Testing and Evaluation

Testing and Evaluation

Testing and evaluation of language skills and competencies are very important components of. language teaching. Testing becomes an integral part of teaching because it provides significant information or. inputs about the growth and achievement of learner's difficulties, styles of learning, anxiety levels.

Difference between Testing and Evaluation

Education professionals make distinctions between assessment, evaluation, and testing. ... A test or quiz is used to examine someone's knowledge of something to determine what he or she knows or has learned. Testing measures the level of skill or knowledge that has been reached. Evaluation is a process that critically examines a program. It involves collecting and analyzing information about a program's activities, characteristics, and outcomes. Its purpose is to make judgments about a program, to improve its effectiveness, and/or to inform programming decisions 

Kinds of tests

There are many kinds of tests, each with a specific purpose, a particular criterion to be measured.

Proficiency Tests

 A proficiency test is not intended to be limited to any one course, curriculum, or single skill in the language. Proficiency tests have traditionally consisted of standardized multi­ple-choice items on grammar, vocabulary, reading comprehension, aural comprehension, and sometimes of a sample of writing.

A rather typical example of a standardized proficiency test is the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) produced by the Educational Testing Service. It is used by nearly 1000 institutions of higher education in the United States as an indicator of a prospective student's ability to undertake academic work in an English medium. The TOEFL consists of the following three sec­tions:

Section 1, Listening Comprehension, measures the ability to understand English as it is spoken in the United States. The oral aspects of the language are stressed. The problems tested include vocabulary that is more frequently used in spoken English, structures that are primarily peculiar to spoken English, and sound and intonation distinctions that have proven to be difficult for nonnative speakers. The stimulus material is recorded in standard American English; the response options are printed in the test books.

Section 2, Structure and Written Expression, measures mastery of important structural and grammatical points in standard written English. The language tested is formal, rather than conversational. The topics of the sentences are of a general academic nature so that individuals in specific fields of study or from specific national or linguistic groups have no particular advantage. When topics have a national context, they refer to United States history, culture, art, or litera­ture.

Section 3, Vocabulary and Reading Comprehension, tests the ability to under­stand the meanings and uses of words in written English as well as the ability to understand a variety of reading materials. So that there is no advantage to indi­viduals in any one field of study, the questions based on reading materials do not require outside knowledge of the subject matter.

Diagnostic and Placement Tests

A diagnostic test is designed to diagnose a particular aspect of a particular language. Some proficiency tests can serve as diagnostic tests by isolating and analyzing certain sets of items within the test. An achievement test on a particular module in a curriculum might include a num­ber of items on modal auxiliaries; these particular items could serve to diag­nose difficulty on modals.

A placement test typically includes a sam­pling of material to be covered in the curriculum (that is, it has content valid­ity), and it thereby provides an indication of the point at which the student will find a level or class to be neither too easy nor too difficult but to be appro­priately challenging.

Achievement Tests

An achievement test is related directly to classroom lessons, units, or even a total curriculum. Achievement tests are limited to particular material covered in a curriculum within a particular time frame.

Aptitude Tests

Finally, we need to consider the type of test that is given to a person prior to any exposure to the second language, a test that predicts a person's future success. A foreign language aptitude test is designed to measure a person's capacity or general ability to learn a foreign language and to be successful in that undertaking. Aptitude tests are considered to be independent of a par­ticular foreign language, predicting success in the acquisition of any foreign language. 

Teaching of English

Teaching of English

Enriching one’s vocabulary

      Vocabulary enrichment does not mean rote-learning or memorizing words. It can be exciting. Look at the following problems:

     The plural of ‘milkman’ is ‘milkmen’; but the plural form of ‘walkman’ is ‘walkmans’ and not ‘walkmen’ – not even the nonsexist walkpersons! The reason is walkman is not a kind of man; it is the brand name for an instrument.

