Friday 24 June 2011

Language Testing-Arthur hughes

LANGUAGE TESTING TASK
BOOK TESTING FOR LANGUAGE TEACHERS

I. READER ACTIVITIES (CHAPTER I PAGE 5)

1.      Think of a tests with which you are familiar (the test may be international or local, written by professionals or by teachers). What do you think the backwash effect of each of them is? Harmful or beneficial what are your reasons for coming to these conclusions?
Ø  The backwash effects of each of them are harmful and beneficial. If attest is done by professional testers, then they have expanded great effort and not a little money in attempts to do it. For example, if we want to know how well someone can write, there is absolutely no way we can get a really accurate measure of their ability by means of a multiple choice. Test. When testing is carried out an very large scale, and the scoring of compositions as reliable as possible, automatically they are generally highly succesfull in this respect. But when testing is carried out on a very small scale, on the other hand, tends to be reliable than it should be.
Ø  While the teacher in doing test must give attention and care about content and techniques. It will be good test if the teaching is also good. This means of beneficial backwash. But when the teaching is good and the testing is not, this means harmful backwash.

2.      Consider this test again. Do you think that they give accurate or inaccurate information? What are you reason for coming to these conclusions?
Before starting to make a test, they must give attention in test content and techniques. If the content of the test is relevant or related to the real life, so the test is inaccurate. The inaccurate test means that the test is very ungrammatical and far form the content and very poor quality. I think, the test is written by professionals tester are not so accurate because of unreliability in scoring. While the test is written by teachers are accurate because of the relevant content.

II. READER ACTIVITIES (CHAPTER III, PAGE 20)

1.      What is the purpose of the test?
The purpose of the test is to measure the ability of the students can learn in learning process and the result of their learning.

2.      Does it represent direct or indirect testing (or a mixture both)?
We can use direct and indirect testing. Direct testing can be used when we wish to measure. If we want to know how well the learners pronounce a language, we get them to speak. If we want to know how well the learners can write compositions, we get them to write compositions. Direct testing is easier because of measuring the productive skill of speaking and writing. While indirect testing can be used when we wish to measure the abilities of the other skill which is in that skill itself. For example TOEFL test, we can find out the writing skill in doing TOEFL test.

3.      Are the items discrete point or integrative (or a mixture)?
The items discrete point and integrative.
Discrete point testing refers to the testing of one element at a time, item by item. This might involved for example, a series of items each testing a particular grammatical structure. While integrative testing, by contrast, requires the candidate to combine many language.

4.      Which items are objective, and which are subjective? Can you order the subjective items according to degree of subjectivity?
The items of objective in scoring, while the items of subjective is if in the scoring have judgment the subjective items according to degree of subjectivity, if judgment is called for the scoring is said to be subjective. There are different degrees of subjectivity in testing.

5.      Is the test norm-referenced of criterion –referenced?
The test which is designed to give kind of information and we are not told directly what the student is capable of doing in the language. And then we provide this kind of information directly and we can classify people according to whether or not they are able to perform some task or set of task satisfactory.

6.      Does the test measure communicative abilities? Would you describe it as communicative tests justify your answer?
The test measure communicative abilities. When testing is about speaking, automatically is related to communicative ability. A speaking test is measured as the final goal of study language. And the final goal of study language is good in speaking including writing in anywhere and near native speaker.

7.      What relationship is there between the answer to question 6b and the answer to the other question?
The relationship between them is about test, kinds of the test and testing. Each of them has goals.

III. READER ACTIVITIES (CHAPTER IV PAGE 28)

Consider any test with which you are familiar. Asses each of them in terms of the various kinds of validity that have been presented in this chapter. What empirical evidence is there that the test is valid?
The empirical evidence is if a test has a content validity it means that the test would have content validity only if it includes a proper sample of the relevant structures.

2 comments:

  1. Testing is a stage that helps in knowing the difference between actual and the expected outcome which can help you to improve your product quality.STC Technologies

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  2. have you tested yourself in teaching learning activity?

    ReplyDelete