Summary Test Week 8

Summary Topic, Developed By : Juan Felipe Herrera Cantor

Test specifications and design.

In this topic our partners explained about specs, which are explanatory documents for the creation of test task, it is said that specs are actually a common sense notion in test development. Specs can be also called blueprint, which is the foundation or base in which other task tests, are made. Taking this into consideration, kheoe presents a series of guidelines for creating multiple choice test items.

1.Before writing the stem, identify the one point to by tested by that item.

2.Construct the stem to be either an incomplete statement or a direct question, avoiding stereotyped phraseology, as rote responses are usually based on verbal stereotypes.

Among other topics they talked about guiding language versus sample, and congruence which is when a new spec fits a previous one.

Finally I recall they talked about Reverse engineering which is an analytical process that begins with a real life question and infer the guide language that drives it , that means that they are trying to get information about a final product.

Writing Items and tasks

In this topic our partners talked about the evidence centered design and its items and tasks, this type of design bases on the evidences that the student can deduct and analyze for this type of test, it uses different abilities, such as deduction, inference and all relat4ed to the branch of the sociolinguistic awareness and sociocultural approach.

They also explain the ECD, (validity argument) which is methodology for designing that underscore the central role of evidentiary reasoning in assessment design, and this is based in three premises:

1.The importance of how the language is acquired and the understanding of the cognitive process.

2.The chain of reasoning, from what participants from what the participants say and do in the assessment

3.The purpose must be the driving force behind design decisions.

Finally, a description of items and tasks shows this process is broken down to three pieces: Interaction activity, interaction requirement for activity and the communication goal.

The final output the student is going to produce also known as language characteristics are:

Organizational Characteristics:  Grammatical, Textual,

Pragmatic Characteristics:  Functionality and sociolinguistics.

This all takes goods results taking into consideration the Washback the teacher receives from the students and the school. Since each context and case are different, the teacher must validate the specs of this individual case.

Prototypes, prototyping and field test

Models of how the final design will work in order to evaluate the functioning of the test, the validity. For prototyping there are two steps which is the Alpha testing which is a test used to determine all the errors that the test may have and must be done before being used with real examiners, and the purpose is to stimulate the real users. For the beta test which is done with the real examiners all the approved methodologies and questions from the alpha test can be questioned as well new modifications that found validity.

Also the field test which is:

 P1. The tests are performed with the user of the target group

 P2. It Is divided into a task model, a reader model and a research agenda.

 P3. Assembly types of investigation are carried out, this means the duration of the test and questions.