Assessment Test Roxana Correa Pérez – UCSC 2012.

Principles of Language Assessment Test

1. - Name and define (in no more than three lines) 3 Bachman & Palmer’s qualities of test

usefulness and 3 Brown’s. Compare 1 quality in both models. (10 out of 14)

- Bachman & Palmer

* Practicality: a test is practical when it is not expensive to set, it os not carried out with one

hundred students in 10 hours, etc. Practicality refers to the external factors of a testing situation.

*Washback: In general terms, it is the cooperative feedback between students and teachers;

teachers can analyze what they have to improve as well as students.

* Validity: It is the quality that refers to the test should have in terms of measurement; it responds

to the question “does it measure what was supposed to be measured?”

- Brown

*Validity: It is that principle that refers to the measurement of what was taught. There are

different types of it, such as “face validity”, which refers to the impression students have when a

test is being tested.

* Washback: it is based on the impression that both students and teachers have according to their

respective performances: What do students need to improve and what do they lack of? What does

the teacher have to improve in terms of creating a useful?

* --

- Both Bachman&Palmer and Brown consider reliability and validity the most influential

principles/qualities respectively when talking about creating a useful test. These authors believe

that a test will never be either one hundred percent reliable or one hundred percent valid;

however, they indicate that teachers should try to reduce those details that make a test less

reliable and less valid.

2. - Analyze the test item below. (10 out of 10)

a) What aspect(s) of language knowledge/ability is it testing or claiming to be testing?

b) Is it a valid and reliable test item? Back up your answers.

Assessment Test Roxana Correa Pérez – UCSC 2012.

Test of Spoken English

Look at the timetable below and tell your teacher about it.

British Rail Timetable

Leads London 07.00 09.05 07.20 09.35 07.38 10.05 08.05 10.35 09.05 11.37 10.05 12.30

If we analyze deeply the exercise of the spoken English test, we are able to affirm that it is valid in

terms of measuring what was supposed to be measured (students have to look at the timetable

and tell—i.e. “speak”, your teacher about it: it is a spoken test so the student should speak), but it

has a weak reliability because the structure of the test is not clear but too narrow. It (the test) is

an oral test that pretends to measure the speaking ability considering time vocabulary but

instructions are not that clear, which makes the test itself much less subjective.

3. - Analyze the cartoon in terms of test qualities. Identify and explain 1 weak and 1 strong test

quality of testing situation. (1 out of 8)