Practical Language Testing

Practical Language Testing equips you with the skills, knowledge and principles necessary to understand and construct language tests. This practical guide offers step-by-step guidelines on the design of assessments within the classroom and provides the necessary tools to analyse and improve assessments, as well as deal with alignment to externally imposed standards. Testing is situated both within the classroom and within the larger social context, and readers are provided with the knowledge necessary to make realistic and fair decisions about the use and implementation of tests. Now in its second edition, this respected text has been substantially revised and updated, including a new chapter on validity drawing from the author's Messick Award for innovation in validity theory and practice. It also includes expanded coverage of standardised testing and learning-oriented assessment, and introduces task design features, including authenticity, and automated assessment. With its frequently updated online resources to support language assessment (https://languagetesting.info/), this book is the ideal introduction for students of applied linguistics, TESOL and modern foreign language teaching, as well as practising teachers required to design or implement language testing programmes. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents List of figures and tables Acknowledgements Preface 1. Testing and assessment in context 1. Test purpose 2. Tests in educational systems 3. Testing rituals 4. Unintended consequences 5. Testing and society 6. Historical interlude I 7. The politics of language testing 8. Historical interlude II 9. Professionalising language education and testing 10. Validity Activities 2. Standardised testing 1. Two paradigms 2. Testing as science 3. What’s in a curve? 4. The curve and score meaning 5. Putting it into practice 6. Test scores in a consumer age 7. Testing the test 8. Introducing reliability 9. Calculating reliability 10. Living with uncertainty 11. Reliability and test length 12. Relationships with other measures 13. Measurement Activities 3. Classroom assessment 1. Life at the chalk-face 2. Assessment for learning 3. Self- and peer-assessment 4. Dynamic assessment 5. Understanding change 6. Assessment and second language acquisition 7. Criterion-referenced testing 8. Dependability 9. Assessment literacy Activities 4. Deciding what to test 1. The test design cycle 2. Construct definition 3. Where do constructs come from? 4. Models of communicative competence 5. From definition to design Activities 5. Designing test specifications 1. What are test specifications? 2. Specifications for testing and teaching 3. A sample detailed specification for a reading test 4. Granularity 5. Performance conditions 6. Target language use domain analysis 7. Accommodations 8. Moving back and forth Activities 6. Evaluating, prototyping and piloting 1. Investigating usefulness and usability 2. Evaluating items, tasks and specifications 3. Guidelines for multiple-choice items 4. Prototyping 5. Piloting 6. Field testing 7. Item shells 8. Operational item review and pre-testing Activities 7. Scoring language tests 1. Scoring items 2. Scorability 3. Scoring constructed response tasks 4. Automated scoring 5. Corrections for guessing 6. Avoiding own goals Activities 8. Aligning tests to standards 1. It’s as old as the hills 2. The definition of ‘standards’ 3. The uses of standards 4. Unintended consequences revisited 5. Using standards for harmonisation and identity 6. How many standards can we afford? 7. Performance level descriptors (PLDs) and test scores 8. Some initial decisions 9. Standard-setting methodologies 10. Evaluating standard setting 11. Training 12. The special case of the CEFR 13. You can always count on uncertainty Activities 9. Validity 1. Preliminaries 2. The Messick consensus 3. Argument-based validation 4. Technicalism 5. The new realism 6. Constructivism 7. Pragmatic realism 8. Conclusion Activities Epilogue Appendices Glossary References Index