Instructor: Dr.

Nguyen Thi Hong Tham

Email: hongthamnguyen@hcmussh.edu.vn
 –
Brown, H. and Abeywickrama, P. (2019)
Chapter 1, pp. 1-26.
 Testing

–
™  is a type of assessment, a method/instrument
which measures a person’s ability, knowledge, or
performance in a given domain.

™  A test measures performance and competence.

™  A test measures a given domain.
Assessment

–
Ø  identifies the current condition or current progress of
something, such as the ability or condition of a language
learner.
Ø  is an ongoing process that encompasses a wider domain
than testing.
Ø  Is an integral part of the teaching-learning cycle.

Ø  Purposes:
•  To certify student achievement
•  To support learning
 Measurement and evaluation
–
Measurement is the process of quantifying the observed
performance of classroom learners.

™  Quantitative descriptions of student performance:

assigning numbers to observed performance.
v  Advantages: Numbers: providing exact descriptions of
student performance, greater objectivity.
™  Qualitative descriptions of student performance: written
descriptions, oral feedback, and other nonquantifiable
reports.
v  Advantages: providing individualized feedback for a
student
 Evaluation
–
™ is involved when the results of a test (or other
assessment procedure) are used to make decisions.

™ involved the interpretation of information.

 Teaching

–
Teaching sets up the practice games of language
learning: the opportunities for learners to listen, think,
take risks, set goals, and process feedback from the
‘coach’ and then recycle through the skills that they are
trying to master.
 Informal and formal assessment

Informal assessment

•  incidental, unplanned
– Formal assessment

• systematic, planned sampling

comments and responses; techniques constructed to give
coaching and other impromptu teacher and student an appraisal
feedback to the student. of student achievement.

Ex: marginal comments on papers, Ex: tests, portfolios, essays, etc.

oral feedback

™  All tests are formal assessments, but not all formal
assessment is testing.
 Summative and formative assessment

–
Task 1 (10 minutes): Let’s watch the following video
clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTGnJnuVNt8
and answer this question:

What are the differences between summative and

formative assessment?
 Summative and formative assessment

–
Summative assessment
Goal to measure, or summarize, what
a student has grasped.
Time typically occurs at the end of a
course or unit of instruction.
Formative assessment
to monitor student learning
to provide ongoing feedback for
students to improve their learning
and for instructors to improve their
teaching.
typically occurs during the learning
process.

Weight
of high low
grades
Ex Midterm tests, end-of-term tests, journals, learning logs, the minute
proficiency exams, final projects, paper, concept maps, directed
etc. summarization, diagnostic tests, and
quizzes, etc.
 Norm-Referenced and Criterion-Referenced Tests

Norm-referenced tests Criterion-referenced tests

to place test-takers along a

–to give test-takers feedback, usually in
mathematical continuum in rank the form of grades, on specific course
order. or lesson objectives.
Scores are usually reported back
to the test-taker in the form of a
numerical score and a percentile
rank

Ex: Standardised tests (TOEFL, Ex: classroom-based tests.

TOEIC, IELTS)
 Types of test
Type of test Purpose
1. Proficiency Test
–
To assess general ability in a second language.

2. Achievement Test To evaluate how much a learner knows from a

defined amount of course or class work.

3. Diagnostic Test To identify a student’s strengths or

weaknesses in specific areas of language.

4. Placement Test To determine which would be the most

appropriate class, stream or level in which to
place a student so that subsequent language
teaching is appropriate to their needs.
 Types of test

1. LANGUAGE APTITUDE TESTS

–
™  Predict a person’s success prior to exposure to the second
language.
™  Measure capacity/ general ability to learn a foreign language
and ultimate success in that undertaking.
™  Two standardized aptitude tests: Modern Language Aptitude Test
(MLAT) and Language Aptitude Battery (PLAB).

™  Limitation: measuring success by similar processes of mimicry,

memorisation, and puzzle-solving; no research to show
unequivocally that these tasks predict communicative success in
a language, esp. untutored acquisition of the language.
 2. PROFICIENCY TESTS
–
™ Not limited to any one course, curriculum, or single skill
in the language.
™ Test overall ability.
™ Summative and norm-referenced.
™ Providing a single score which plays the gate-keeping
role.
™ Not equipped to provide diagnostic feedback.
™ The tasks must be legitimate samples of English
language use in the defined context.
™ Creating these tasks and validating them with research
is time-consuming and costly process.
™ Examples: TOEFL, IELTS
 3. PLACEMENT TESTS
–
™ Proficiency tests can act in the role of placement tests.
™ Purpose: to place a student into a particular level or
section of a language curriculum or school.
™ Example: The English as a Second Language Placement
Test (ESLPT)
™ Face validity, diagnostic information on students’
performance and authenticity
 4. DIAGNOSTIC TESTS

–
™ Diagnose specified aspects of a language.

™ Diagnostic and placement tests may sometimes

be indistinguishable from each other.
 5. ACHIEVEMENT TESTS

–
™ is related directly to classroom lessons, units, or even a
total curriculum.
™ Primary role: to determine whether course objectives
have been met – and appropriate knowledge and skills
acquired – by the end of a period of instruction.
™ Often summative, but also formative in offering
washback about the quality of a learners’ performance in
subsets of the unit or course.
Distinguishing a diagnostic test and a general
achievement test:

–
a. Achievement tests: analyse the extent to
which students have acquired language
features that have already been taught.

b. Diagnostic test: should elicit information on

what students need to work on in the future.