Week 2 (Fundamentals of testing & assessment)

This topic helps me to understand better about what we should consider when designing a test to test or assess student’s performances.  Good language test should have criteria such as validity, reliability, practicability and backwash/washback.

This is what I understand about these 4 criteria. A test said to have validity when it measure what it is supposed to measure. In other words, validity deals with appropriateness of the content. There are several types of validity which are content validity, concurrent validity, predictive validity, construct validity and face validity.

Reliability is the consistency of test. A test should provide a clear instruction to avoid misinterpretation of what they asked to do for the test. Test said to be reliable when students get the same score even when they take same test on different day.

Practicability looks at how the test administer. When designing a test, we should think about logistic. A test should be easy to be administered without costing much money and time. A test should be fast, cheap and good but it is hard to achieve these criteria.