Hollywood has been making films based on comic book heroes; it has so far made three ‘Supermans’ (not supermen), and two ‘Batmans’ (not Batmen)

The plural of ‘mouse’ is ‘mice’ but we say that administration is full of ‘Mickey Mouses’ (not Mickey Mice) because it refers to timid people.

      Crimes like ‘robberies, muggings and pick-pocketings …’ Should it be  ‘pocket –picking or pick-poketing? One who does it is called a ‘pickpocket’, not a pocket-picker (though we have rag-picker) or a ‘pickpocketer’

   Such problems can create a lot of interest in word formation processes. By learning the company that words keep (called collocation), one can learn a lot about how words are used in combination with other words, phrases and idioms. Take idioms, for example:

    Kick the bucker, Spill the beans, Bite the bullet, Go bananas……

      There is no way to predict the meaning of such expressions from the meanings of their components: for example, kicking the bucket is not a kind of kicking, and buckets have nothing to do with it. We have to take these phrases as ‘words’ and learn their meanings.

Homonyms

Homonyms are two words that are spelled the same and sound the same but have different meanings. The word "homonym" comes from the prefix "homo-," which means the same, and the suffix "-nym," which means name. Therefore, a homonym is a word that has the same name as another word, meaning that the two words look and sound exactly alike.

A simple example of a homonym is the word "pen." This can mean both "a holding area for animals" and "a writing instrument." Another example is "book," which can mean "something to read" or "the act of making a reservation." In both cases, the sound and spelling are the same, and only the definition changes.

Homonym Examples

Here are 30 more examples of homonyms. Note that some homonyms have more than two meanings (for example, "tender" can also mean sensitive, easily chewed, or even refer to chicken strips), but to keep things simple we've only included two in our homonyms list:

·         Address - to speak to / location

·         Air - oxygen / a lilting tune

·         Arm - body part / division of a company

·         Band - a musical group / a ring

·         Bark - a tree's out layer / the sound a dog makes

·         Bat - an implement used to hit a ball / a nocturnal flying mammal

·         Bright - very smart or intelligent / filled with light

·         Circular - taking the form of a circle / a store advertisement

·         Current - up to date / flow of water

·         Die - to cease living / a cube marked with numbers one through six

·         Express - something done fast / to show your thoughts by using words

·         Fair - equitable / beautiful

·         Jag - a sharp, jutted object / a crying spree

·         Kind - type / caring

·         Lie - to recline / to tell a falsehood

·         Match - to pair like items / a stick for making a flame

·         Mean - average / not nice

·         Pole - a person from Poland / a piece of metal that holds a flag

·         Pound - unit of weight / to beat

·         Quarry - a site for mining stone / to extract or obtain slowly

·         Ream - a pile of paper / to juice a citrus fruit

·         Ring - a band on a finger / something circular in shape

·         Right - correct / direction opposite of left

Homophones

Homophones are pairs of words that sound the same, but have distinctly different meanings and different spellings. Understanding homophones is an essential part of mastering the English language, both for vocabulary building and spelling.

20 Common Homophone Pairs

Some common examples of homophones, including the words used in a sentence, are:

·         brake/break: When teaching my daughter how to drive, I told her if she didn't hit the brake in time she would break the car's side mirror.

·         cell/sell: If you sell drugs, you will get arrested and end up in a prison cell.

·         cent/scent: I won't spend one cent on a bottle of perfume until I know that I love the scent.

·         die/dye: If you accidentally drank a bottle of fabric dye, you might die.

·         flour/flower: To bake a flower-shaped cake, you'll need some flour.

·         for/four: I purchased four new pairs of shoes for my upcoming vacation.

·         heal/heel: If the heel breaks on your shoe, you might fall. However, your injuries will heal over time.

·         hear/here: I wanted to sit here so I could hear the singer performing without any distractions.

·         hour/our: We have one hour before our appointment with the real estate agent.

·         idle/idol: Being idle makes me unhappy, but listening to my idol Taylor Swift makes me happy.

