceptable.
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ITEM ANALYSIS The discrimination index to find out how well a test managed to separate the good students from the poor students. Perfect discrimination is the score of 1. This means all the good candidates got the item correct and all the poor students got the item wrong. This score is seldom obtained. generally, an item that has a discrimination index of less than 3 is not considered good and may be remove from the test. Negative discrimination index means that it is easier for poor students than for good students.
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TUTORIAL Pairwork: Draw up a table of specifications that reflect both the purpose and the objectives of the test Discuss the importance of test specifications for the purpose of assessment
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References Brown, H. Douglas, Language Assessment: Principles and classroom practices. Pearson Education, Inc. Chitravelu, Nesamalar, ELT Methodology: Principles and Practice. Penerbit Fajar Bakti, Sdn, Bhd.
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