LECTURE 1

ASSESSMENT AND TESTING. GENERAL ISSUES. APPROACHES TO TESTING

1. Testing as a means of assessment. Why, when, what

2. Tests used at secondary and tertiary levels

3. Approaches to testing and main kinds of testing

4. The main characteristics of tests

Warmer: synonyms to the word to love: to adore, to worship, to be fond of, to be crazy about, to like, to admire, to be attracted by, to fancy, to feel affection to, to be keen on etc.

Do you associate any of these words with the term assessment? Does it cause pleasant feelings, emotions and positive attitudes? Is it common? Why? Why do so many professors in anecdotes serve as executors and students as innocent victims who sometimes manage to cheat the cruel professor? Do we all have some misconceptions about assessment? Or do we, as teachers, feel some kind of malicious glee when thinking about our chance to take revenge at the examination?

Do our students view each test as Doomsday? As painful but inevitable prelude to holidays?

To clarify that we are to find out what assessment is, what testing is and whether it is a panacea for all the defects of modern schooling.

1. Testing as a means of assessment. Why, when, what

Let’s clarify the terms: evaluation, assessment and testing.

Assessment is measuring our students’ performance and the progress they make, diagnosing the problems they have and providing learners useful feedback.

Evaluation is considering all the factors that influence the learning process such as syllabus objectives, course design, materials used, methodology, teacher performance and assessment. Assessment is one of the most valuable sources of information about what is happening in a learning environment. So evaluation is an umbrella term.

Is testing synonymous with evaluation? No, it is a way of formal assessment alongside with oral exams of traditional format. Assessment may also be informal, carried out by the teacher not under special test/exam conditions.

Is it just teachers’ responsibility to test their students? Primarily yes, but school or university administration also have a say, and local and national authorities are responsible in case of some regional tests (“srezy”) or national exams or the so called external independent testing (ZNO). Besides assessment of students’ progress may be carried out by the students themselves, it may be peer-assessment or self-assessment.

They often say that testing should take place only after learning. It’s true about tests at the end of the topic, term, or year. It’s summative assessment measuring students’ performance at the end of a certain period of study. But we should not forget about formative assessment which feeds back into learning, gives learners information of their progress throughout a course, helps them to become more efficient learners. There are diagnostic tests as well aimed at finding out students problematic areas with the language and given at the beginning of a course or when a new teacher starts conducting a course and wants to know where students and s/he stands.

Testing as a check on learning is essential. Teaching implies giving input and guidance, testing implies absence of teacher’s support and some kind of evaluation. One absolutely necessary features of testing is accountability. As professionals, teachers should be able to provide learners, parents, institutions and society in general, with clear indications of what progress has been made and if it has not, why that is so. We should be able to explain the rationale behind the way assessment takes place and how conclusions are drawn, rather than hiding behind a smoke screen of professional secrecy.

Assessment should be aimed at giving students a chance to show what they have learnt rather than to reveal what they have not learnt. Unfortunately, it is not always like that. Tests try to catch students out and students feel alienated by the assessment because they have no other role in it but that of passive participants. For many learners in this situation, especially when task formats and criteria for grading the works are not informed beforehand, assessment may seem arbitrary and at times even unfair. Sometimes they get on with their teacher, sometimes they do not. Sometimes they are lucky and revise the right material for a test, sometimes they are unlucky.

To change this gloomy picture, we are to analyse tests that are used at schools and at universities, to speak about different test formats, to find out how to test effectively and integrate testing into teaching process, and last, but not least, - how to enlist the help and participation of both teachers and learners and use a co-operative approach. Rather than being motivated by the threat of examinations, students should start feel more responsible for their own progress.