DESIGNING CLASSROOM

LANGUAGE TESTS
Lecturer: Yee Bee Choo
IPGKTHO

Stages of Test Construction

Determini
ng
Planning
Writing
Preparing
Reviewing
Pretesting
Validating
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Stages of Test Construction

1. Determining
Be clear with the following:
The objective of the test (what will it measure?)
The need for the test (what advantages will it have?)
The test population (who will take it?)
The content (what will the test cover?)
The style of administration (how will it be given)
The item format (will it be forced choice? Multiple choice?)
The inclusion of alternate forms use (is it necessary for
this test?)
The training requirements (what professionals are allowed
to give the test?)

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Stages of Test Construction

2. Planning
Prepare a table of specifications for the test.
This will include information on:

content
format and timing
criteria
levels of performance
scoring procedures

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Stages of Test Construction

3. Writing
A good test item writer should:
be experienced in test construction.
know the subject matter well.
know and understand the students being
tested.
be thoroughly familiar with test formats
have the capacity in using language clearly
and economically.
be ready to sacrifice time and energy.
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Stages of Test Construction

4. Preparing
Factors in selecting the appropriate format:
Purpose of the test
Time available to prepare and score the test
The number of students to be tested
Physical facilities available for reproducing
the test
Skill in writing the different types of items

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Stages of Test Construction

5. Reviewing
Principles for reviewing test items:
The test should not be reviewed
immediately after its construction, but after
some considerable time.
Other teachers or testers should review it.
In a language test, it is preferable if native
speakers are available to review the test.

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Stages of Test Construction

6. Pre-testing
The tester should administer the newlydeveloped test to a group of examinees
similar to the target group and the purpose
is to analyse every individual item as well
as the whole test.
Numerical data (test results) should be
collected to check the efficiency of the item,
it should include item facility and
discrimination.
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Stages of Test Construction

7. Validating
Item difficulty (or easiness)/Item Facility (IF)

the extent to which an item is easy or

difficult for the proposed group of testtakers
Item discrimination (ID)
the extent to which an item differentiates
between high- and low-ability test-takers

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Stages of Test Construction

7. Validating
To measure the facility or easiness of the item, the following
formula is used:
IF= (c) / (N)
(c) - number of correct responses
(N) - total number of candidates
The results of such equations range from 0 1.
An item with a facility index of 0 is too difficult, and with 1 is
too easy.
The ideal item is one with the value of (0.5) and the
acceptability range for item facility is between [0.37 0.63],
i.e. less than 0.37 is difficult, and above 0.63 is easy.
Thus, tests which are too easy or too difficult for a given
sample population, often show low reliability.

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Preparing Test Blueprint/ Test

Specification

Test specs serve as a blueprint of the test in

the following:
a description of its content
item types (methods, such as multiplechoice, cloze, etc.)
tasks (e.g. written essay, reading a short
passage, etc.)
skills to be included
how the test will be scored
how it will be reported to students
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Preparing Test Blueprint/ Test

Specification
According Brown (2005), test specification
should include the following:
1. Outline of the test
2. Skills to be included
3. Item types and tasks

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Preparing Test Blueprint/ Test

Specification
1. Outline of the test (example)
Section A. Vocabulary
Part 1 (5 items): match words and definitions
Part 2 (5 items): use the words in a sentence

Section B. Grammar
(10 sentences): error detection (underline or circle the
error)

Section C. Reading comprehension

(2 one-paragraph passages): four short-answer items for
each

Section D. Writing
Respond to a two-paragraph article on Malaysian culture
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Preparing Test Blueprint/ Test

Specification
2. Skills to be included

Sometimes due to time constraint, a 60-minute test

can only assess 3 or 4 language skills, e.g. listening,
reading, writing and grammar.
Other skill such as speaking is done separately in
another time as more time is needed if the teacher
is assessing the students one-by-one.

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Preparing Test Blueprint/ Test

Specification
3. Item Types and Tasks

There are a limited number of modes of

eliciting responses (i.e. prompting) and of
responding on tests of any kind.

Consider: the test prompt can be oral

(student listens) or written (student reads)
and the student can respond orally or in
writing.

