How a good language test can support effective learning

By Luis Armando Villalobos Njera

ELT Professor at the Autonomous University of Aguascalientes
2013

A language test in the communicative classroom must serve different purposes in order to become
a good language test. Although the main purpose of language tests is to measure students
learning outcomes, language tests must also support learning and motivate students to learn a
foreign or a second language.
As a language teacher, I have designed and administered a great number of tests, especially
achievement tests for general English courses at all levels including tests for different subjects in
the BA in ELT at my university. Throughout all the years of experience as a teacher, I have
observed that most of the times students experience test anxiety mainly because they do not feel
prepared to take the test or they do know the length and contents of the test.
But how can teachers help students overcome test anxiety and use language tests as an aid to
improve learning in their students? Perhaps, one of the major issues to reflect on is in relation to
the way we test our students and whether our tests are well designed in favor of obtaining
positive backwash effect.
Most of the times language teachers become test designers unless the institution they work for
has an appointed team of test designers. In my own experience as a language teacher and a test
designer, I have become aware of various important aspects to be taken into account when
designing a written test with the purpose of supporting not only effective learning, but also
effective teaching:
Test length
Tests must be short. It is advisable to construct not very long tests since tests with many long
exercises will overwhelm students and may block their minds.
Diversity and format of test items
Language tests must include different types of items, such as Multiple choice, Fill in the blanks,
Matching, Open-ended questions, and so on. Varying the types of test items will maintain
students mental agility while taking the test. It is important to mention that the test items should
follow a similar format to the exercises in the coursebook. When students are faced with a
different format in the test items, they usually get confused or distracted and will probably waste
precious time in answering correctly.
Clarity of instructions
Each section of the exam must contain clear and concise instructions. Students often answer
incorrectly when instructions are unclear and confusing and as a result they may fail an entire
section of the exam.
Contextualized test exercises
When designing test items, it is important to provide some context with the purpose of making
such items understandable and communicative. When students are confronted with
contextualized items they usually recall information related to the situation being presented in
such items and will have more chances to supply correct answers.
Test preparation activities
Once I finish designing the test my students will be taking, I also design an exam study guide
where I list all the topics included in the test and give them out to my students a couple of days
before the test administration.
The first day the students are asked to organize themselves in groups of three or four students.
Then, each study group goes over the study guide, discusses the topics and exchanges ideas.
Finally, they commit themselves to gather the materials given through the course and bring them
to class the next day. The second day is the most productive as the study groups, guided by the
teacher, make a more complete review of the exam topics, solve doubts, and exchange
information with other study groups in the class.
During the course of these preparation activities, effective learning takes place as previous
knowledge is recycled and stored in the students long-term memory and this will be reflected in
the exam results.
These test preparation activities, that can also be considered part of collaborative work in the
classroom, support effective learning and moreover help to maintain a positive classroom
environment.
Oral tests
Oral examinations are usually intimidating for most students mainly because they fear public
speaking. Students feel their vocabulary knowledge is not enough and are afraid of committing
grammar mistakes. I usually avoid face to face interviews to evaluate oral performance of my
students as I feel this type of assessment is somewhat intimidating. I rather ask them in advance to
organize themselves in small groups to role play communicative situations. I also give them sets of
role cards of different topics. They are also free to choose the topics and characters of their
preference and they may even wear special costumes in their presentations. I have always noticed
that using role plays as a means to evaluate oral performance helps to increase students
motivation as well as to improve their oral communication skills.



We must test what we have taught
A language test would be unfair if we include topics we did not cover in the classes previous to the
day when the test takes place. Likewise, including unknown vocabulary items in the test exercises
may also seriously affect students performance and consequently will obtain an inaccurate grade.

To sum up, it is important to point out what Glencoe, 2005, states regarding effective tests, A
well-written test allows you to accurately and consistently measure students mastery of specific
content taught in class. Results of well-written tests also allow teachers to measure, to some
degree, how effective their instruction has been. In other words, it is the teachers responsibility
to construct well-written tests in order to measure accurately students knowledge and to make
decisions whether the syllabus and the methodology must be modified.
Furthermore, if we are able to help our students to overcome learning anxiety through creating a
nice classroom atmosphere and if we are willing to assist them with strategies to deal with test
anxiety, we will achieve the goal of making our students successful language learners.