A summary of the webinar Understanding test scores, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIzUcZ7BBDk

1. UNDERSTANDING TEST
SCORES: WHAT EVERY
TEACHER SHOULD KNOW
BY: DIANA CRUZ S.
JAN 2017

2. TEST CONSTRUCT: WHAT AM I TESTING?
Speaking
• Is often considered as the most important of the four
skills.
• One frustration commonly voiced by learners is that
they have spent years studying English, but still they
cannot speak it.
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3. WHY IS SPEAKING ASSESSMENT IS MORE DIFFICULT
THAN OTHER SKILLS?
• Not enough confidence of the student to speak.
• Get nervous / anxious when try to speak in english.
• Some words are difficult to pronounce
3

4. WHAT AM I TESTING?
• We need to choose
one of these aspects
for speaking
assessment.
• Is important to know
the purpose or the
context of the
assessment to select
one of the tasks 4

5. WHAT IS SPEAKING?
• It seems to be natural and simple but is totally the
opposite
• Speaking is a complex process
• Different speaking tasks activate different speaking
processes in the brain and we need to make sure we
assess the correct range of these processes
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6. COGNITIVE KNOWLEDGE AND PROCCESING
1. Start with the generation of ideas (CONCEPTUALIZATION STAGE), these
ideas are not expressed in sentence, only exist in our brain.
2. Next, these ideas are converted into language, for this we need to know
words, lexical knowledge (VOCABULARY) and the rules to put these words
together (GRAMMAR), the result is phrases and sentences
3. Then we need to convert these phrases and sentences into sounds
(ARTICULATION), the non verbal idea in our brain become in actual idea
that we express verbally
4. While we speaking we constantly monitoring the ideas, the vocabulary
and gramar we producing (SELF-MONITORING) 6

7. • When we speak we do the process explained in an
automatic way, but speaking could be very challenging for
learners because one of the elements needed for speaking
may be missing.
• The cognitive process is not fully developed
• The result is slowly speaking or hesitations when speaking.
• Ussualy speaking is compared with driving, at the begining
is a slow process, covering the basics
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8. • Learners need to be exposed to a range of
communicative situations (monologues, interactions,
etc), this is important because these situations put
different cognitive demands on the learner.
• The more different tasks are demanded for learners,
the more automatic process will be.
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9. HOW AM I TESTING?
TEST TASKS
• Talk about a topic (involves MONOLOGUE)
• Describe a photograph, compare photographs (involves
MONOLOGUE)
• Tell/summarise a story (involves MONOLOGUE)
• Question and answer (involves INTERACTION)
• Discussion (involves INTERACTION)
• Information gap activities (involves INTERACTION)
• Role plays (involves INTERACTION)
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10. ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES
• In the classroom the tasks have advantages and limitations,
that´s why we must combine a range of different activities
to reduce the limitations of the tasks as much as posible.
• We can include a range of task types like:
• Question and answer
• Monologue
• Paired Interaction
• To reduce the limitations we can also use of analytical and
global criteria and scales
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11. BEST WAY TO TEST SPEAKING
• There´s no ¨best¨way to test speaking.
• Each task has its unique advantages and limitations
• Each task is suitable for different purposes
• The task need to be fit for an specifical objective
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12. TASK DIFFICULTY: TYPE/TOPIC OF INFORMATION
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13. OTHER FACTORS WICH AFFECT TASK FAIRNESS
• Are the instructions clear?
• Is the purpose of the task clear to the test takers?
• Is there a range of tasks?
• Are the ítems/tasks in a justifiable order?
• Is the timing for each part of the test appropiate?
• Are the marking criteria clear to the test takers?
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14. HOW AM I SCORING?
CRITERIA TO ASSESS
Holistic:
- General impression
- One overall mark
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Analytic:
- Broken down into
separate features
- Several marks-one
for each assessment
criterion
TYPES OF SCALES

15. ADVANTAGES AND LIMITATIONS OF ANALYTIC SCALES
Strengths
• Diagnostic information
• Useful in rather training
• Useful for L2 learners who have an uneven profile
Limitations
• Time consuming
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16. ADVANTAGES AND LIMITATIONS OF HOLISTIC SCALES
Strengths
• Practically faster
Limitations
• No useful diagnostic information (single score)
• Difficult to use when skills are unevenly developed 16