BRI 3053: LANGUAGE TESTING FOR PRIMARY SCHOOLS

ASSIGNMENT 1: EVALUATING A LANGUAGE TEST

LANGUAGE TESTING

"Language Testing is the practice and study of evaluating the proficiency of an individual in
using a particular language effectively." (Priscilla Allen, University of Washington 2002).
Language testing is an important part of the teaching and learning process. The test can be
administered at any stage of the teaching and learning process. The test will give a clear
indicator to the level of proficiency of the pupil and the language test also will help teachers
to overcome the pupils weaknesses and prepare a better teaching method to cater the pupils
needs.

A good composed language test should comprise of these four language testing principles;
they are:

A. Validity
B. Reliability
C. Practicality
D. Authenticity

Validity of a language test is important to ensure that the test given is reliable and able to
measure pupils abilities. A good test should be able to be validated or accurate to measure
pupils understanding of the lesson that they had learnt. Some of the language experts have
defined the term of test validity. Heaton (1975: 153), for example, states that the validity of a
test is the extent to which it measures what it is supposed to measure.

Reliability is the consistency of the test; the test should be composed according to the skills
that the teachers wanted to test. The test administered to pupils should yield same results. The
factors affecting the reliability of a language test are:

A. Pupil-related reliability: pupils personal factors such as motivation, illness, and

anxiety can hinder from their real performance,
B. Rater reliability: either intra-rater or inter-rater leads to subjectivity, error, bias during
scoring tests,
C. Test administration reliability: when the same test administered in different occasion,
it can result differently,
 D. Test reliability: dealing with duration of the test and test instruction. If a test takes a
long time to do, it may affect the pupils performance such as fatigue, confusion, or
exhaustion. Some pupils do not perform well in the timed test. Test instruction must be
clear for all of test takers since they are affected by mental pressures.
(Heaton, 1975: 155-156; Brown, 2004: 21-22):

Practicality of test should also be considered when constructing the test. The test should be
cost effective, time and energy saving. Teacher should consider the practicality of test by
considering the time, the cost and the suitable time to administer the test. It is pointless if a
valid and reliable test cannot be administed if the test could not be done because the faclities
and time is suitable (Heaton, 1975: 158-159; Weir, 1990: 34-35; Brown, 2004: 19-20).

Authenticity of a test is important. According to Bachman and Palmer (as cited in Brown,
2004: 28) defined authenticity as the degree of correspondence of the characteristics of a
given language test task to the features of a target language. There are few factor should be
taken into consideration to make an authentic test, there are:
A. The language used in the test should be natural and easy for the pupils to understand
B. The items in the test are contextual.
C. The topics brought in the test should be meaningful and interesting for the learners and
should not veer of the topic learnt by the pupils.
D. The items in the test should be organized thematically, and the test must be based on
the real-world applications such as part of speech.

For this study, the test paper is composed for year 3 pupils of Sekolah Kebangsaan Seri
Samudera in Manjung District. The test paper is mainly to test the writing and reading skills
of the pupils. I had studied the test paper and using the principle of language testing I had
discovered its strength and weaknesses. The test paper has 30 questions divided into three
sections; section A, section B and section C.

STRENGTH OF THE TEST PAPER

Practicality
The test paper has pictures to guide pupils to generate ideas and further pupils understanding
of the questions. The layout of the test paper is simple and practical. The questions are also
simple and the rubrics are easy for the year 3 pupils to understand.

Reliability

The test paper is simple and the pupils will be able to complete the test within the time frame
given. The test is given during the monthly test and it will assess pupils ability to understand
and build sentences. It also tests the grammar ability of the pupils.

Weaknesses

This test paper has some issues. The test paper is assessing to different skills. The section A of
the test is assessing the reading and writing skills of the pupils. The section B and C of the
test is assessing the grammar skills of the pupils. The test should only test one skill at a time
so that the pupils wont be confused. The teacher who prepares the test paper should consider
the validity of the test and what part of the language skills that the teacher wants to assess on
the pupil. The test also is too simple and it doesnt test or assess any part of the language skills
that the pupils require to master.

The teacher who prepares the test paper must assess only one skill. For example the test is
prepared to assess pupils ability to construct a meaningful sentence and ability to form a
sentence should only have these questions in the test paper and not veering from the intended
objectives.