Teach english new edition r

Testing
■ Reasons for testing students ■ Marking tests
■ Good tests 
■ Designing tests
■ Test types
Reasons for testing students
At various stages during their learning, students may need or want to be tested on their 
ability in the English language. If they arrive at a school and need to be put in a class at an 
appropriate level, they may do a 
placement test. 
This often takes the form of a num ber of 
discrete (indirect) items (see below), coupled with an oral interview and perhaps a longer 
piece of writing. The purpose o f the test is to find out not only what students know, but also 
what they don’t know. As a result, they can be placed in an appropriate class.
At various stages during a term or semester, we may give students 
progress tests. 
These 
have the function of seeing how students are getting on with the lessons, and how well they 
have assimilated what they have been taught over the last week, two weeks or a m onth.
At the end of a term , semester or year, we may want to do a final 
achievement test
(sometimes called an 
exit test) 
to see how well students have learnt everything. Their 
results on this test may determine what class they are placed in next year (in some schools, 
failing students have to repeat a year), or may be entered into some kind of school-leaving 
certificate. Typically, achievement tests include a variety of test types and measure the 
students’ abilities in all four skills, as well as their knowledge of gram m ar and vocabulary.
Many students enter for 
public examinations 
such as those offered by the University 
of Cambridge ESOL, Pitm an or Trinity College in the UK, and in the US, the University 
of Michigan and TOEFL and TOEIC. These 
proficiency tests 
are designed to show what 
level a student has reached at any one time, and are used by employers and universities, for 
example, who want a reliable measure of a student’s language abilities.
So far in this chapter we have been talking about testing in terms of ‘one-off’ events, 
usually taking place at the end of a period of tim e (except for placement tests). These 
‘sudden death’ events (where ability is measured at a particular point in time) are very 
different from