Assessment and Testing in ESP

A. Assessment
Assessment is a process of measuring, and one formal
method of measuring is to test. Assessment is the systematic
collection, review, and use of information about educational
programs undertaken for the purpose of improving learning and
development. Assessment is central importance. Every teacher
has an interest in knowing whether, and to what degree, his/her
teaching has been successful.

1. Principles of Assessment
According to Tracey Hall, et al., (2009, pp. 2) “not all
students are alike.” Therefore, in order to best promote learning
and to give a valid picture of individual achievement, the
assessment process should incorporate the following principles:
ü Assessment process should be planned and
communicated to learners and parents prior to
instruction;
ü Assessment strategies must align with the prescribed
curriculum objectives and with the teaching strategies
used;
ü Assessment must be fair and designed to enable each
student to demonstrate the full extent of their own
learning;
ü Assessments should measure how well students learn
as well as what they have learned;
ü Assessment instrument should be highly varied in type;
assessments should cover a full range of instructional
objectives including knowledge, skills, and affective
items;
 ü And set personal achievement goals; students must
receive clear instructions for improvement in what they
have learned as well as how they learn.

B. Testing
ESP tests are related in content, themes and topics to
particular disciplines, and involve a higher degree of language
specificity. ESP tests are more concerned to present learners
with tasks that involve them in reading, listening to, speaking or
writing the target language, and evaluating how well they can do
this. Of course, an important component in assessing how well
somebody can use English is how accurately they can produce
or understand texts written or spoken in the language, but the
key to this assessment is to present learners with tasks that
resemble in some way the sort of things they may have to
In ESP there are three basic types of test, they are:
a. Placement Test
Placement tests are used to place learners’ in the
ESP course most suited to their neeeds. The placement
test is dagnostic, indicating how far and in what ways
the learner fall short of the proficiency level. The
placement tests are normally comes at the beginning of
the course. Placement tests are usually comes in the
form as follows:
o Reading test (cloze passages)
o Listening test (note-taking)
o Quickly & sufficient reliable for group students
o Short-written exercises

b. Achievement Test
 Achievement tests are used to know how well the
learner in keeping up with the syllabus and can be
administered any time through the course. These are
basic principles in constructing good ESP achievement
test(Heaten,1975, Oller,1979):
o The form of the test must based on what the ESP
teacher have taught to the lerners.
o The test must measured what the ESP teacher want to
test.
o The test must avoid bias, for example the test contain
of specific cultural or religion knowledge. This test of
course may result bias because every learner come
from different background of culture and religion.

c. Proficiency Test
Proficiency Tests are used to know whether or not
the student can cope with the demands of a particular
situation, for example, study at a university of reading
technical manuals. Proficiency test for specific purpose
should be able to give a reliable indication of whether a
candidate is proficient enough to carry out the task that
will be required.
A good test will automatically have beneficial
effects on classroom instruction. Other variables such
as teacher competence, motivation and innovation, the
climate of the school, socioeconomic status of pupils
and teachers combine to exert an equally important
influence on what goes on in an ESP classroom.

C. Conclussion
Assessment is a process of measuring, and one formal
method of measuring is to test. Assessment is needed in order to
know whether, and in what degree, the teaching of ESP has been
successful. Instrument used in assessing ESP learners is
test. ESP tests are related in content, themes and topics to
particular disciplines, and involve a higher degree of language
specificity. ESP tests are more concerned to present learners
with tasks that involve them in reading, listening to, speaking or
writing the target language, and evaluating how well they can do
this. There are three kinds of test in ESP, they are :
a. Placement Test
b. Proficiency Test
c. Achievement Test
A good test will automatically have beneficial effects
on classroom instruction. Other variables such as teacher
competence, motivation and innovation, the climate of the
school, socioeconomic status of pupils and teachers
combine to exert an equally important influence on what
goes on in an ESP classroom.