oriented, effective and easy to manage if it tests such skills as writing
or speaking. It could be explained by the fact that the tasks intended to
check the skills mentioned above give us precise information about the
learners’ abilities. Moreover, we can maintain that when testing writing
the teacher demands the students to write a certain task, such as an essay,
a composition or reproduction, and it will be precisely the point the
teacher will be intended to check. There will be certain demands imposed on
writing test; the teacher might be just interested in the students’ ability
to produce the right layout of an essay without taking grammar into
account, or, on the contrary, will be more concerned with grammatical and
syntactical structures. What concerns testing speaking skills, here the
author of the paper does not support the idea promoted by Bynom that it
could be treated as direct testing. Definitely, you will have a certain
task to involve your speaking skills; however, speaking is not possible
without employment of listening skills. This in turn will generate the idea
that apart from speaking skills the teacher will test the students’ ability
to understand the speech s/he hears, thus involving speaking skills.
It is said that the advantages of direct testing is that it is
intended to test some certain abilities, and preparation for that usually
involves persistent practice of certain skills. Nevertheless, the skills
tested are deprived from the authentic situation that later may cause
difficulties for the students in using them.
Now we can shift to another notion - indirect testing. It differs from
direct one in the way that it measures a skill through some other skill. It
could mean the incorporation of various skills that are connected with each
other, e.g. listening and speaking skills.
Indirect testing, regarding to Hughes, tests the usage of the language
in real-life situation. Moreover, it suits all situations; whereas direct
testing is bound to certain tasks intended to check a certain skill. Hughes
(ibid.) assumes that indirect testing is more effective than direct one,
for it covers a broader part of the language. It denotes that the learners
are not constrained to one particular skill and a relevant exercise. They
are free to elaborate all four skills; what is checked is their ability to
operate with those skills and apply them in various, even unpredictable
situations. This is the true indicator of the learner’s real knowledge of
the language.
Indirect testing has more advantages that disadvantages, although the
only drawback according to Hughes is that such type of testing is difficult
to evaluate. It could be frustrating what to check and how to check;
whether grammar should be evaluated higher, than composition structure or
vice versa. The author of the paper agrees with that, however, basing on
her experience at school again, she must claim that it is not so easy to
apply indirect testing. This could be rather time-consuming, for it is a
well-known fact that the duration of the class is just forty minutes;
moreover, it is rather complicated to construct indirect test – it demands
a lot of work, but our teachers are usually overloaded with a variety of
other duties. Thus, we can only hope on the course books that supply us
with a variety of activities that involve cooperation of all four skills.
4.2 Discrete point and integrative testing
Having discussed the kinds of testing that deal with general aspects,
such as certain skills and variety of skills in cooperation, we can come to
the more detailed types as discrete point and integrative testing.
According to Longman Dictionary of LTAL (112), discrete point test is a
language test that is meant to test a particular language item, e.g.
tenses. The basis of that type of tests is that we can test components of
the language (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, and spelling) and
language skills (listening, reading, speaking, and writing) separately. We
can declare that discrete point test is a common test used by the teachers
in our schools. Having studied a grammar topic or new vocabulary, having
practiced it a great deal, the teacher basically gives a test based on the
covered material. This test usually includes the items that were studied
and will never display anything else from a far different field. The same
will concern the language skills; if the teacher’ aim is to check reading
skills; the other skills will be neglected. The author of the paper had
used such types of tests herself, especially after a definite grammar topic
was studied. She had to construct the tests herself basing on the examples
displayed in various grammar books. It was usually gap-filling exercises,
multiple choice items or cloze tests. Sometimes a creative work was
offered, where the students had to write a story involving a certain
grammar theme that was being checked. According to her observance, the
students who studied hard were able to complete them successfully, though
there were the cases when the students failed. Now having discussed the
theory on validity, reliability and types of testing, it is even more
difficult to realize who was really to blame for the test failures: either
the tests were wrongly designed or there was a problem in teaching.
Notwithstanding, this type was and still remains to be the most general and
acceptable type in schools of our country, for it is easy to design, it
concerns a certain aspect of the language and is easy to score. If we speak
about types of tests we can say that this way of testing refers more to a
progress test (You can see the examples of such type of test in Appendix
2).
Nevertheless, according to Bynom (2001:8) there is a certain drawback
of discrete point testing, for it tests only separated parts, but does not
show us the whole language. It is true, if our aim is to incorporate the
whole language. Though, if we are to check the exact material the students
were supposed to learn, then why not use it.
Discussing further, we have come to integrative tests. According to
Longman Dictionary of LTAL, the integrative test intends to check several
language skills and language components together or simultaneously. Hughes
(1989:15) stipulates that the integrative tests display the learners’
knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, spelling together, but not as separate
skills or items.
Alderson (1996:219) poses that, by and large, most teachers prefer
using integrative testing to discrete point type. He explains the fact that
basically the teachers either have no enough of spare time to check a
certain split item being tested or the purpose of the test is only
considered to view the whole material. Moreover, some language skills such
as reading do not require the precise investigation of the students’
abilities whether they can cope with definite fragments of the text or not.
We can render the prior statements as the idea that the teachers are mostly
concerned with general language knowledge, but not with bits and pieces of
it. The separate items usually are not capable of showing the real state of
the students’ knowledge. What concerns the author of the paper, she finds
integrative testing very useful, though more habitual one she believes to
be discrete point test. She assumes that the teacher should incorporate
both types of testing for effective evaluation of the students’ true
language abilities.
4.3 Criterion-referenced and norm referenced testing
The next types of testing to be discussed are criterion-referenced and
norm referenced testing. They are not focused directly on the language
items, but on the scores the students can get. Again we should concern
Longman Dictionary of LTAL (17) that states that criterion-referenced test
measures the knowledge of the students according to set standards or
criteria. This means that there will be certain criteria according to which
the students will be assessed. There will be various criteria for different
levels of the students’ language knowledge. Here the aim of testing is not
to compare the results of the students. It is connected with the learners’
knowledge of the subject. As Hughes (1989:16) puts it the criterion-
referenced tests check the actual language abilities of the students. They
distinguish the weak and strong points of the students. The students either
manage to pass the test or fail it. However, they never feel better or
worse than their classmates, for the progress is focused and checked. At
this point we can speak about the centralized exams at the end of the
twelfth and ninth form. As far as the author of the paper is concerned, the
results of the exams are confident, and the learners after passing the
exams are conferred with various levels relevant to their language ability.
Apart from that, once a year in Latvian schools the students are given
tests designed by the officials of the Ministry of Education to check the
level of the students and, what is most important, the work of the teacher.
They call them diagnostic tests, though according to the material discussed
above it is rather arguable. Nevertheless, we can accept the fact that
criterion-referenced testing could be used in the form of diagnostic tests.
Advancing further, we have come to norm-referenced test that measures
the knowledge of the learner and compares it with the knowledge of another
member of his/her group. The learner’s score is compared with the scores of
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