‘Testing Matters’
Classroom Testing for English Teachers

400 teachers took part in workshops across Vietnam this summer. The topic was classroom testing. The workshop title was ‘Testing Matters’.

There are three possible meanings of this in English:

Testing (n) + Matters (n) = Things about testing
Testing (adj) + Matters (n) = Difficult things
Testing (n) + Matters (v) = Testing is important

All three meanings were uncovered during the workshops!

Yes! Participants shared their knowledge about classroom testing and
discovered new things as well.

Yes! Participants also discovered that creating classroom tests can be a
difficult thing, and...

Yes! Participants saw how important testing can be, not only to give a clear and fair impression of students' progress and abilities in English, but also to make teaching itself more effective.

With a new teaching syllabus and new textbooks due to arrive in upper
secondary classrooms in the very near future, the relationship between teaching and testing has become very important. The new textbooks change from a grammar and vocabulary teaching focus to a skills teaching focus. In order to make this change successful, the new materials will have to be supported by new testing techniques, both in the classroom and at a provincial and national level.

This round of provincial VTTN workshops aimed to do two things:

n to help teachers write better tests for the current textbooks, and
n to prepare teachers for the challenges of testing when using the new
textbooks.

What follows in the first part of this magazine are the principles, ideas and techniques that workshop participants and trainers discussed during the summer. If you were at the workshops, this will serve as a timely reminder of what we did. If you weren't at one of the workshops, we hope you will find these pages both interesting and useful.

Here it is - ‘Testing Matters!’

Workshop contents

• Background to testing
Who/why/where/when/what/how do we test?
• Testing terms
• What makes a good test?
• Test analysis
• Techniques for testing
• Focus on grammar and vocabulary tests
• Focus on reading tests
• Designing a 15-minute test
• Designing a 45-minute test
• Test presentation and evaluation

Background - What are the ingredients of ‘Good Tests’?

On Day 1, workshop participants were asked to consider the question, ‘What makes a good test?’ The following list of criteria was put together by participants from Thai Nguyen:

In general, a good test…

…tests what has been taught
…encourages students to learn what you want them to
…is motivating for the students
…has clear, simple instructions which follow the same format as the textbooks and national exams
…is suitable for the level of the students - not too easy, not too difficult
…has something for everyone in a mixed ability class
…has a clear marking scheme - clear to both teacher and students
…has a clear layout and different sections are labelled, e.g. ‘Section 1 - Grammar’, ‘Section 2 - Reading’
…is easy to prepare, administer and mark
…is cheap to produce
…follows a format which is familiar to students from their lessons
…makes it difficult for students to copy (!!)
…contains a variety of question types and tests a variety of skills/knowledge areas
…fits well into the time available in class

On Day 2, participants were asked to consider more specifically the qualities of a good reading test. This is what Vinh teachers came up with:

Criteria for a good reading test….

Testing Terms!

Backwash The effect (positive or
negative) that a testing has on teaching and learning

Test Specifications

Before starting to write a test, it is a good idea to think about your framework: How long will the test last? How many sections will the test have? How many questions in each section? How many marks for each question? What type of test techniques will you use?

If you have one framework (or 'specification') for 15-minute tests and one for 45-minute tests, you can use them again and again. This will save you time. It will also mean that your students will become used to the tests you give them. If all the teachers in your school use the same specification, your department will give consistent tests for all students!

Workshop participants thought about these issues and produced test
specifications for both 15-minute and 45-minute tests. The ones here were produced at the Nam Dinh workshop in August.

A 15-minute test specification

A 45-minute test specification

Testing Terms!

A Reliable Test A test which produces
consistent results when it is used
on different occasions

Testing Techniques

Just as we need a ‘repertoire’ of techniques in the classroom to make sure there is enough variety in our lessons, we also need a repertoire of testing
techniques to make sure our tests are interesting and challenging. Summer workshop participants shared their testing repertoires. On these two pages, we
present some of the techniques they discussed, together with selected examples. Next time you are writing a test, why not have a look at this list and try something new?

