7 Help your learners to prepare well. Tell them in advance when the test
will be, and tell them about the likely content, question types and marking
criteria. Learners are more likely to learn from test preparation if they can be
confident that their efforts are appropriately directed.
8 Give detailed feedback, promptly. If the test is to be part of the learning
experience, learners need specific advice about where they did well and
where they did less well. And this feedback is likely to be most effective if it
is given when the test experience is still fresh in the learners’ minds, and
when they are anxious to know how they got on.
9 Involve learners in marking where you can. For ‘objective’ questions,
with one correct answer, it is relatively simple to involve learners in marking
their own or their classmates’ papers. As you lead a discussion as to why
various alternatives are or are not acceptable, learners are encouraged to
think more deeply about the language being tested.
10 Keep it short! Classroom tests will probably happen quite frequently. So
short, representative tests help to ensure that test preparation, administration
and feedback do not come to dominate the whole of the teaching-learning
experience.39 Giving feedback on classroom tests
Students can learn a great deal from feedback on tests, but this depends very
significantly on how and when the feedback is delivered, and on how well the
learners themselves are able to receive the feedback. The following suggestions
should help your learners to optimize the benefits that feedback on classroom
tests can bring them.
1 Give feedback as soon as possible. Feedback works best when learners can
still remember what they were trying to do in the test. In particular, when
learners have made mistakes, give them feedback so quickly that they can
still remember the possibilities they were weighing up when they made their
decisions in the test.
2 Help learners to see that feedback is valuable. It is useful to make sure
that learners are aware of how much they can learn from feedback. Ideally,
learners should want to have feedback on everything they do, both to find
out what they are doing well, and to diagnose areas upon which to concentrate
further efforts.
3 Help learners not to shrug off positive feedback. In many cultures (not
least English-speaking ones), there is a tendency to be embarrassed by
positive feedback. Learners (and others) often don’t receive the full benefit
of feedback on things that they have done well, due to their tendency to
dismiss praise. Help learners to see that taking ownership of things that they74 ASSESSMENT