Name and explain the main concepts of the Testing & Assessment Course

and examine how these may be meaningful for the Uruguayan context.
(Approx. 600 words)
INTRODUCTION.
This is an account of the main ideas and concepts that Dr. Susan Sheethan exposed during
the sessions held last February in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Susan Sheethan is part of the British Councils Research and Consultancy team and her
sessions were divided into the following areas:
a. Theory
b. Statistics
c. Specifications
d. Practical work
a. THEORY:
There are some questions we should ask ourselves:
Why to test? Is the test the best way to get that information?
Is there a justifiable reason for testing students at this time? Is there a justifiable reason for
testing this topic? Is there a justifiable reason for testing this topic this time?
What are the features of a good test?
There are a number of characteristics all good language tests should accomplish: firstly,
there are justifiable reasons for testing. Secondly, there must be a clear link between the
information you need to obtain and the tasks designed. This is to say, the method is suitable
and the tasks are appropriate to the learners. Thirdly, the test should be marked consistently
and fairly. Lastly, there must be an analysis on how well the test has tested what it should
have tested.
Theories allow testers understand and justify approaches and they are a key part of the
validity of the score system. They are the more abstract aspect of the test, as they describe
all aspects of language. Then, we have the assessment framework and thirdly, the test
specifications which are the blueprint of tests.
Mc Namara, Hymes, Canale and Swain, Bachman and Calce-Murcia, Dorneyei and
Thurrell provided different views for language theory which can explain different ways of
testing.
b. STATISTICS:
Some of the concepts discussed and analyzed were: facility value (percentage of students
who do it right), discrimination index (the ability to separate who knows and who needs to
learn), mean (average), mode (most common score), median (score in the middle), range
(difference between top and bottom students), standard deviation (the difference from the
mean), and the ways to check reliability of tests.
c. SPECIFICATIONS:
These are generative exploratory documents for the creation of tasks. They contain
samples of tasks or items, guiding language samples, a description of how close
distractors should be, number and type of items, length of texts, topics to be
included, etc.
They help item writers to produce useful material and to do reverse engineering.
There is a number of different possible approaches for reverse engineering: straight
R.E. (to create more items), historical R.E. (test evolution), critical R.E. (f the test
was not exactly what expected), test deconstruction R.E (when the impact on
society was not the expected), parallel (to discover differences between writers).

d. PRACTICAL WORK:
During the analysis of samples we discussed highly relevant ideas. Some of them are:
More items in a test means more reliable results
Standardization of raters is essential
The specifications and test instructions must be very clear
All acceptable answers must be in the key
Avoid partial marks
Pilot the test before you present it to students
Avoid mixing abilities in an item
When multiple option, try to keep similar sentence length
CONCLUSION:
First of all I must say that the course has been extremely enlightening and relevant for our
context.
It showed tests as tools which can be validated by providing strong justification of your
decisions. This tool can be applied to get information at different scales.
Tests are not only used for particular situations which is a very important function- but
they are also important for decisions at larger scales such as design of courses syllabi and
improve practices at larger scales.
Thus, their reliability gets essential importance and we should be able to produce quality
tests in terms of validity, discrimination, congruency and marking fairness.
It is also important that candidates and society in general perceive the test as valid and
useful as clear evidence of their achievements, and in relation to generally accepted
standards.
Last but not least, I would like to express my deepest interest in continuing further studies
on this topic which has showed me a new challenging and interesting development
opportunity.