INTRODUCTION

One of the main issues for teachers in their practice is to evaluate the progress of their
students. Teachers know that they have to use tools that provide them with the
necessary outcome to detect if the language is being acquired or it is necessary to
enhance or change some procedures to achieve our goals.

That is why assessment is so important in the process of acquiring a second language.

However, how effective are the tools that we use to measure our students’
performances. In other words, we know that assessment is a process of measuring and
one formal method of measuring is to test. Thus, it is crucial to develop specific tools
that provide us with the information we require to understand our students’
development.

Needless to say that this can be done through different methods and with different
tools. It is important to mention that not only does the formal test provide us with this
information but also the everyday activities we perform in the classroom that are less
formal and more qualitative methods of assessment and are also particularly important
for feedback on learning.

We also have to bear in mind that we assess for two reasons, one of them is for
feedback to aid learning and the other one for a comparable measure of competence.
So, our main concern and the ultimate proof for an ESP course is to know exactly how
our learners fare when using English in their target situation. In so doing, we need to
design the most appropriate tools to obtain the most accurate information.

This paper tries to analyse the use of an achievement test as a formal tool of
evaluation and to justify the mechanisms and procedures implied in its design.