General Principles of Testing

Giving a test doesnt just mean that you can freely make one and let the students answer it. Of course, as to everything there are certain guides that we need to follow to ensure that the test we make is a valid and reliable one. There are 5 basic principles that we need to observe whenever we want to give tests to our students. They are as follow: 1. Measure all instructional objectives. When you give test to your students, make sure that the test you gave them measures the objectives you have set for the specific lessons because one purpose of testing is knowing whether you have reach your goals and if you wont align your test to your objectives then your test will have no validity and would measure nothing. It would only waste you and your students time. 2. Cover all learning tasks. Make sure that when you give a test to your students, you will cover all the topics discussed or the set of chapters you said that will be included in the test. Because if you will not include all the topics covered then how would you know if they understood your lessons and second you will just frustrate the student by making them so many things that in the end they will not see in the test. So make sure that when you give a test you will cover everything so no ones effort will be put to waste. 3. Use appropriate test items. Using the wrong kind of test item leads to wrong interpretation of the results of the test and also will never yield any validity and reliability. As we have said a while, you need to measure all instructional objectives you have set and you cant measure those objectives properly if you will use the

wrong test items. It is like going to planned place but taking a route far from your intended place to be. 4. Make the test valid and reliable. Of course, your test will be useless if you will not make your test a valid and reliable one so your effort in making one is not wasted. Also if you will not make your test valid, then whats the sense of the test you made? Giving out tests is not just for the sake of having grades to compute or to fail your students but to measure and gauge your students learning and how effective teaching strategies are and how the teacher can improve his teaching. 5. Use test to improve learning and not to fail the students. As I have said, you should never use the test as a form of punishment to your students or to fail them. If that is how you view giving out tests, then I think you are not in to teaching. We should use the results of the test to analyze where could we have done wrong, where at what should be given focus of, and what and how can we improve our teaching. Also, testing can also help the students realize their strengths and weaknesses and improve on them. At some point, tests can be use as their motivation to study even harder for they can see their progress using their test scores.

General Guidelines in Writing Test Items

As we have said earlier, we should make our test valid and reliable so that the results it will yield will be something useful for us and for our students. If only we can make our test valid and reliable then we can use that to modify our teaching strategies, reflect on the activities we have done, identify the points that needs clarification and most of all help our students in identifying their strengths and weaknesses. To achieve those, here are some basic guidelines on how we should construct our test regardless of what type of test item you will give: 1. Avoid wording that is ambiguous and confusing. Do not make your test difficult by using words that are beyond the schema of your students. Always make sure that when you construct a test you make sure that the level of difficulty of words you use is at the same level your students has in terms of their vocabulary. Because they might not understand those words which in turn limit their opportunity to give the right answer. Second, is never let your students be confused with the words and sentence construction you use. It will only give you a hard time correcting and making them understand what you wanted to mean in your test questions. Always remember that when you give test, you allow your students to have ample opportunity to give out the correct answer by matching their level of thinking and understanding with the level of vocabulary you use in your test construction. You give tests not to fail but to measure the level of understanding of your students- thats the number goal of giving tests. 2. Use appropriate vocabulary and sentence structure. As I have said you should always make sure that the level of vocabulary you use in the test is at same level that your students has so they can understand well your test questions and at the same time has the chance to give out the correct

answer. Every time you use inappropriate vocabulary or sentence construction, you make your students confused and make it unfair for them to answer correctly. Another youll get exhausted answering all their queries about certain words and structures they cant understand, so to avoid confusion and chaos in the room you should always check your grammar and sentence construction. 3. Keep questions short and to the point. There is no need to make your sentences long. Remember that the test you will give will only have limited time to answer and if you make your sentences long and not direct to the point, you are stealing the time of your students to answer more questions. 4. Write items that have one correct answer. For uniformity, always put items that have one correct answer. The tendency if you put questions that has more than one answer, the students will use that as an advantage to confuse the teacher and make them accept their answers by reasoning why it should be accepted though it must be wrong. Another is when you rechecked their papers; you wont get confused so they are for there is only correct and final answer. 5. Do not provide clues to the answer. Your aim of measuring how deep is your students understanding of your lesson will never be reached if you keep on giving clues in every question you give in your test. Give your students a little challenge by not giving clues and a little challenge on how well they know the lesson.