REPUBLIC OF ANGOLA

MINISTERY OF EDUCATION

TEACHER TRAINING SCHOOL COR MARIAE OF UÍGE

ENGLISH TEACHING
METHODOLOGY SOLO WORK

THEME: TESTING

Name: Filomeno Afonso

Grade: 13th
Course: English and Moral

Teacher
Moisés André Gouveia

Uíge/June/2022
 Introduction
English has become the main means of communication between people who
have no common language. In Angola for instance, the need to communicate in English
has increased incredibly and year after year the number of student wanting to learn
English has dramatically increased. This means that as educators and teachers that we
are, we cannot close our eyes to this situation.
Then, we all have an important role to play in order to provide student with at
least the very basic language needed to carry out simple communication either oral or
written. However, we have to provide a basic language, we also have to be aware of
testing, because there is a strong relationship between teaching and testing. In the
present work I will be focusing on testing.
 Reasons for testing
During the learning, students may need or want to be tested on their ability in the
English language. A teacher might have several purpose to test the learners. He/she
might test to find out not only what students know, but also what they don’t know, to
see how students are getting on with the lessons, and how well they have assimilated
what they have been taught over the last week, two weeks or a month, to see how well
students have learnt everything...

Some of the reasons for testing students.

 Measuring language progress
 Encouraging students
 Identifying learning difficulties
 Selecting students
Measuring language progress: in this reason, the teacher need to know how well
the student have learned the language areas and skills that have been dealt with. And the
teacher need to test regularly to be aware of what is going on in the teaching-learning
process.
Encouraging students: it is known that learning a language is not the same as
learning Biology, history etc. this means that it is difficult for students to have a
perception of their progress, especially in higher levels. And it is important to test the
student in order to help them to know if they are evolving or not, this will show the
students their actual progress, therefore, increasing their motivation.
Identifying learning difficulties: diagnosing students´ strengths and weakness and
identifying what they know and do not know is very important both to the teacher and
the student, by knowing the areas in which s/he in not good, the student can concentrate
on that same area and try to improve his/her knowledge in it. As for the teacher, by
knowing students´ weakness, s/he will be able to improve the way of teaching, as well
as the to know the areas in which can focus more, in order to help the students.
Selecting students: this reason is necessary when one needs to select candidates
for a place on a course or job, in case there are far more candidates than the number of
places available. Then, by having a test one will be in conditions of choosing the best
people to fill the places, as the one will be compared the performances of the
candidates.
Measuring language proficiency: in this reason proficiency test is used to measure
how suitable candidates will be for performing a certain tsk or following a specific
course. This usually happens when a student wants to study in a foreign country.

Types of tests
 When designing tests, we can either write discrete items, or ask students to
become involved in more integrative language use. Discrete-item testing means only
testing one thing at a time (e.g. testing a verb tense or a word), whereas integrative
testing means asking students to use a variety of language and skills to complete a task
successfully. A further distinction needs to be made between direct and indirect test
items. A direct test item is one that asks students to do something with language (e.g.
write a letter, read and reply to a newspaper article or take part in a conversation).
Indirect test items are those which test the students’ knowledge of language rather than
getting them to use it.
Indirect test items

There are many different ways of testing the students’ knowledge of language
construction. We will look at three of the most common.

Multiple choice: multiple-choice questions are those where students are given
alternatives to choose from, sometimes students are instructed to choose the ‘correct’
answer (because only one answer is possible), as in the example below.

Circle the correct answer.

You m u s t______ here on time.
a to get b getting c to have get d get

But sometimes, instead, they can be told to choose the ‘best’ answer (because,
although more than one answer is possible, one stands out as the most appropriate), e.g.

Circle the best answer.

Police are worried about the level of ________crime.
a juvenile b childish c young d infant

Multiple-choice questions have the great advantage of being easy to mark.

Answer sheets can be read by computer, or can be marked by putting a transparency
over the answer sheet which shows the circled correct letters. Multiple-choice questions
can be used to test reading and listening comprehension (we can also use true/false
questions for this: students circle ‘T’ or ‘F’ next to statements concerning material they
have just read or listened to).

One problem with multiple-choice questions, leads some people to find them
unattractive, since training students to be good at multiple-choice questions may not
help them to become better language learners. And there is a limit to how much we can
test with this kind of indirect item. Nevertheless, multiple-choice questions are very
attractive in terms of scorer reliability.

Fill-in and cloze: this extremely common form of indirect testing involves the
examinee writing a word in a gap in a sentence or paragraph, e.g.

Yesterday I went a the cinema b my friend Clare. I enjoyed the film c

she did not.

Transformation: In transformation students are asked to change the form of

words and phrases to show their knowledge of syntax and word grammar. In the
following test type they are given a sentence and then asked to produce an equivalent
sentence using a given word:

Rewrite the sentence so that it means the same. Use the word in bold
Could I borrow five pounds, please?
lend_______________________

In order to complete the item successfully, the students not only have to know
the meaning of borrow and lend, but also how to use them in grammatical
constructions.
A variation of this technique is designed to focus more exactly on word grammar. Here,
students have to complete lines in a text using the correct form of a given word, e.g.