Multiple choice

Choose the best answer to fill the gap in the
sentence below. Circle the correct letter A,B,C or D.

My grandmother ............................. in London for 35 years before she moved to Ireland

A lives B is living C has been living D lived

Odd-one-out

Look at the underlined sounds. Circle the word in each group which sounds different:

1 rough tough cough enough
2 ship pipe pip drink
3 hello throw though now

Jumbled dialogue/Dialogue re-ordering

Put the dialogue below in the right order by numbering the parts. The first and the last ones have been done for you.

hi there.
fine thanks. can I have two first class stamps please?
don't forget your change.
9 goodbye.
oh yes….thanks….see you.
how are you today?
thanks….here's a pound.
1 good morning sir.
certainly, sir….here you are….that'll be 56p please.

A Repertoire of Testing Techniques

Multiple choice
Sentence completion
Gap-fill sentences
Transformation
Jumbled letters
Jumbled words/Sentence re-ordering
Jumbled dialogue/Dialogue re-ordering
True/False
Q & A
Odd-one-out
Cloze test
Translation
Sentence building
Correct the mistakes
Here's the answer, write the question
Dictation
Picture dictation
Matching - collocations/compound nouns
Stress marking

Jumbled paragraphs/Text re-ordering
Putting sentences back in the text
Categorising
Information transfer
Crosswords/Puzzles
Summary writing
Topic/Essay writing
Give title to a text
Spelling tests
Matching - sentence halves
Matching - question and answer
Matching - antonym/synonym
Matching - words/pictures
Matching - words/definitions
Matching - headings/paragraphs
Spot the mistakes
???
???
Can you think of any more?

Matching - compound nouns

Match a word in column A with a word in column B to make a new word. The first one has been done for you.

Spot the mistakes

There are 5 mistakes in the following paragraph. Underline each mistake:

My friend Peter is a very good
footballist. He plays football since he was about 5 years old and now he plays for Arsenal Juniors. His dream is to became a famous player like David Beckham and play for England on the World Cup. If he will work hard, I think he can do it.

Jumbled paragraphs

Put the following paragraphs in the
correct order by numbering them 1,2,3….etc.

__ Thai Environment Minister Prapat Panyachatraska said this yesterday when he announced government plans to help more than 16,000 villages that still have no access to tap water.

__ Drinking unclean water is responsible for up to 25,000 deaths a day in developing countries, according to the World Health organization.

__ Speaking at World Environment Day, Prapat said the Ministry would present a water-supply plan for the villages without tap water to the Cabinet before the end of the month.

Information transfer

You are lost. A stranger gives you
directions. Read the directions and draw the journey that you take on the map below:

Go straight ahead until the traffic lights…turn left…then take the next right and it's about 100 metres further on your right just opposite the cinema.

What was produced at the end of the workshops?

Following the input sessions on what makes a good test, test specifications, test techniques and work on grammar, vocabulary and reading tests,
participants got to work writing 15 and 45-minute tests using their new found knowledge and insights. We hope to put the best of these tests together for VTTN provinces so that a ‘testing bank’ can be built up. This will allow all teachers to access ready-made, context-specific tests without having to spend hours and hours in preparation. We hope that these will soon be available to VTTN members in print form and as downloadable files on the Internet.
Watch this space!

The future of testing in Vietnam

As mentioned earlier in the magazine, things are changing fast in secondary schools in Vietnam. A new curriculum, new syllabuses and textbooks will soon be introduced into upper secondary schools. Amongst other changes, this will mean a change in the way students are tested. As you will read in the article on page 12 by Mr Hoang Van Van, the writer of one of the new textbooks, there will be a change in materials and a change from grammar-focussed teaching to skills focussed teaching. In order to make this change
successful, new tests will have to go beyond the traditional recipes used up to now. In addition to the sections outlined in the test specifications on page 5, teachers and
examiners will have to find space in their
testing for the skills of listening and speaking as well. We hope that future VTTN workshops will cover the topics of teaching (and testing) these skills.

Testing Terms!

An Objective Test A test where there is only one correct answer and, therefore, no judgement required when marking

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