Five Principles of Testing Practicality Reliability Validity Authenticity

Five Principles of Testing • • • Practicality Reliability Validity Authenticity Washback John Bunting (2004) presentation in the Course: Testing, Assessment and Teaching- A program for EFL Teachers at UABC. Facultad de Idiomas, UABC

Practicality • • Not too expensive Not too long (or too short) Easy to administer Appropriate and accurate scoring/evaluation procedure (Brown 2004, 19)

Reliability Is the test or assessment tool consistent and dependable? • Student-related reliability • Rater reliability • Test administration reliability • Test reliability (Brown, 2004, 20 -22)

Validity • • • “The extent to which the inferences made from assessment results are appropriate, meaningful, and useful in terms of the purpose of the assessment” (Gronlund 1998, cited in Brown 2004, 22) Content validity Criterion-related validity Construct validity Consequential validity Face Validity

Authenticity • • “the degree of correspondence of the characteristics of a given language test to the features of a target language task” (Bachman and Palmer 1996, cited in Brown 2004, 28) Natural language Contextualized rather than isolated Meaningful topics – relevant and interesting Thematic organization when possible

Washback • • • How testing affects both teaching and learning Tests as learning tools Preparation for test Feedback during/after test Distractors as learning tools Specific comments (good and bad) Even summative tests can provide positive washback (Brown 2004, 29 -30)