By: Snežana Filipović

“The assumption is that is that best teacher is the teacher who devises classroom methods and techniques that derive from a comprehensive knowledge of the total process of language learning, of what is happening within the learner and within the teacher and the interaction between the two. All of this knowledge, however, remains somehow abstract in the mind of the teacher unless it can be empirically tested in the real world.

Your theory of second language acquisition can be put into practice every day in the classroom, but you will never know how valid your theory is unless you systematically measure the success of your learners – the success of your theory-in-practice”

Douglas Brown (1987:218)

-They are objective

-They are quick to do and check

-They test exactly what you want them to test

-They can be easily analysed

Anatomy of a Multiple Choice Item

1. How did Tina go to the airport?

- a) by bus

- b) by car

- c) on foot

- d) by taxi

stem

alternatives

distractor

answer

distractor

distractor

ITEM FACILITY INDEX

number of students answering correctly

IF = ---------------------------------------

number of students taking the test

ITEM DISCRIMINATION ANALYSIS

We test because we want to find out if the students know the material, but

all we learn for certain is how they did on the exam we gave them. The item

discrimination index tests the test in the hope of keeping the correlation between

the knowledge and exam performance as close as it can be in an admittedly

imperfect system. Zurawski 1998: 2

ITEM DISCRIMINATION INDEX

ID = IF upper - IF lower

GENERAL RULES FOR ID INDEX

0.40 and up – Excellent items

0.30 – 0.39 - Good items but possibly subject to improvement

0.20 – 0.29 – Marginal items, usually needing and being subject to improvement

Below 0.19 – Poor items, to be rejected or improved by revision