The document outlines the various purposes and types of language tests, including proficiency, placement, achievement, diagnostic, and aptitude tests. Each type serves specific objectives such as measuring readiness for instruction, placing students in appropriate classes, diagnosing strengths and weaknesses, and evaluating instructional effectiveness. It also discusses testing methods, distinguishing between direct and indirect testing, and the differences between discrete point and integrative testing.

1. 1

2.  Tests are procedures for
measuring ability, knowledge or
performance.
 Testing is the use of tests, or the
study of the theory and practice
of their use, development,
evaluation etc.

3.  Before we can even begin to plan a language
test, we must establish its purpose and
purposes. The following list summarizes the
chief objectives of language testing:
 1. To determine readiness for instructional
programmes. Some screening test are used to
separate those who are prepared for an
academic or training programme from those
who are not.

4.  2. To classify or place individuals in
appropriate language classes. Other
screening tests try to distinguish degrees
of proficiency so that examines may be
assigned to specific sections or activities
on the basis of their current level of
competence. Such tests may make no
pass-fail distinctions, since some kind of
training is offered to everyone.

5.  3.To diagnose the individual’s specific
strengths and weaknesses. Diagnostic
screening test generally consist of several
short but reliable subtests measuring
different language skills or components
of a single broad skill. On the basis of the
individual’s performance profile which
will show his relative strength in the
various areas tested.

6.  4.To measure aptitude for learning. Still
another kind of screening test is used to
predict future performance. At the time
of testing, the examinees may have little
or no knowledge of the language to be
studied, and the test is employed to
assess their potential.

7.  5. To measure the extent of student
achievement of the instructional goal.
Achievement tests are used to indicate
group or individual progress toward the
instructional objectives of a specific study
or training program. Examples are
progress tests and final examinations in a
course of study.

8.  6. To evaluate the effectiveness of
instruction. Other achievement tests are
used exclusively to assess the degree of
success not of individuals but of the
instructional program itself. Such tests
are often used in research, when
experimental and ‘control’ classes are
given the same educational goals but use
different materials and techniques to
achieve them.

9.  Language tests are carried out with specific
purposes in mind. As we use them to obtain
information about the students, as we may
categories test according to the kinds of
information being sought. We may put them
into the following divisions:
 1. Proficiency tests.
 2. Placement tests.
 3. Achievement tests.
 4.Diagnostic tests.
 5. Aptitude tests.

10.  Proficiency tests are designed to measure people’s
ability in a language regardless of any training
they may have had in that language. The content
of a proficiency test is, therefore, not based on the
content or objectives of a language course.
 In the case of some proficiency tests, ‘proficient’
means having sufficient command of the language
‘ for a particular purpose’. An example of this
would be a test used to determine whether a
student’s English is good enough to follow a
course of study at a British University.

11.  Placement tests are designed to place students
at an appropriate level in a programme or
course on the basis of their current level of
competence.
 The term ’Placement test’ does not refer to
what a test contains or how it is constructed.
The most successful of them are constructed for
particular situations depending on the key
features at different levels of teaching in the
institution.

12.  Various types of test or testing procedure can
be used for placement purposes. Dictation, a
grammar test or an interview may be ideal.
 As the objective of a placement is to place
students at the stage of the teaching
programme most appropriate to their abilities,
it is taken at the beginning of a course or
programme. Placement tests make no pass-fail
distinction.

13.  Achievement tests measure how
much of a language someone has
learned with reference to a
particular course of study or
programme of instruction. They are
of two kinds:
 A. Final Achievements tests
 B. Progress Achievement tests.

14.  Final achievement tests are those administered
at the end of a course of study. They are norm-
referenced since they show the standard which
a student has now reached in relation to other
students at the same stage. This standard may
be worldwide, as with the Cambridge
Examinations in EFL; or established for a
country, as with school-leaving certificates; or
it may relate to an individual school or group
of schools which issue certificates to students
attending courses.

15.  Progress Achievement tests are intended to
measure the progress that students are making.
Like final achievement tests, these tests, too,
should relate to objectives. The best way of
measuring progress is to establish a series of well-
defined short –term objectives. These should make
a clear progression towards the final achievement
test based on course objectives. The result of the
progress tests will show if the syllabus and
teaching are in line with the course objectives. The
teacher’s responsibility would be to bring in
changes in the syllabus or teaching technique if
there is any incongruity or lack of fit is found in
entire system.

16.  Aptitude tests assess learner’s ‘aptitude’ for
learning a language. They are designed to
measure the student’s probable performance
in a foreign language which he has not started
to learn.
 Language learning aptitude is a complex
matter. It consists of such factors as
intelligence, age, motivation, phonological
sensitivity and sensitivity to grammatical
patterning. An aptitude test takes all these
factors into consideration.

17.  Aptitude tests generally seek to
predict the student’s probable
strengths and weaknesses in
learning a foreign language by
measuring his performance in an
artificial language.

18.  Diagnostic tests are those tests which are used
to identify student’s strengths and weaknesses
and to pinpoint the areas of difficulty they
encounter. They are intended primarily to
ascertain what further teaching is necessary or
what remedial action should be taken. Tests
used for diagnostic purposes may include
phoneme discrimination tests, grammar and
usage tests and certain controlled writing tests.

19.  Testing is said to be direct when it
requires the candidate to perform
precisely the skill that we wish to
measure. If we want to know how well
candidates can write compositions, we
get them to write compositions. The tasks
and the texts that are used should be as
authentic as possible.

20.  Direct testing is easier to carry out when it is
intended to measure the productive skills of
speaking and writing. The very acts of
speaking and writing provide us with
information about the candidate’s ability.
 Direct testing has a number of attractions.
 First, provided that we are clear about just
what abilities we want to assess, it is relatively
straightforward to create the conditions which
will elicit the behaviour on which to base our
judgement.

21.  Secondly, at least in the case of the
productive skills, the assessment
and interpretation of students’
performance is also quite
straightforward.
 Thirdly, since practice for the test
involves practice of the skills that we
wish to foster, there is likely to be a
helpful backwash effect.

22.  The main appeal of indirect testing is that it
seems to offer the possibility of testing a
representative sample of a finite number of
manifestations of them.
 The main problem with the indirect tests is that
the relationship between performance on them
and the performance of the skills in which we
are usually more interested tends to be rather
weak in strength and uncertain in nature.

23.  Discrete point testing refers to the testing of one
element at a time, item by item. This might, for
example, take the form of a series of items, each
testing a particular grammatical structure.
 Integrative testing, by contrast, requires the
candidate to combine many language elements in
the completion of a task. This might involve
writing a composition, making notes while
listening to a lecture, taking a dictation, or
completing a cloze passage. Discrete point tests
will almost always be indirect, while integrative
tests will tend to be direct.

24.  The distinction here is between methods of
scoring and nothing else. If no judgment is
required on the part of the scorer, then the
scoring is objective. A multiple choice test, with
the correct responses unambiguously
identified, would be a case in point. If
judgment is called for, the scoring is said to be
subjective. There are different degrees of
subjectivity in testing.