Devising closed-ended test tasks

Also known as multiple-choice questions this kind of tasks involve a variety of chracteristics that must be taken into account for instuctors at the moment of designing an efficient and reliable test. Unexperienced teachers could think that designing a multiple -choice test is as easy as it is at the moment of grade this kind of practical tests, but it is a demanding task to desing tests that really represent our students´ froficiency and development. For this reason I would like to underline those characteristics or guidelines that appear very useful to teachers in the way that them give us a wider idea of test design and the direct  implications of this kind of assessment actvities in our performance due to the better we assess our students best decision we could make to improve our instruction.
So we must take into account:
- A simple and concise stem.
- Avoid unnecesary double negatives or complex wordings in the stem.
- That the stem evaluates what is supposed to.
- The precesnce of inadvertent cues to the right answer
-Avoid vervatim repetition material already thought in class.
- To design distractors of the same grammatical and semantic classas the correct response
- The response alternatives must be grammaticaly compatible with the stem.
- All the alternatives must be equally attractive.
- The distractors must be informative.
-The alternatives must be equally difficult and long.
-There must not be more than one correct alternative
- The alterntives must match the stem.
- The correct response should be derived from common kowledge.
-Alternatives must not refer to other items.

Interviews as an useful tool for producing washback in assessment

Interviews in assessment can be applied in different stages of a teaching process; at the beginning a teacher could implement an interview in order to gather information about students` social, personal and cultural background, and in the same way previous language and educational experiences and also their current language skills or English proficiency. Some needs could also be detected at this stage. During the process information about the effectiveness of a unit or some procedures can be gathered and also some students` impressions about the course can be checked. The data collected at the end of a course can be useful in the way that revision of instructional plans for next  groups of students can be made. I do recommend that a short and an

informal interview should be made at the moment of giving back the tests scores; It could create beneficial washback in the case of low scores because the students are not going to take only their bad results to home, instead they can be encouraged by the teacher to keep trying and get a more possitive feeling about their failure. It can also help to incrase the motivation of students with high scores due to good comments of the teacher about the high scores.

Importatnt concepts about tests.

I would like to share with you some important concepts about test taht we should have clear.

Some important concepts in assessment with tests

♦ Formative assessment or diagnostic testing is a range of formal and informal assessment procedures employed by teachers during the learning process in order to modify teaching and learning activities to improve student attainment. It typically involves qualitative feedback (rather than scores) for both student and teacher that focuses on the details of content and performance. It is commonly contrasted with summative assessment, which seeks to monitor educational outcomes, often for purposes of external accountability.

♦ Summative assessment (or summative evaluation) refers to the assessment of the learning and summarizes the development of learners at a particular time. After a period of work, e.g. a unit for two weeks, the learner sits for a test and then the teacher marks the test and assigns a score. The test aims to summarize learning up to that point. The test may also be used for diagnostic assessment to identify any weaknesses and then build on that using formative assessment.

♦ A norm-referenced test (NRT) is a type of test, assessment, or evaluation which yields an estimate of the position of the tested individual in a predefined population, with respect to the trait being measured. This estimate is derived from the analysis of test scores and possibly other relevant data from a sample drawn from the population. That is, this type of test identifies whether the test taker performed better or worse than other test takers, but not whether the test taker knows either more or less material than is necessary for a given purpose.

The term normative assessment refers to the process of comparing one test-taker to his or her peers.

♦ A criterion-referenced test is one that provides for translating test scores into a statement about the behavior to be expected of a person with that score or their relationship to a specified subject matter. Most tests and quizzes that are written by school teachers can be considered criterion-referenced tests. The objective is simply to see whether the student has learned the material. Criterion-referenced assessment can be contrasted with norm-referenced assessment and ipsative assessment.

Making journals more attractive

As it is known journals can be an useful tool in a second language learning process. Even though some difficulties could arise, as students reluctant to write, just as an example. There can be descried some clear advantages triggered by journals due to that it can reveal useful analysis in a learning process that cannot be obtained by other techniques of feedback. In the same way students are actively present in their own learning process, also have a more general view on their own learning and also a journal can directly generate better teacher´s decisions about instruction. I think that the idea of writing something that even is not scored in the class could not look so attractive for modern students. Journal should be fostered by ways that make student feel more willing to write about them selves.I think that teachers could use some ways at the moment of the students writing a journal. maybe giving them more freedom not only about the content but also about the way they carry out  the journal; maybe they could complement their writings adding infomation in different ways maybe with own drawings, pictures, cuttings from magazines or even designing their own book where they are going to carry out the journal and in the same way rewarding the more creative ones. I think it could be in some way usefull for make students a bit more willing to capture their perceptions about their own learning process.

As inexperiencied teachers you might have a narrow peception about evaluation really means and involves. In contrast, there are several and different aspects and issues concerned to evaluation that a teacher must bear in mine if it is required to have a better teaching performance and more effective learning programs.

This book analyzes the different contexts where evaluation takes place and several methods intended to help teachers make effective decitions in their classrooms. In a teaching context some different scenarios can emerge where the teacher would have to make sound decisions in order to aplly solutions and in the same way make changes that directly will affect the  current program. As in this book is stated, evaluation involves gathering information to make decisions, due to this, the teacher should follow some methods and take into account important aspects and recognize several evaluation contents and concepts.

In the evaluation process exists three kinds of participants: parents, teachers and students, but the proffesional criterion and physical resources must be taken into account. Some evaluation steps  are recognized in this book in order to develop a evaluation method.

Evaluation steps

In general, evaluation follows threee basic steps:

-To gather information.(there are various ways)
-To interpret the information( there are varios kinds of interpretation)
-To make decitions based on the information gathered.
Furthermore, I would like to add that a fourth step could be added as to find better ways to implement the decsions bearing in mind in which way that decisions will affect our program and students performance.

Collecting information

It is quite important to bear in mind the importace of gather information beyond students scores (numbers) there is a lot of ways information can be collected and various kinds, as for example: Observation of students behaviour, students comments, students journas, tests etc.

If the teacher requires to know more about a student performance in a test, he must do a deeper analysis of the student score taking into account some external aspects as: The maximum score, the text content, language objectives, other student performance, students presence in the class, time dedicated to study etc, among other facts. Other sound questions must be analyzed too as for example: Is the test representative of that has been taught?

Purpose
One of the most important  aspect is to identify the purpose, the nature of the purpose determines the type of information needed and the method of collecting that information.The teacher undertakes evaluation in order to:
-Make decisions about follow-up instruction.
-Ascertain the effectiveness of instruction units in order to improve or maybe change them.
-Foster students in formulating personal learning objectives.
-Analyze students reactions to some instruction units(checklist)

It is quite interesting to discover the wide scope of evaluation and the huge amount of aspects, effects, reactions and fields it involves, in the same way it called my attention the great way in which this subject will affect our teaching and our students performance.

Happy morning everyone!!