LANGUAGE TESTING ASSIGNMENT

Testing plays a necessary role in teaching and studying. It is used to measure

learning progress and achievement and to evaluate the effectiveness of educational
programs. In this essay, I will analyze four characteristics making a good language test.
Then, I will respond to the question "Can a standardized test be used in classroom
contexts for different purposes?" by listing its usefulness toward educators, students, and
parents.

A good test, according to Bachman and Palmer (1996), can be described by

considering the measurable features of the test namely: reliability, validity, practicality,
and authenticity. First and foremost, a good test should be high reliability. Test reliability
refers to the extent to which an assessment result is consistent and stable. This means the
test will yield similar results even though there are many test-takers administrate the test
in different situations (Brown, 2010). Also, Brown (2010) believed that there are four
factors mainly affecting the reliability of a test. The first factor is related to students. The
mental and physical problems of test-takers on that day partly impact the test
results. Next, the scoring process plays a vital role because it can include bias, the
subjectivity of raters. Therefore, to ensure a test is highly reliable, it is required the
scorers to be careful, pay attention to clear scoring criteria, and not be favor to any
student. Thirdly, the degree of reliability may depend on test administration. This refers
to the surrounding conditions where the examination takes place. Some typical reasons
that cause unreliability are revealed in outside noise, light conditions, temperature, and
the conditions of desks and chairs even. Last but not least, the test itself may also result in
unreliability. A good test should be designed not too long or too short, too easy or too
difficult so that test-takers can complete it in sufficient time. The second important
characteristic of a good language test is validity. The term "validity" refers to how
accurate a test assesses something. A test can be regarded as valid if it measures what it
purports to measure. Besides, the test results closely match real-world values. On a test
with high validity, the items will be closely linked to the test’s intended focus. For many
certification and licensure tests, this means that the items will be highly related to a
specific job or occupation. If a test has poor validity, then it does not measure the job-
related content and competencies it ought to. There are several ways to estimate the
validity of a test including content validity, construct validity, criterion validity, and face
validity. These features will be explained briefly below:
 Content-related validity relates to objectives and their sampling
 Construct-related validity refers to the theory underlying the target.
 Criterion-related validity means concrete criteria in the real world. It can be
concurrent or predictive.
 Face validity is about the test overall appearance.
Thirdly, Brown (2010) claimed that an effective test needs to be practical. Practicality
refers to the amount of time, effort, and money in testing. In other words, a test should be
easy to design, easy to administer, and easy to score. Finally, authenticity has been
emphasized by Bachman and Palmer (1996) as one of the most decisive characteristics of
a good examination. The term "authenticity" is described as the degree to which the tasks
on a given language test match the characteristics of target language usage (Bachman &
Palmer, 1996). Simply speaking, authenticity requires the test questions to be relevant to
real-life situations. It has the ability to influence test takers' expectations of the test as
well as their performance.

A standardized test is any form of test that requires all test-takers to answer the
same questions and that is scored in a consistent standard. The test results enable
examiners to easily compare the relative performance of individual students. There are
many different types of tests and assessments that are standardized in this way. Not
limited to academic settings, standardized tests range from the most popular large-scale
language proficiency tests such as TOEIC, TOEFL, IELTS to which are standardized on
over the world to national graduation tests. In a narrower scope, a standardized test can
be a mid-term or final exam for students at a public school. According to Walberg
(2011), “research and experience show that standardized tests are generally good at
measuring students’ knowledge, skills, and understandings because they are objective,
fair, efficient, and comprehensive” (para. 2).

Standardized tests may be used in a classroom context for a wide variety of

educational purposes. First of all, a standardized test is a quick and effective method for
educators to measure students’ learning. Because the typical format of a standardized test
is usually multiple-choice, true-false questions, and short answer questions, so it is less
time-consuming to score and even being automatically scored by computers.
Furthermore, due to the consistent format and computerized scoring, the potential for
bias, favoritism, or subjective evaluation will be reduced. Secondly, standardized tests
identify students’ strengths and weaknesses. Edriss and Etchells (2016) stated that
standardized tests allow educators to evaluate students' progression, discover their strong
and weak points, and provide remedial as well as modification of teaching and
curriculum. Moreover, by comparing students' results, teachers will recognize weak
students who need help. As a result, teachers can invest more time to support these
students or provide them extra lessons. Additionally, standardized tests can aid to find
outstanding abilities that can be developed further in college and specialized occupations
(Walberg, 2011). In other words, standardized tests can help to point out which academic
areas need to be improved. To serve this purpose, diagnostic tests and placement tests are
the most reasonable choices. The third purpose is that standardized tests are opportunities
for students to demonstrate their mastery of the course. At the end of the course, testing
results will tell students to what extent they meet the learning outcomes. In this case,
achievement tests are usually employed because their primary role “is to determine
whether course objectives have been met – and appropriate knowledge and skills
acquired” (Brown, 2010, p.48). For students who are aware of their study, they will try
harder if their scores are low in comparison with peers. Standardized tests also bring
satisfy feelings for good students when their performances are highly evaluated in tests.
So that, standardized tests can be an encouragement that motivate students to learn.
Finally, looking at the benefits of standardized testing from a parental angle, it also has
effectiveness in some aspects. Through this kind of test, parents are able to monitor how
their children study at school. Consequently, this enables parents to assess the progress of
schools and individual teachers (Edriss & Etchells, 2016). Nowadays, at some private
schools, according to students' scores, parents have the right to suggest methods to
improve a teaching-learning process at the teacher-parent conference.

In conclusion, testing is parallel with learning and teaching process. There are
several elements contributing a language good test, those mentioned features in this essay
are just basic ones. If a test is well-developed and standardized, it will be helpful for both
teachers and learners as well as support many educational purposes.
References

Bachman, L. F., & Palmer, A. S. (1996). Language testing in practice: Designing and

developing useful language tests. Oxford University Press.

Brown, H. D. (2010). Language assessment: principles and classroom practices. Pearson

Education.

Edriss, R., & Etchells, M. J. (2016). The case for and against standardized
testing. Electronic international journal of education, arts, and science, 2(4),
126–162. http://www.eijeas.com/index.php/EIJEAS/article/view/94

Walberg, H. J. (2011). Stop the war against standardized tests. Hoover Institution.
https://www.hoover.org/research/stop-war-against-standardized-tests