38 Designing classroom tests
A formal classroom test is one of the many options available if you want to
assess your learners’ progress and achievement. In many institutions, formal
tests are highly valued and everyone expects that teachers will use them. The
following suggestions should help you to design small-scale tests that allow your
students to show what they have learnt, and which fit easily with the styles of
teaching and learning which are present in your classroom.
1 Make your test representative rather than exhaustive. Look back through
your lesson notes to see what the teaching goals have been in the period
leading up to the test, and then draft questions which relate to those goals.
This is a good way of ensuring content relevance, without trying to cover
every detail of the teaching programme.
2 Use activities that you use in class. For example, if you sometimes ask
your learners to reorder jumbled paragraphs to form a coherent text, also
consider this activity for your test. Learners will do better on activities they
are familiar with, and they will also be encouraged to see the links between
the test and the wider learning experience.
3 Avoid unfamiliar question formats. Sometimes it’s tempting to choose the
question formats we see in public exams, especially if they’re quick and
easy to mark. Some people feel that these formats lend authority and
objectivity to classroom tests. But if the test formats are not representative
of the way you teach, they may not provide valid information about your
learners’ progress in class.
4 Get a colleague to check your question paper. It is all too easy to write
instructions that are not clear, or ‘objective’ questions where there is actually
more than one right answer. A colleague can often spot problems like this.
It’s especially important to check the question paper in settings where the
learners will be expected to take the test in silence, without further help from
the teacher.
5 Make your test criterion-referenced. For each question or task, have a
specific idea of what learners must do to gain marks. Make sure the criteria
relate to what you’ve done in class. If this means that many learners get
similar, high marks, so much the better—this shows that testing and learning
are working together.
6 Use mark schemes where appropriate. Mark schemes are an important
part of criterion referencing for subjectively marked questions, such as letter
writing tasks or oral interactions. If you write down the expected
characteristics of performances at different levels, and refer to the guide
when marking, you are less likely to find yourself marking simply by
impression. Impression marking tends to lead to learners being compared
with each other, rather than with the test criteria.ASSESSMENT 73