It was a terrifying performance. The acrobats showed ___________ no fear even

though their feats of ___________ shocked the crowd into stunned silence.
Terrify
Absolute
Dare

These kinds of transformations work very well as a test of the students’

underlying knowledge of grammar and vocabulary. However, the items are quite
difficult to construct.

Direct test items

In direct test items, we ask students to use language to do something, instead of

just testing their knowledge of how the language itself works. We might ask our
students to write instructions for a simple task (such as using a vending machine or
assembling a shelving system) or to give an oral mini presentation. There is no real limit
to the kinds of tasks we might ask students to perform. The following list gives some
possibilities:

Reading and listening: some reading and writing test items look a bit like
indirect items (e.g. when students are given multiple-choice questions about a particular
word in a text, for example, or have to answer T/F questions about a particular
sentence). But at other times we might ask students to choose the best summary of what
they have heard or read. Many reading and listening tests are a blend of direct and
indirect testing. We can ask students direct language - or text-focused - questions as
well as testing their global understanding.

Writing: direct tests of writing might include getting students to write leaflets
based on information supplied in an accompanying text, or having them write
compositions, such as narrative and discursive essays. We can ask students to write
‘transactional letters’ (that is letters replying to an advertisement, or something they
have read in the paper, etc.). In transactional writing we expect students to include and
refer to information they are given.

Speaking: We can interview students, or we can put them in pairs and ask them
to perform a number of tasks. These might include having them discuss the similarities
and differences between two pictures, they might discuss how to furnish a room, or talk
about any other topic we select for them. We can ask them to role play certain
situations, such as buying a ticket or asking for information in a shop, or we might ask
them to talk about a picture we show them.

When designing direct test items for our students, we need to remember two
crucial facts. The first is that, as with indirect tests, direct tests should have items which
look like the kind of tasks students have been practicing in their lessons. In other words,
there is no point in giving students tasks which, because they are unfamiliar, confuse
them. The result of this will be that students cannot demonstrate properly how well they
can use the language, and this will make the test worthless.

Direct test items are much more difficult to mark than indirect items. This is
because our response to a piece of writing or speaking will almost certainly be very
subjective unless we do something to modify this subjectivity. We will now go on to
look at how this can be done.
Test, Assessment and Evaluation

These words are often confused by people. Test, Assessment and Evaluation are
different things, although they can all refer to the same activity.
In language teaching programs, a test is the formal activity normally carried out
by teacher at the end of a term or during it to check students' ability in what was taught.
This activity should not be confused with assessment or evaluation, which are different
constructs.
Evaluation is related to decisions to be made about the quality of the program
itself, and decisions about individuals in the program.

Assessment is the measurement of the ability of a person or the quality or

success of a teaching course.

Most definitions of evaluation and assessment overlaps, it possible to make a

clear and more accurate distinction between these terms.

Assessment has to do with student through the learning process, that is, how well
there are etc. whereas evaluation has to do with checking the materials and programs
used to make the learning process happen. In other words, assessment corresponds to
learner performance, and evaluation corresponds to innovation or change in, for
example, school organization or a course syllabus.

Then, it can be concluded that, assessment has to do with students´ performance

along the learning process, evaluation ha to do with the development of school
organization, course syllabus and materials, and testing refers to the activity done from
time to time to check students´ knowledge.

Elaboration of Test project

1° Set the header

See some elements of test elaboration.

2° preliminaries
Teacher's Name
Period
Grade
Class
Date
Simester
Subject
School curse/ cycle
Type testing
Addressee

3° Content
Cite only the topics you had spoken during the three semester, mainly those who had
succeeded in term of learning process.

4° Competency
Choose the competency you want work with on the testing, from the first testing till
now you have to know what is the weak part if your student.

5° Quotation
The teacher must choose the quotation if is 10 or 20 value.

6°Material or resource of testing realization.

The teacher must say what is necessary to do the test, what kind of school object the
student will use.
 Conclusion
In this work, I tried to summarized about testing. I talk about:

Reasons for testing, where we could see that a teacher might have several
purpose to test the learners. Might test to find out not only what students know, but also
what they don’t know, to see how students are getting on with the lessons, and how well
they have assimilated what they have been taught over the last week, two weeks or a
month, to see how well students have learnt everything...
Types of testing, where we could see that there is Indirect test items, which includes
Multiple-choice questions, Fill-in and cloze and Transformation. And Direct test items,
which includes Reading and listening, Writing and Speaking.

Test, Assessment and Evaluation, it can be concluded that, assessment has to do

with students´ performance along the learning process, evaluation ha to do with the
development of school organization, course syllabus and materials, and testing refers to
the activity done from time to time to check students´ knowledge.
 Bibliography

English language teaching methodology_ volume II

Celeste Sambeny and Ana Sofia Gonzalez
how_to_teach_english_2nd_edition_jeremy_harmer