Tests as Tools

One of the most important things to keep in mind when making or using language tests is that tests and other assessments are tools. We want to use a test or assessment for a particular reason, to do a certain job, not “just because.” We should have in mind what that reason is, and who is likely to be taking the test, before we start planning the test—let alone before we start writing it. Almost without fail, the reason for giving the test will have something to do with making decisions about students, or other people (for example, prospective...

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Test Purposes and Types

As Brown (1995) points out, language tests are normally used to help make decisions, and there are a number of types of decisions that they can be used for. We generally refer to tests, in fact, by the type of decision they are used to make. I think it is useful to divide these test and decision types into two broad categories: those that are closely related to a teaching or learning curriculum, and those that are not. I use this distinction because curriculum-related tests all have a specific domain—the curriculum—to which we can refer when...

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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....

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Norm-Referenced and Criterion-Referenced Testing

One major way in which test results can be interpreted from different perspectives involves the distinction between norm- and criterion-referenced testing, two different frames of reference that we can use to interpret test scores. As Thorndike and Hagen (1969) point out, a test score, especially just the number of questions answered correctly, “taken by itself, has no meaning. It gets meaning only by comparison with some reference” (Thorndike and Hagen: 241). That comparison may be with other students, or it might be with some pre-established...

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asal usul terminologi of kata dancuk

etimologi Menurut Kamus Online Universitas Gadjah Mada , istilah “jancuk, jancok, diancuk, diancok, cuk, atau cok” didefinisikan sebagai “sialan, keparat, brengsek (ungkapan berupa perkataan umpatan untuk mengekspresikan kekecewaan atau bisa juga digunakan untuk mengungkapkan ekspresi keheranan atas suatu hal yang luar biasa)”. Kata ini memiliki sejarah yang masih rancu. Kemunculannya banyak ditafsirkan karena adanya pelesetan oleh orang-orang terdulunya yang salah tangkap dalam pemaknaannya, dimana versi-versi ini muncul dari beberapa...

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Seven Principles of Effective Public Speaking

When we watch celebrities, politicians, or business leaders speak on television or in public, they seem so at ease that we may wonder:  are great speakers made, or are they just born that way? While it is true that some individuals are definitely born with this gift, the overwhelming majority of effective speakers have trained themselves to be so. Either they have received formal media training or they have delivered so many speeches that over time they’ve learned what works for them. So what is the true secret to effective public...

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