Testing and evaluation are important concepts in education. Testing is used to measure students' language proficiency, knowledge, or performance in a given subject area. There are different types of tests, including achievement tests which measure how much students have learned in relation to a course of study, and diagnostic tests which identify students' strengths and weaknesses. Evaluation refers to assessing students' achievement of instructional objectives and can take different forms, such as formative evaluation used during instruction to provide feedback or summative evaluation used after instruction to assign grades. Characteristics of good tests and evaluation include reliability, validity, usability, and suitability for measuring student learning.