Chapter 18: Putting Students to the Test 269
Testing progress
If a course is of a specific length you can build in one or two progress tests at
various stages. Progress tests serve a few purposes:✓ Providing motivation for the students to study. Targets and deadlines
help some people to get themselves in gear, but for others they can be
stressful and de-motivating. You need to decide how to present your test
so that you strike the right balance.
✓ Providing a standard level for the class so that students can be
changed to a different course that better matches their proficiency
level if necessary. Students sometimes ask to be moved up to a higher
level and if you, as the teacher, aren’t too keen, the results of the progress
test may be the basis on which you decide. Likewise if you have to move
a student down, you can use the test as evidence for your decision.
✓ Highlighting gaps in your teaching – or the course materials – that
you need to fill. This can be for your own purposes or for the school to
monitor its teachers. The danger of this is that you may end up training
your class to pass the test rather than teaching them English.
The way you handle the test depends on the importance you attach to it and
your main objective. For example, you may tell the students the topic of the
test and ask them to revise particular points that you feel are essential to
their progress in the rest of the course. On the other hand, you may decide
that the class should have a thorough review, so you don’t give the students
specific details. This makes them revise everything so far.A fun and effective way to organise a progress test is to allow the students
to design it themselves. Break them into different groups, have each group
construct a few questions, or ask each student to submit two or three ques-
tions each. As they review the topic and construct the questions, the topic
becomes indelibly printed on their minds. There’s also an exciting level of
competition and anticipation as they wait to see who gets their question right.Testing achievement
Achievement tests are typically given at the end of the course. You can hold
these up against the course syllabus and objectives to see how successful the
lessons have been.The success of a course may not be measured solely in language skills. A
student may want to become more outgoing, creative or confident and her
success or failure in this is dependent on her own feelings. Formal testing is
incidental to her. It’s helpful to have class discussions about what each
student hopes to achieve and how they expect to do so.