Friday, January 11, 2013

Language Assessment: Assembling and Reproducing Final Form

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Assembling and Reproducing Final Form

By :
Joko Supriyanto

1.      Assembling a Test Form
After the first test, tasks may be re-ordered to take account of their difficulty. Usually the easiest questions are presented first. This is to encourage candidates to proceed through the test and to ensure that the weaker candidates do not become discouraged before providing adequate evidence of their achievements and skills. Minor changes to items may have to be made for layout reasons (for example, to keep all of an item on one page of the test, or to avoid obvious patterns in the list of correct answers). Items representing a single cell within a test specification should vary in item content and difficulty. The position of the correct option in multiple-choice items (A, B, C, D or E) should also vary and each position should be used to a similar extent. Some questions may have minor changes to wording, others may be replaced. The final test should be consistent with the test blueprint. The item review procedures described above are repeated (particularly important where stimulus material must be associated with more than one question) and each reviewer should work independently through the proposed test and provide a ‘correct’ answer for each question. This enables the test constructor’s (new) list of correct answers to be checked.
1.1.  General Rules for Test Assembly
            The following are general rules, intended as guidelines for assembling test forms. When reviewing a test prior to administering, verify that the test conforms with the following test construction guidelines.
            Test Construction Rules for Multiple-Choice Tests.
1.      Set the number of items so that at least 95 percent of the examinees can answer all items.
2.      The correct choice should appear about an equal number of times in each response position.
3.      Do not use any pattern of correct responses, e.g., ABCDE, etc.
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4.      Directions to examinees should be written on the test to indicate whether guessing is permitted or not.
            Test Construction Rules for Essay Tests.
1.      All examinees must take the same items. Do not give them a chance to choose which items they want to answer. Meaningful comparisons normally can be made only if all examinees take the same test.
1.2.Grading Essay Tests
            Because of their subjective nature, essay exams are difficult to grade. The following guidelines are helpful for grading essay exams in a consistent and meaningful way.
1.      Construct a model answer for each item and award a point for each essential element of the model answer. This should help minimize the subjective effects of grading.
2.      Essay items must be graded anonymously if at all possible in order to reduce the subjectivity of the graders. That is, graders should not be informed as to the identity of the examinees whose papers they are grading.
3.      Grade a single essay item at a time. This helps the grader maintain a single set of criteria for awarding points to the response. In addition, it tends to reduce the influence of the examinee's previous performance on other items.
4.      Unless it is a test of language mechanics, do not take off credit for poor handwriting, spelling errors, poor grammar, failure to punctuate properly, etc.
5.      Ideally, there should be two graders for each item. Any disagreements between these two graders must be resolved by a third grader. Normally, this third grader is the head grader or course instructor.

2.      Reproducing the test
As the test are reading to reproduce, there are many things should be the test maker’s concern then. Here they are:
a.       When the test is typed for reproduction, the items should be spaced on the page so that they are easy for students to read and for instructor to score.
b.      If multiple choice items are used, the alternative should be listed underneath the stem.
c.       All of the parts of an item should be on the same page.
d.      For interpretative exercises, it may be necessary to place the introductory material on a facing page, or on a separate sheet to be handed out with the test.
e.       If the answer to be marked on the test itself, provision should be made for recording the answers on the left side of the page to simplify the scoring.
f.       If separate answer sheets are to be used and the test is to be administered to more than one group of students, it is usually necessary to warn the students not to make any marks on the booklets.
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g.      For better preparation, it is also suggested to make more copies of the  test than are needed as an anticipation because some students will ignore your warning.
h.      Regardless of reproduction used, the master copy should be checked carefully for item arrangement, legibility, accuracy, of detail in drawings, and freedom from typographical errors.



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