·         knight/night: The knight is on his way to the castle, but traveling at night is very dangerous.

·         knot/not: I do not know how she learned to tie the knot to make that necklace.

·         poor/pour: I pour drinks at a bar every night. I am poor because I have too many bills and not enough money.

·         right/write: There is no right way to write a great novel.

·         sea/see: At my beach house, I love to wake up and see the sea.

·         sole/soul: I need to get a new sole put on my favorite pair of running shoes. Jogging is good for my soul.

·         son/sun: My son is 13 years old. He likes to spend time outside in the sun.

·         steal/steel: Someone who decides to steal a car has committed a crime, but auto parts are made of steel.

·         tail/tale: My cat was crazily chasing his tail while I read a fairy tale to my children.

·         weather/whether: I don't know whether to bring a jacket or not. The weather looks unpredictable today.

Frequently Confused Homophones

There are several homophones in the English language that almost everyone gets confused at some point. These frequently confused homophones include:

·         accept/except: Accept is a verb that means to take or receive. Except is used as a preposition or conjunction to mean but or exclude.

·         affect/effect: Affect is a verb (in most cases) and indicates influence. Effect is a noun (in most cases) and is the result of an action or change.

·         compliment/complement: Compliment means to say something nice about someone or something. Complement means something that enhances or completes.

·         then/than: Then is a versatile word used as an adverb, noun or adjective to show the order of how things happened. Than is a subordinating conjunction you can use to make comparisons.

Walter Pater

Walter Pater

Walter Horatio Pater (4 August 1839 – 30 July 1894) was an English essayist, literary and art critic, and fiction writer, regarded as one of the great stylists. His works on Renaissance subjects were popular but controversial, reflecting his lost belief in Christianity.

Pater on Literature and Criticism

Pater distinguishes between ‘imaginative literature’ and ‘literature of fact’. Poetry is literature of imagination. Books on science, history, etc. are literatures of fact. Pater says that imaginative prose is also poetic, even though it does not have metre and rhythm. Religious prose is also poetic. Imaginative literature expresses the artist’s vision of life and nature. Pater says that labour and painstaking efforts are also necessary in writing poem. Hence poetry or literature in general is both an art and a science.

What is the function of great literature? Great literature serves to a) increase happiness  b) redeem the oppressed c) enlarge our sympathies d) present new and old truths from a new angle  e) fortifies and ennobles our minds and f) makes us aware of the glory of God. Great literature combats the corrupting influence of the age.

Pater on Style

Pater finds three important ingredients in style. They are i) diction  ii) design  and iii) personality. By diction, Pater means the use of proper vocabulary, shunning obsolete or worn-out words, and also uncommon and ornamental words. Pater says that the writer must use words economically, extracting the utmost from every word and meaning more than he writes down. It is the intelligent reader’s duty to discover the layers of meaning compressed and kept hidden in each word by the writer. It is like the miner using shovels and pickaxes to unearth the gold deposited deep down the earth.

   The second requirement of style is design by which Pater means combining words into a unified whole. It is not just a stringing together of sentences. The literary piece, whether it is a poem or a drama, must be imbued with a cpmmon purpose, an architectural design. Foreseeing the end  in the beginning and the end looking back to the beginning. Pater’s design reminds us of the Aristotelian plot, with its beginning, middle and end, organically inter-related.

    The third requirement of style is the writer’s personality which gives warmth and colour and even perfume to the writing. It is the writer’s responsibility, which inspires every word. The writer’s personality, in as much as the writer is noble and sublime, is not only individualistic but also universal. Everyman speaks through the writer’s mouth

Pater on Criticism

     Pater says that a critic should have three qualities. First, the critic should have tact and sensibility. Second, he should be well-versed not only in literature but also in science and philosophy. Third, the critic should have a noble vision. Only, he can detect the true grandeur and nobility of the writer.