Tests are a necessary aspect of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). For an educator it is crucial to monitor the progress of the learners and be aware of difficulties they may experience.
Testing is a suitable way for the teacher to observe the learner’s success and failure and make conclusions considering the methods and approaches implemented for each specific learner or class (Hancock, 2006).
There are a number of various tests designed to determine the learners’ progress in each aspect of English such as proficiency, vocabulary, skills and knowledge, theoretical and practical application of language. This paper focuses on ten different types of tests and their use for TESOL.
Proficiency tests are normally composed of several levels. This is done in order to determine the learner’s proficiency in various spheres such as grammar, vocabulary, and text comprehension. Tests of thins kind are based on multiple choice scheme so the learner needs to select one of the offered answers.
The questions of such test are selected in order to target different aspects of the English grammar and also the learners’ ability to read and understand written text.
Proficiency tests are good for TESOL educators because they serve as a perfect tool for monitoring general progress, the efficiency of various teaching methods and the level of knowledge and skills of learners at various stages.
Diagnostic tests are rather specific; they are also recognised as progress tests. They are called this way because they are designed to diagnose certain aspects of language and the level of the learners’ progress (Gonzalez, 1996).
The tests of this type are often conducted in the end of a unit and are directed at the determination of the knowledge the students acquired and the skills they obtained.
These tests are normally based on short-term objectives. Since teaching English to the speakers of other languages is always broken down into units, diagnostic tests serve as useful means to estimate the quality of learning and to determine if the students can move on to the next stage based on their progress level.
Placement tests represent a particular kind of diagnostic tests (Brown, 2003). They are designed to cover the materials within a certain curriculum. They are conducted with the purpose to determine where the students are to be placed in relation to the information studied by specific learners.
In TESOL this kind of tests is useful because they help to save time and effort to both educators and students and place the learners exactly where they need to pick up from instead of making them go through certain materials for the second time.
Achievement tests can be viewed as a kind of progress or diagnostic tests because the main objective of these tests is to evaluate the knowledge of a learner within a particular curriculum, program or unit.
The length of the period of time covering certain material or program evaluated by the test is indefinite, and this is why the tests are called “achievement” instead of “progress”.
Achievement tests are oriented at the evaluation of specific kinds of knowledge, which is useful in TESOL because this allows estimating the quality of the program, and its suitability for the learners.
Language aptitude tests are important in TESOL, they are conducted even before the learning starts in order to determine each specific learner’s ability to learn and comprehend foreign languages which varies from one individual to another.
The tests of this kind are not very popular in the present days because of ethical reasons (Gonzalez, 1996). These tests tend to create bias for the teachers and students and they are viewed as invalid since they are conducted prior to actual language teaching and learning experience.
Testing is recognised as norm-referenced when a mark is given to a learner (Brown, 2003). This way, the individual performance of each student is related to that of the remaining members of the class.
This way of testing is applied because the progress and skill of each learner need to be placed on a certain position within the class. In TESOL giving marks is vital for the awareness of progress and failure for both teachers and students.
In criterion-referenced testing the progress of an individual learner is not compared to that of other students, but is matched against a set of criteria which are designed to determine the level of knowledge. In TESOL the criteria are designed to create a frame of what the learner should be able to do at a certain stage of their learning process.
The special feature of these tests is that they do not facilitate competition between the learners and focus of the positive effect of learning.
In TESOL English language is broken down into four skills which are reading, writing, speaking and listening and seven linguistic components spelling, grammar, syntax, morphology, phonology, graphology and vocabulary.
Discrete-item tests are designed to evaluate these parts separately which provides the learners with more specific understanding of the difficulties a learner may experience.
Global/integrative tests, on the contrary, are designed to view language as a whole. They do not separate the components from the context. This way, the learner’s ability to apply and combine many elements at the same time is evaluated. This approach towards testing considers the separate evaluation of the components as inadequate.
Communicative language testing is designed in order to evaluate the learner’s ability to communicate certain information to other people and also to be able to comprehend the information received from other speakers (Gonzalez, 1996). Communicative testing normally concerns both written and spoken language skills and knowledge.
The results of communicative languages tests are evaluated based on the quality but not the quantity of communication.
The purpose of this kind of testing is to determine the learner’s ability to apply the theoretical knowledge from their lessons in practice which requires levels of creativity. Such testing is focused on the content, integration and interactivity.
In TESOL such tests are vital because they evaluate the levels of learners’ preparation for the independent application of their knowledge.
In any kind of teaching testing is recognised to be one of the most controversial aspects. At the same time, it is one of the most important areas of teaching. It is impossible to determine an English language testing method which could be called the best.
Testing methods are selected based on the individual choice of each educator based on the goals they pursue. There are five principles of language assessment; they are reliability, validity, authenticity, practicality and washback. The efficient test method is the one that aims for the highest levels of these features.
Reference List
Brown, H. D. (2003). Language assessment: Principles and classroom practices. Harlow, United Kingdom: Longman.
Gonzalez, A. B. (1996). Testing English as a foreign language: An overview an some methodological considerations. RESLA, 11, 17-49.
Hancock, C. R. (2006). Language Teaching and Language Testing: a way and ways to make appropriate connections. Accion Pedagogica, 15, 6-13.