Curriculum-Related Tests

The first type of curriculum-related test that a new student might encounter is an admission test, which is used to decide whether a student should be admitted to the program at all; this could of course be viewed as a screening test for a language program (see below), illustrating that, as noted earlier, the lines between categories can often be rather fuzzy. A related type of test is a placement test, which is used to decide at which level in the language program a student should study. The student then gets “placed” into that level—hence the name. In many cases, a single test might be used for both purposes: to decide whether a students language ability is adequate for even the lowest level in the program (admission decisions), and if they pass that threshold, to decide which level is most appropriate for them (placement decisions).

Diagnostic tests are used to identify learners’ areas of strength and weakness. Sometimes diagnostic information is obtained from placement (or admissions) tests, but sometimes diagnostic tests are administered separately once students have already been placed into the appropriate levels. Some language programs also use diagnostic tests to confirm that students were placed accurately. This can be a good idea, especially if a program is not highly confident in its placement procedures, but it is debatable whether this is actually a diagnostic purpose p er se. Diagnostic information can be used to help teachers plan what points to cover in class, to help them identify what areas a student may need extra help with, or to help students know which areas they need to focus on in their learning.

Once students are placed appropriately, teachers may wish to find out whether or how well their students are learning what is being taught. Progress tests assess how well students are doing in terms of mastering course content and meeting course objectives. This is done from the point of view that the learning is still ongoing—that is, that students are not expected to have mastered the material yet. Many progress decisions in the classroom do not involve testing, however, but are made informally, in the midst of teaching (see, for example, Leung 2004). This is often referred to as monitoring, or “just paying attention,” and is assumed to be a fundamental part of teaching, but this does not make it any less a form of assessment. More formally, we often refer to smaller progress assessments as quizzes. However, to the extent that we are using these assessments—quizzes, tests, or whatever—to grade students, we are assessing something other than progress. Achievement tests are those that are used to identify how well students have met course objectives or mastered course content. To a large extent, the question ofwhether a particular test or quiz is an achievement or progress test depends upon how it is being used. To the extent that the test is used to make decisions about what or how fast to teach, it is a progress test, and to the extent that it is used to make decisions about how individual students have learned what they were supposed to, it is an achievement test.

For example, imagine that a test is given in the middle of a course. It is used to assign grades for how well students have learned the material in the first half of the course, but it is also used by the teacher to decide whether any of those points need to be reviewed in class. In such a case, the test is both a progress and an achievement test. As a second example, consider a test given at the very end of a course. This test is used to assign grades to students—to make decisions about how much learning they have achieved in the course—so it is purely an achievement test. In considering whether a test is actually serving as an assessment of progress, achievement, or both—regardless of what it is being called by a teacher or program—the key is to think in terms of the type(s) of decisions being made. This is especially important when the actual use of a test has changed from what was intended when it was originally designed.

Moving beyond the level of an individual course, achievement tests can also be used at the level of the school or language program for decisions about whether to promote students to the next level or tier of levels, or for program exit or graduation decisions. Often, of course, practicality dictates that achievement testing for such purposes be combined with end-of-course achievement testing. Finally, there are two additional types of test-based decisions that closely relate to language curricula and programs, but which do not involve their “own” types of tests. The first involves program evaluation—one source of evidence to use when evaluating a programs effectiveness is tests. While we may want to consider the results of placement tests—and how good a job of placing students they seem to be doing—we may also want to examine achievement test results. In particular, if achievement tests are used at the end of a course, or for graduation, and if these tests are clearly tied to the goals and objectives (Brown 1995) of the course or program, then student performance on those tests should tell us something about how well the program is working.