The document discusses standardized testing, including its history, purposes, advantages, and disadvantages. It provides details on test specifications and conditions as well as common reporting formats for scores such as Z-scores, T-scores, and scaled scores. The document also examines designing classroom language tests and assessing different language skills, including reading, listening, speaking, and writing. Test design considerations are outlined for each skill.

1. UNIVERSIDAD DE LAS FUERZAS ARMADAS ‘‘ESPE’’
ACTIVITY 1
NAME: JENNIFER BRIGITTE CARVAJAL TIERRA
SUBJECT: ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION 18232
TOPIC: THEME 2

2. STANDARDIZED TESTS:
• Emerged in china in 1880 to evaluate applicants
for government employment based on Confucian
philosophy and poetry.
• These tests have become widespread, being used
today for various purposes, from obtaining
licenses to evaluating performance in education.
ADVANTAGES:
• Objectivity and Consistency: Standardized tests guarantee fair and consistent
scoring, eliminating grading differences between classes.
• Comparability and Accountability: These tests empower educators to consistently
evaluate and compare students' scores, fostering accountability and providing a
basis for enhancing the curriculum.
DISADVANTAGES:
• Student-Related Reliability: Standardized tests, influenced by factors like anxiety
and test-taking skills, impact student performance reliability.
• Washback Effect: The emphasis on test success in standardized testing undermines
teaching practices and student skills, prioritizing test outcomes over the holistic
educational journey.
STANDARDIZED TESTS

3. PURPOSES:
• Comparison of Competences and Aptitudes:
Standardized testing's main aim is to compare
competences and aptitudes among individuals
with diverse educational backgrounds, enabling
benchmarking and comparisons across
institutions.
• Benchmarking and Comparison: Reliable and
valid, standardized tests facilitate benchmarking
discussions regardless of the test location.
TEST SPECIFICATIONS:
• Conditions for Standardized Tests: Relies on adherence to
specific conditions, including representativeness across a
knowledge domain, reliance on standardized formats and
scoring benchmarks, and maintaining consistent test
conditions.
• Content and Process-Based Specifications: The basic test
specifications aim to provide background information
about the content tested, including item number, nature
assortment, delivery method, and additional input
material.

4. Multiple choice exams:
• The perception that item-based tests, particularly multiple-choice exams, might
be seen as lacking depth in evaluating students' mastery of the content.
• Despite the perceived shallowness, the efficiency in grading allows teachers to
expedite the assessment process, even though the creation of such tests may not
be as straightforward.
Essay Questions:
• Essay questions aim to showcase a comprehensive understanding of a
particular topic and assess students' critical thinking capacity in terms of
organization, creativity, and information management.
• They are considered less reliable in grading due to the high likelihood of
bias varying from one reader to another.
THE MOST COMMONPLACE ITEM-BASED TESTS

5. REPORTING FORMATS
Z-score:
When presenting Z-scores, a scale extending
from -4 to 4 is utilized. Scores closer to 4
indicate an above-average performance,
while those closer to -4 signify below-
average performance. A Z-score of zero
corresponds to the average performance.
T-score:
These scores are organized into intervals,
each spanning from 10 to 90 points. The
midpoint of each interval is set at fifty, with
typical average scores falling within the
range of 40 to 60.
Stanine score:
This is commonly referred to as the standard
nine scale, and many results from norm-
referenced tests are expressed in stanines.
The scoring with 5 represents the average
score.
Scaled score:
The scores presented on this scale are quite
comprehensive as they result from a specific
number of taken subtests. Since diverse skills
and areas are under assessment, the overall
composite score is derived by combining the
scores obtained from these subtests.

6. DESIGN CLASSROOM
LANGUAGE TESTS
CHARACTERISTICS
• Test specifications should be aligned with
the stated purpose and objectives
• The organization of items and scoring must
show consistency so that students
understand before taking the test.
• The five commonly observed types of
different language assessments are:
- Language aptitude tests
- Language proficiency test
- Placement tests
- Diagnostic tests
- Achievement tests
READING TEXT:
• Involves the incorporation of various sub-skills and linguistic knowledge bases.
• The tasks are designed with a restrictive purpose for reading during the evaluation.
• Reading assessment must take into account students' proficiency level along with their age.

7. USE OF LANGUAGE TEXT:
• There is a big worry when creating language tests.
The problem is figuring out how to get information
that helps examiners make good guesses about how
well someone knows a language, especially when
looking at grammar.
• Cambridge exams have changed how they test
language use to focus on exercises that match how
language is used in writing and fit the context better.

8. LISTENING TEXT:
• Two prominent types of listening tests are discussed:
proficiency tests that assess comprehensive listening
competence to place learners in appropriate courses,
and large-scale standardized tests like TOEFL or
IELTS that aim to establish a common scale for result
comparison across different locations.
• There is a controversy surrounding the design of
listening tests, with a focus on whether they
adequately cover various aspects like cognitive
processes, source knowledge, and interactive
listening, raising concerns about reliability and
validity.

9. SPEAKING TEXT:
• Speaking in a new language is seen as the toughest
part to get good at. It's hard because you have to
interact a lot and control the language well.
• When testing speaking skills, they look at different
things like if you make sense, use the right words,
manage your time, and speak smoothly when
answering different kinds of questions.
• speaking tests have become more important in the
last hundred years. People pay more attention to
them now. This means they look more carefully at
how well someone speaks, considering things like
what they say, how they do tasks, how well they
perform, and how they develop their speaking skills.

10. WRITING TEXT:
• These tests look at how people solve problems with
their writing while also thinking about the culture
they come from..
• Writing styles can be different in various cultures,
including how formal they are, how polite, the
perspective used, and even how extra information is
added.
• When people write, they often explore and go back
to change things. They can use different ways of
expressing ideas, but they need to follow certain
rules to make their writing clear and connected.
REFERENCES:
Front. Sociol, (2020) Standardized Testing, Use of Assessment Data, and Low Reading Performance of Immigrant and Non-
immigrant Students in OECD Countries. Retrieved from:
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsoc.2020.544628/full