How to Design Good Tests

The New Year is around the corner, meaning, most students are preparing for their examinations in December or January. Whether you are an academic, private tutor, or teacher, you are most likely to be designing or selecting assessment sheets for your students. Here are some guidelines I think you need to consider when assessing your learners.

Learners' perception of examination

No doubt students inevitably experience anxiety, nervousness, and stress when preparing for assessments. Surprisingly, most learners perceive testing positively, they acknowledge its beneficial impact on their learning progress. Experts claim that the less anxious students are before their exams, the more likely they are going to perform well. Therefore, your responsibility as a teacher is to inform your students in advance about any testing, not only is it ethical, but it is also useful for learners to revisit previous units and revise. Some teachers, like myself, see "Pop" tests as useful tools to assess students at any stage of the course, again, students have to know at the beginning of the course that there are going to be pop tests.

Understanding different types of tests

Conventionally, tests are broken down into five main categories:

1- Progress: a test in which learners are assessed formally (exam with a grade) or informally (quizzes) on their development throughout the course.

2- Achievement: a summative test that is set at the end of the course to highlight learning outcomes of the materials taught.

3- Proficiency: a test that assesses learners' overall language systems and skills. It is not linked to a specific course. Cambridge Assessments (IELTS, FCE, etc.) are examples of Proficiency Tests.

4- Diagnostic: a test, usually done at the beginning of a course or unit, to help the teacher address learners' weaknesses and strengths. Some coursebooks label these tests as introductory or orientation tests at the beginning of the book.

5- Placement/Level: tests designed to determine the learner's ability to place them accordingly.

I will talk about the first two types (Progress and Achievement) in this article.

Criteria to designing outstanding tests

Taking a test is unarguably stressful, but designing it is rather laborious, in fact, the more daunting the process is, the better the test is. You might be spared if you are following a coursebook and it provides you with a set of testing sheets. However, teachers often need to design their own tests and customize them to meet their learners' specific needs, and the items they have covered so far (Progress Testing). Here are some criteria to help you evaluate your own written exam papers:

1- Clarity: this is especially necessary when carrying out formal testing where learners are expected to perform independently. This includes writing clear instructions by grading the language, having clear objectives, choosing the right font size, printing quality, and layout. You may ask a colleague to take the test and see if they are clear about what they are asked to do.

2- Mark distribution: weigh each question and set a mark of its worth logically. Short-answers, multiple-choice, and gap-filling questions are usually worth less than extended tasks such as writing an essay.

3- Objectivity: try to be as objective as possible, avoid including questions that are more likely to have more than one correct answer. It's hard to be objective when assessing productive skills (speaking and writing), but you will want to have a set of criteria to assess the learner against, make sure the learners know about these criteria beforehand. Here is a sample of criteria for writing a story B2. Another sample for a speaking test.

4- Time allotment: I personally try to be as judicious as possible in terms of the testing time. I always try to break the Progress Test down into mini-tests taken in the same week. For example, speaking and written tests are on one day, and writing is on another. Think about the difficulty of each task, in fact, it would be a great idea to take the test yourself and see how much time students might need. Some tasks are "holistic", they require more than one skill or language system, for example, writing requires grammar, vocabulary, proofreading, spelling, and other subskills.

5- Validity of the test: a test is valid when students are being tested on items they have covered so far, or on the course they have taken. Therefore, my top tip with this regard is to avoid including items they have not been taught. This includes tricky questions, learners are stressed out already, no need to confuse them. I sometimes don't have time to design a test from scratch and the coursebook doesn't provide tests, so I look up tests relevant to the students' level, read them, and make the necessary adjustments to make it fit into the syllabus they have covered.

Another crucial area of test validity is whether the test does really test what it is meant to test. This might sound confusing, differences could be subtle, yet have a big influence. Do you want to test their knowledge of past simple or their knowledge of past simple vs present perfect? Be as precise as possible in terms of your target language or skill.

6- Test evaluation: make sure to pitch the test at the right level. Some groups, if not all, have weaker and stronger learners. Some coursebook tests have standard and higher testing papers, Optimize course books, for example. Those can be catered to students to test them fairly. You may want to look at such samples before designing your own tests so that you have a clear idea of how to control the difficulty of the assessment.

7- Create a positive culture: tests are often perceived as a scary tool that is detrimental. Personally, it is challenging to change this fossilized concept. However, I always try to tell my students the why before the what and how. They have to know the benefits of tests to perform better. It is even more important to have feedback on their results and agree with them on a development plan.

I remember my first testing session with a group of young learners ages 8-10 which I was assigned to. After having them receive the results, they started crying, I realized how negative their school culture was about testing. I told them why tests are important and how they can improve, and how proud I will be to see better results. The following unit was a complete change in results.

The aforementioned criteria are not a holy bible to follow, feel free to add up any ideas or share your experience of designing tests. Finally, understand that good tests are not easy to make, and we learn the most by error and trial. Therefore, it is always useful to ask for feedback from colleagues and the students themselves on your customized testing papers.

Good luck with your tests and Happy New Year!