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Preparing Test Blueprint/ Test

Specification
3. Item Types and Tasks (Elicitation mode)
Oral (student listens)
word, pair of words
sentence(s), question
directions
monologue, speech
Pre-recorded
conversation;
interactive (live) dialogue

Written (student
reads)
word, set of words
sentence(s), question
directions
paragraph
essay, excerpt
short story, book

Preparing Test Blueprint/ Test

Specification
3. Item Types and Tasks (Response
mode)
Oral

Written

repeat
read aloud
yes / no
short response
describe
role play
monologue (speech)
interactive dialogue

mark multiple-choice
option
fill in the blank
spell a word
define a term (with a
phrase)
short answer (2-3
sentences)
essay

Preparing Test Blueprint/ Test

Specification
3. Item Types and Tasks (example)
Speaking (5 minute per person, previous day)
Format: oral interview
Task: teacher asks questions of students

Listening (10 minutes)

Format: teacher makes audiotape in advance, with one other
voice on it
Task: a. 5 minimal pair items, MCQ
b. 5 interpretation items, MCQ

Reading (10 minutes)

Format: cloze test items (10 total) in a story line
Task: fill-in the blanks

Writing (10 minutes)

Format: prompt for a topic: why I like/ do not like football
Task: writing a short opinion paragraph

Blooms Taxonomy
Blooms Taxonomy (1956) is a systematic
way of describing how a learners
performance develops from simple to
complex levels in their affective,
psychomotor and cognitive domain of
learning.
The original taxonomy provided carefully
developed definitions for each of the six
major categories in the cognitive domain
and it was revised in 2001.

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Blooms Taxonomy
Anderson and Krathwohl

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Blooms Taxonomy

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SOLO Taxonomy
SOLO (Biggs & Collis, 1982), which stands for
the Structure of the Observed Learning
Outcome, taxonomy is a systematic way of
describing how a learners performance develops
from simple to complex levels in their learning.
There are 5 stages, namely Prestructural,
Unistructural, Multistructural, which are in a
quantitative phrase and Relational and Extended
Abstract, which are in a qualitative phrase.
Students find learning more complex as it
advances.

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SOLO Taxonomy
SOLO is a means of classifying learning outcomes
in terms of their complexity, enabling teachers to
assess students work in terms of its quality not
of how many bits of this and of that they got
right.
At first we pick up only one or few aspects of the
task (unistructural), then several aspects but they
are unrelated (multistructural), then we learn how
to integrate them into a whole (relational), and
finally, we are able to generalise that whole to as
yet untaught applications (extended abstract).

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SOLO Taxonomy

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SOLO Taxonomy

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SOLO Taxonomy

The SOLO taxonomy maps the complexity of a students

work by linking it to one of five phases: little or no
understanding (Prestructural), through a simple and
then more developed grasp of the topic (Unistructural
and Multistructural), to the ability to link the ideas and
elements of a task together (Relational) and finally
(Extended Abstract) to understand the topic for
themselves, possibly going beyond the initial scope of
the task (Biggs & Collis, 1982; Hattie & Brown, 2004).
In their later research into multimodal learning, Biggs &
Collis noted that there was an increase in the structural
complexity of their (the students) responses (1991:64).

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Guidelines for Constructing Test

Items
Aim of the test: measure the objectives
prescribed by the blueprint and meet
quality
standards.
Range of topics to be tested: measure the
test-takers ability or proficiency in applying
the knowledge and principles on the topics
that they have learnt.
Range of skills to be tested: measure higher
levels of cognitive processing.

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Guidelines for Constructing Test

Items
Test format: follow a consistent design so that the
questioning process in itself does not give
unnecessary difficulty to answering questions.
Level of difficulty: plan number of questions at a
level of difficulty and discrimination to best
determine mastery and non-mastery performance
states.
Internal and cultural considerations (biasness):
refrain from the use of slang, geographic
references, historical references or dates
(holidays) that may not be understood by an
international examinee.

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Test Format
SPM 1119 English
Paper 1 (Time: 1 hour 45 minutes)
Section A. Directed Writing (35 marks)
Section B. Continuous Writing (50 marks)
Paper 2 (Time: 2 hours 15 minutes)
Section A. 15 MCQ questions (15 marks)
Section B. Information Transfer (10 marks)
Section C. (i) Reading Comprehension (10 marks)
(ii) Summary (15 marks)
Section D. Literature Component.
(i) Poem. 1 poem with 4 short-answer questions
(5 marks)
(ii) Novel. 1 essay question (15 marks)

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Test Format

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