placement test used to find out what a learner's level is before deciding which course or level he/she should follow. It is usually used at the time of enrolment for obvious reasons! The content may reflect the syllabus of the school. diagnostic test used at the beginning of a course to find out what the students know and what they don't know. It is more finely tuned than a placement test and the content reflects what the students should know or will need to know at this particular level. Based on the test results the teacher or course planner can then ensure that the course content is relevant to the students' needs, or in other words, will teach them what they don't already know. progress test or formative test administered during the course. The test aims to find out how well students have grasped what has been taught on the course so far. In other words the test content is based on the teaching content, not on other things. As a result of this test, the teacher and the learners see how they are progressing. They can be used to help the teacher and the learners themselves set their own learning goals. final achievement test or summative test used at the end of a course to see if students have achieved the objectives set out in the syllabus. An end of year test, for example, falls into this category. A lot of information from this type of test is often wasted because it does not feed back into the learning process. proficiency test focuses on what students are capable of doing in a foreign language, regardless of the teaching programme. It is used to assess whether a student meets the general standard. These types of tests are often set by external bodies such as examining boards. They may be used within schools to see for example whether students are at the required level to enter for and pass a public exam. norm-formative test a test which compares test takers to each other rather than against external criteria content validity Refers to a test testing what it is supposed to test. In constructing a test you should draw up a list of the skills, structures etc. that you want to test. Then devise the test using this list. The test may not contain all of these things but should contain a representative selection of them. This helps avoid testing what is easy to test rather than what is important to test. construct validity Refers to a test testing what it is supposed to test and nothing else. For example, if the students do not understand the instructions and are therefore unable to get the right answer to a test item, you will not have tested what you intended to. Or if you want to test their listening skills and you give them a test based on distinguishing minimal pairs, are you sure that this will give you a good indication of their overall listening ability? face validity Refers to a test appearing to test what it is trying to test. This is not a scientific concept; it refers to how the test appears to the users. For example, if you aim to test a student's ability to read and understand whole texts, it might appear strange to do this by giving them a multiple choice grammar test. test reliability This means that if the same students, with the same amount of knowledge, took the same test at a different time they would get more or less the same results. (It would never be exactly the same because humans aren't like that.) The closer the results, the more reliable the test. It is unlikely that teachers designing tests will be able to test this kind of reliability. If a student does surprisingly badly or well in a test, what do you do? (A disadvantage of tests as the sole means of assessment!) scorer reliability This means that different markers or scorers would give the same marks to the same tests. This is easy with discrete item tests such as multiple choice if there really is only one correct answer and the markers mark accurately. But with, for example, a piece of 'free writing', the marking may be more subjective, particularly if the marker knows the students who did the test. To improve scorer reliability you can use things like clear guidelines for marking (criteria and points awarded), standardisation meetings (to compare sample tests and agree on what constitutes an A, B or a C for example), or double marking (two teachers mark each piece of work and the score is averaged). practicality This means that it is possible to carry out the test. For example if you want to use video for testing listening skills, have you got sufficient copies of the video and enough video players for all of the classes that need it. backwash refers to the effect that the test has on the teaching programme that leads up to it. For example, if the end of year test only tests writing and grammar, then it may discourage teachers from spending time on oral skills in class. spin off the positive or negative impact of a test on the test taker fresh starts questions which do not rely on a previous question, ie the learner has a fresh start to get an answer right. direct test the test actually requires the candidate to demonstrate ability in the skill being sampled. It is a performance test. For example, if we wanted to find out if someone could drive a vehicle, we would test this most effectively by actually asking him to drive the vehicle. In language terms, if we wanted to test whether someone could write an academic essay, we would ask him to do just that. In terms of spoken interaction, we would require candidates to participate in oral activities that replicated as closely as possible [and this is the problem] all aspects of real-life language use, including time constraints, dealing with multiple interlocutors, and ambient noise. indirect test a test that measures ability in underlying skills required to perform the authentic target language use situation, but does not require them to perform the actual test discrete item test used when we want to know if a learner can recognise or produce a specific language item integrative test a test which requires the taker to use several language skills at the same time, e.g. writing a letter objective scoring when a mark is given without the use of the examiner's personal judgement subjective scoring scoring requires an element of judgment on the part of the assessor e.g. a speaking test. criterion reference testing a test which measures learners results against external criteria e.g. FCE can-do statements These can be presented in the form of questions or statements to tick or cross. They differ from checklists in that they refer to language competencies, or what learners can do with the language rather than what language items they know.