Introduction

Testing plays a crucial role in teaching and learning

English. It enables teachers and pupils to evaluate the
achievement of their goals. Teachers can track the progress of
their pupils. That is, how well they are mastering the content so
that teachers can determine or modify their plans to meet the
problems faced by students. On the other hand, pupils benefit
from tests as they stimulate them to pay closer attention to the
material. They also give them feedback about the strong and
weak areas in their performance, so that they can remedy their
weakness. In other words, tests are tools for measuring
achievement, promotion and graduation. In addition, they also
serve as a basis for reporting pupils' progress to the people
concerned: parents, headmasters, supervisors, teachers, high
education institutions.

Definitions
Tests:
Are samples of behaviors, intended to reflect whether the
examinee possesses certain knowledge, or to predict whether he
or she can perform certain acts.
Are devices, procedures, or sets of items that are used to
measure ability, skill, understanding, knowledge, or
achievement. (Eric descriptors1996)
 A test is a task or a set of tasks which can be assigned
under uniform conditions for purposes of assessment or
evaluation.

Importance
Tests are important, why?
As seen in the introduction, tests are important for many
reasons. In addition,
1) Tests motivate learners to study English or any other
subjects in order to score high marks.
2) Tests are used to measure aptitude of the students for
language learning.
3) Tests help teachers to set instructional objectives.