ELT Inspector : Abdessamad Hammami

Trainee Inspector : Habib Cherni

 What do you expect today’s session to be
about ?
 Write one expectation share it with your
partner and then share within a group of four
, and agree on two expectations .
 Compare your expectations with the trainer’s
objectives .
1 minute sand timer

1 minute

End
By the end of Today’s Session Teachers will be
able to :
 Identify reasons for testing
 Recognize the qualities of a good test
 Use test specifications when constructing
tests
 Spot good qualities and anomalies in tests
 Write a list of do’s and don’ts in relation to
testing
 A test can give the teacher valuable
information about where the students are in
their learning.
 Can affect what the teacher will cover next.
 A test will help a teacher to decide if her
teaching has been effective
 A test can give students a sense of
accomplishment as well as information about
what they know and what they need to
review.
 A test helps students to highlight what needs
to be reviewed.
 A test can have a positive effect in that they
encourage students to review material
covered on the course.
 A test is also a learning opportunity after it
has been taken. The feedback after a test can
be invaluable in helping a student to
understand something she couldn't do during
the test. Thus the test is a review in itself.
 https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/testing-assessment
“Summative assessment is intended to be an
indicator of learners’ achievement. It is
carried out at the end of a period of study”

Official Programmes , Secondary Education

 Evaluation
Assessment of outcomes ,
progress and efficiency of
procedures for formative
and summative purposes
 Validity Reliability

Practicality
The qualities of a
Washback good test

Discrimination Authenticity
 Match the different qualities of a test to their
appropriate definitions
 (slips of papers )
 Validity The extent to which a test measures
what it is supposed to measure .

Reliability The extent to which test scores are

consistent .

Practicality The economy of time ,effort and

money in testing.

Authenticity The degree to which language testing

materials have the qualities of natural
speech or writing .

Discrimination The degree to which a test or an item in a

test distinguishes among better and
weaker students who take the test

Washback Washback refers to the effect of

 The extent to which a test
measures what it is supposed to
measure.
 There are several types of validity,
for example:

Face Validity

Validity
Content
validity
 Face validity refers to how acceptable and
credible a test is to its users (Alderson et al
1995) . So if a test has high face validity,
teachers and learners believe it tests what it
is supposed to test.
 If a test has content validity, we have enough
language to make a judgement about the
student’s ability. So if a writing test is to have
content validity, we need to be confident we
have asked the student to do enough writing
to display their writing skills
 By observation and theoretical justification,
since there’s no final, absolute, and objective
measure of validity. We have to ask questions
that yield convincaccurately and sufficiently
ing evidence that a test measures the testee
for the particular purpose of the test.

Testee Tester
‘ Nobody writes good test items alone .Even
professional test writers need the insight of
other people into what they have produced.
Therefore,get other people ( plural !)to take
(i.e.respond to ,not just look at ) your items.

J.Charles Alderson et al,

Language Tests Construction And
Evaluation,(C.U.P/1995)
Reliability is the extent to which test
scores are consistent :if candidates
took the test again tomorrow after
taking it today,would they get the
same result ?
( assuming no change in their ability )
 Exclude items which do not discriminate well
between weaker & stronger students.
 Do not allow candidates too much freedom.
 Write unambiguous items.
 Provide clear and explicit instructions.
 Ensure that tests are well laid out and
perfectly legible.
 Make candidates familiar with format and
testing techniques.
Practicality refers to the economy of time, effort
and money in testing. In other words, a test
should be:

• Easy to design
1

• Easy to administer
2

3
• Easy to mark
 A test that is too expensive is impractical
 A test that would take students 3 hours
instead of 2 to complete would be
impractical
 A test that takes students a few minutes to
complete and several hours for the examiner
to prepare and/or correct is impractical
The degree to which language teaching /testing
materials have the qualities of natural speech or
writing .

Topics should be relevant and meaningful for learners

Items should be contextualized rather than isolated

Some thematic organization to items should be provided

Tasks should represent, or closely approximate, real-world tasks

 The degree to which a test or an item in a test
distinguishes among better and weaker
students who take the test .For example ,if all
the students who took a test scored around
85% ,yet the students were known to be of
different degrees of ability, the test would fail
to discriminate.
Longman Dictionary of Language
Teaching and Applied Linguistics
 Washback refers to the effect of
testing on teaching and
learning. Positive washback can
benefit teachers and students .
It assumes that testing and
curriculum design are both
based on clear course outcomes
which are known to both
students and teachers/testers.
If students perceive that tests
are markers of their progress
towards achieving these
outcomes, they have a sense of
accomplishment. In short, tests
must be part of learning
experiences for all involved.
End
 Group 1 :Speaking
 Group 2:Reading Comprehension
 Group 3: Listening
 Group 4: Language
 Group 5: Writing
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/344173596507250905/
Teachers should :

 Have a clear rationale for each suggested task /

question
 Vary the themes in the reading comprehension ,
the language exercises and the writing tasks
 Give clear and concise instructions that are familiar
to the test takers and accessible to the average
pupil .
 Depressing and shocking themes in
texts/ paragraphs and tasks
suggested.
 Time –consuming tasks
 Repetition or overuse of a question
type
 Materials taken from coursebooks
and commercial , extracurricular
workbooks ‘ livres parascolaires’
Teachers should consider the following
points :

 The length of the text / paragraphs

 The source of the text / paragraphs
 The topics / themes (relevant , recent ,
accessible , conveying universal values )
 6 or 7 questions for Arts branch
 5 or 6 questions for sciences branch
 The marking scheme ( one mark for each correct
answer )
 Teachers should :
 Leave the first sentence intact to set the context
 Spread items / not overload one or two
sentences with test items
 Strike a balance between tenses and forms
 Avoid ungrammatical items
 Suggest ‘bare inf ‘ /root/ base form in tense /
form exercises as a rule .
NB Each lexical item should be found somewhere
in the teaching materials in one of the official
textbooks in use
Teachers should :
 Avoid overloading tables / biography data
with many details and notes
 (In the productive task ) suggest a topic that
is related to the curriculum and should
interest and motivate the pupil to write ( the
task should not lend itself to rote learning )
 Specify the genre ; article , letter , email ,
blog post , facebook post etc.
 Suggest a task which is manageable within
allotted time ( specify the number of lines
required )
 Arthur Hughes , (2003) , Testing For
Language Teachers
 Lyle F. Bachman and Adrian S.Palmer , (1996)
Language Testing In Practice , Designing and
developing Useful Language Tests
 John Izard , (2005) , Overview of Test
Construction
 http://www.openisbn.com/preview/0194371
484/
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