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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.
List of contents
AcknowledgementsPrefaceChapter 1 - Testing and assessment in context1. 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
ActivitiesChapter 2 - Standardised testing1. 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
Chapter 3 - Classroom assessment1. 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
ActivitiesChapter 4 - Deciding what to test1. The test design cycle
2. Construct definition
3. Where do constructs come from?
4. Models of communicative competence
5. From definition to design
ActivitiesChapter 5 - Designing test specifications1. What are test specifications?
2. Specifications for testing and teaching
3. A sample detailed specification for reading test
4. Granularity
5. Performance conditions
6. Target language use domain analysis
7. Accommodations
8. Back and forth
ActivitiesChapter 6 - Evaluating, prototyping and piloting1. 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
ActivitiesChapter 7 - Scoring language tests1. Scoring items
2. Scorability
3. Scoring constructed response tasks
4. Automated scoring
5. Corrections for guessing
6. Avoiding own goals
ActivitiesChapter 8 - Aligning tests to standards1. 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. Standards-setting methodologies
10. Evaluating standard-setting
11. Training
12. The special case of CEFR
13. You can always count on uncertainty
ActivitiesChapter 9 - Validity1. Preliminaries
2. The Messick consensus
3. Argument-based validation
4. Technicalism
5. The new realism
6. Constructivism
7. Pragmatic realism
8. Conclusion
ActivitiesEpilogueAppendicesGlossaryReferencesIndex
About the author
Glenn Fulcher is Emeritus Professor of Education and Language Assessment in the School of Education at the University of Leicester, UK. He is co-editor of
The Routledge Handbook of Language Testing and author of
Re-examining Language Testing: A Philosophical and Social Inquiry. These two books jointly won the SAGE/ILTA Book Award in 2016. His other books include
Language Testing and Assessment: An Advanced Resource Book and
Testing Second Language Speaking. He has published over 100 research papers. In 2021 he received the Messick Memorial Award from Educational Testing Service, and in 2022 was elected a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He is also a UK National Teaching Fellow.
Summary
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.
