DESIGNING CLASSROOM LANGUAGE TESTS

 

 When I first started reading Brown's chapter on designing language tests, I thought it would be a "boring" manual on how to fail and/or promote your students, after all, what is there to know about tests? how difficult can it be to throw some questions, accommodate some multiple choices items, create a word-puzzle? what could be so complicated or important on a quizz that needs a whole chapter?! well, to my surprise there is a whole world of information and right, meaningful ways to assess our students that I as a teacher had no knowledge about.

First of all, and specifically, we must design tests, quizzes, assessment tasks that provide our students with washback; this is the main reason for assessing, rather than assigning a grade and have them pass or fail a course. It is also necessary to analyze everything students should know or be able to do at a certain stage of the learning process and based on those objectives, we must start planning activities that provide learners with real life uses of the language, natural conversations that create a meaningful and interesting context for them. Moreover, we need to make sure we know what kind of skills we want our students to be able to display, do we want them to write perfect essays? do we want to be effective speakers? so we can create the right assessing tools that are consistent with the tasks and exercises used during the whole course.

Secondly, teachers should be aware that feedback is the real reason why we assessed students. It is not enough to provide a number or a letter grade if they are not told about their weaknesses and strengths, it would not represent any gain for them. The testing experience should allow learners to identify their areas of success and challenge, this should be, ultimately, a learning experience.