TSL 3112 –

LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT

TOPIC 4
STAGES OF TEST CONSTRUCTION

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STAGES OF TEST CONSTRUCTION
1. Determining the purpose of a test
2. Designing clear, unambiguous objectives
3. Drawing up test specifications
4. Test construction / Item writing
5. Pre-testing
6. Test administration
7. Scoring and reporting
8. Test interpretation
9. Item analysis

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1. DETERMINING THE PURPOSE OF A TEST
 What kind of test is it going to be? Achievement, general
proficiency, diagnostic, etc.
 What skills do I want to test.
 What kind of backwash effect do I want?
 What do I want to be able to say or do with the results I obtain.
 What are the practical constraints I have to work with?

Samples of a test with its purposes

Phase when test is Types of Test Purpose of Test
administered
During (Formative) Topic/Progress test which To obtain information about
test how well pupils have individual pupils level of
learnt mastery of mastery of skills
taught.

End (Summative) Achievement test To evaluate effectiveness of

teaching/material/ methods
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 2. DESIGNING CLEAR, UNAMBIGUOUS
OBJECTIVES
Every curriculum should have appropriately framed,
assessable objectives, stated in terms of overt
performance by students.
In designing a test, determine appropriate objetives,
stated as explicitly as possible.
State the possible elements of both comprehension
and production

(read Brown page 57 – 58)

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3. DRAWING UP TEST SPECIFICATIONS
A test should have a structure that follows logically
from the lesson or unit you are testing.
Think of your test specs as a blueprint of the test that
include the following
 A description of its content
 Item types (such as mcq, cloze)
 Tasks (eg. written essay, short passage)
 Skills to be included
 How the test will be scored
 How it will be reported

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 3. DRAWING UP TEST SPECIFICATIONS
1. Tasks
 to give a good indication of the skills tested.
2. Types of text
 refer to what the candidate has to process (reading and
listening) and to produce (writing and speaking)
 number of texts need to be specify
3. Topics
 Select topics from syllabus specifications or
 Topic within the maturational level of the students
 How long the task would take.

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 3. DRAWING UP TEST SPECIFICATIONS

4. Format
 The number of items in each sub-test should be
specified.
 Use format familiar to students.
5. Weightage
 Not all skills are equally important
 Allocate different marks to different sections of the test
6. Time allocation
 How important the skill is
 How long the task would take
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3. DRAWING UP TEST SPECIFICATIONS
 Many tests have a design that:
 Divides them into a number of sections
 Offer students a variety of test types
 Gives an appropriate relative weight to each section

Sec- Skill Format Number Marks

tion of items
A Listening: Main idea MCQ 10 20
inference
B Speaking: Interview : using picture 15
describing people Stimuli to describe people

C Reading for Rational cloze 20 10

meaning Open-ended questions 5 10
150 word test
D Writing: description a. 150-word guide composition 20
of places b. 20 blank cloze 10
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 4. TEST CONSTRUCTION /
ITEM WRITING
Guidelines for test construction:
1. Work as a team
2. Vet each other’s work at every juncture
3. Vet the stimulus/input material
Appropriateness
Balance and bias

4. After the test items are written, vet each

component.
5. Finally, look at the test as a whole.
 Common test format:
 MCQ

 Cloze test 9
 5. PRE-TESTING
PURPOSE
 Helps to identify poor distractors
 Gives the test writer a chance to improve poor items
PRINCIPLES FOR PRE-TESTING
 The tester should administer the newly-developed test to
a group of examinees similar to the target group and the
purpose is to analyze every individual item as well as the
whole test.
 Numerical data (test results) should be collected to check
the efficiency of the item, it should include item facility
and discrimination.

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 6. TEST ADMINISTRATION
Guidelines to consider to ensure that the actual
administration of the test accomplishes everything
you want to:
1. when and where the test will be
administered?
2. how will it be administered?
3. who will administer the test?
4. what facilities/apparatus would be necessary
for the successful administration of the test?

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7. SCORING AND REPORTING
Scoring
The scoring plan reflects the relative weight place on
each section and on the items on each section.
Objective tests have a pre-determined answer,
however in subjective tests many decisions have to
be made.

Reporting
The most common way is in terms of grades.
Sometimes pupils are ran ordered according to the
scores they obtained and a class position is recorded.
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 8. TEST INTERPRETATION
1. Mean/average-a measure to find out how the class as a
whole fared in the test.
Mean/average = sum of all scores
numbers of all candidates
STUDENTS TEST A STUDENTS TEST B

1 70 1 17 Interpretation:-
2 67 2 45
• If the mean score is high (test A),
3 68 3 30
the students may have mastered
4 66 4 20 the skill(s) taught or the test was
5 65 5 65 too easy.
mean 67.2 mean 35.4
• If the mean is low (test B), the
students may have not learnt
what was being taught or the test
was too difficult.
 8. TEST INTERPRETATION
2-Range-It is used when there is an extremely influences in
the average score between two tests.
E.g:- STUDENTS TEST A TEST B

1 70 70
2 67 67
3 68 68
This extreme mark of O
4 0 66 has made the average for
5 65 65 the group drop by 13.2
mean 54 67.2
Range = Highest score – lowest score
In order to correct mistaken view that mean score gives,
range and mean score should be looked at together to
get true picture of students performance.
 8. TEST INTERPRETATION
3-Mode-the score that most candidates obtained.
Median-the score that separates the top half of the class
from the bottom half.

CANDIDATES SCORES CANDIDATES SCORES

DILLA 75 RINA 90
RINA 90 ASIF 90 median
NAD 85 AMER 90
ZAIDI 65 NAD 85
ASIF 90 DILLA 75
mode
AMER 90 ZAIDI 65
 8. TEST INTERPRETATION
What you can interpret for these graphs?

f f

x x

f f

x x
 ITEM ANALYSIS
Item analysis is done to find out two things:
1. How well teaching and learning have taken place
2. How well each item within a test has worked in
relation to the test as a whole.

Two criteria are generally used:

3. The difficulty or facility index to determine how
easy or difficult a test was.
 the ideal/expected level of difficulty if 60 -70% but
30 – 90% is considered acceptable.

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 ITEM ANALYSIS
2. The discrimination index to find out how well a test
managed to separate the good students from the poor
students.
 Perfect discrimination is the score of 1. This means all
the good candidates got the item correct and all the
poor students got the item wrong. This score is seldom
obtained.
 generally, an item that has a discrimination index of
less than 3 is not considered good and may be remove
from the test.
 Negative discrimination index means that it is easier for
poor students than for good students.
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 TUTORIAL
Pairwork:
Draw up a table of specifications that reflect
both the purpose and the objectives of the test

Discuss the importance of test specifications

for the purpose of assessment

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 References
Brown, H. Douglas, 2004. Language Assessment: Principles
and classroom practices. Pearson Education, Inc.
Chitravelu, Nesamalar, 2005. ELT Methodology: Principles
and Practice. Penerbit Fajar Bakti, Sdn, Bhd.

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