1. TOPIC 4 STAGES OF TEST CONSTRUCTION
TSL 3112 – LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT
TOPIC 4
STAGES OF TEST CONSTRUCTION

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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)

5. 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

6. 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.

7. 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

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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.

11. 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?

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. 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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. 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

20. 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.