Validity, Reliability, Practicality, Backwash/Washback

Everything is pretty much straight forward to me. However, I need to reiterate some of the terms here so I can better remember it.

Concurrent validity: When a student takes almost similar tests at nearly the same time, his/her result will be pretty much the same.

Construct validity: the language competence the test is testing – does the test reflects the language competence it is trying to test? e.g. a teacher wants to test the students’ speaking ability with a grammar worksheet – not appropriate.  

Reliability: reliability is consistency. The test produces consistent result if the same student takes the test on a repeated occasion.

Article and Video Review

There are several points from the Rebecca S. Anderson’s article and the video that piqued my interest:

1. Diverse student population

This is especially true in most typical Malaysian classroom scenario (forgive me if I’m overgeneralizing). The students are diverse and are increasing in number, therefore so shall the students’ learning preferences, style and needs as well. It is almost impossible to use a one size fits all technique to cater to all students. If we use the traditional assessment to test the student’s overall performance, we might miss out on what other potential the student is capable of. For instance, we cannot measure a student’s athleticism or speaking ability solely on paper.

2. Constructivism

From a constructivist point of view, “education is about assisting students how to obtain knowledge.” Thus, the process is important and it will help the students to become autonomous in their learning. Students will utilize their schemata and try to find other information at the same time in order to discover about something new in their tasks. I may be repeating some part of the article I’m not aware of or I’m reiterating the basic concepts of constructivism, but I strongly believe that students should be involved in their own learning process.

3. Knowledge has a universal meaning VS knowledge has multiple meaning.

Knowledge is culturally mediated, therefore it is restricted and it does not have a definite meaning – the article says. This means that different people from different parts of the world will have different opinion on how to teach and assess language learning. Plus, we are not culturally similar to each other. It’ll be really interesting to know the other different opinions so we can add the knowledge to our teaching arsenal.

4. Self-evaluation

I don’t really know why this term is so interesting to me. Maybe because until now I have difficulty practicing this myself – it’s hard to fully reflect on your own learning after class because perhaps you have lots of things going on in your mind. Maybe this blog will help journalize the little thoughts I have after class.

5. Test to learn

We did this a lot back in high school preparing for the SPM examination. We did tons of trial papers from different states in Malaysia and from the correction session, we unconsciously learned the papers inside out. Thus we are able to somehow predict the types of questions that will appear in certain sections in the exam paper. It’s both good and not good, anyway it helped me pass my killer science and mathematics papers.

M.E.A.T.

When I first saw these four terms, I had thought that they were of similar nature. This is probably because we are learning about language testing, so I deliberately placed them in one box. But when Dr. Lee said they differ from each other, I tried to look at the terms in a different way so I can make out the difference myself. 

Here’s what I got:

Measurement – it involves measuring something, so it might have something to do with numbers. Perhaps it is the marks the students get in their tests. But then, not every potential in a student can be measured, for instance confidence and leadership. “Alex, you got full marks in the leadership test. Thus, you will be the class monitor.” Never heard of such thing. Yet.

Evaluation – the word evaluate brings an overall-like meaning to me; the ultimate of something. In this case, language testing. So evaluation probably will bring all the qualities of a student after an overall test on a table, saying “this is your worth.”

Assessment – assessment sounds so prompt. It is like you’re deciding whether you want a chocolate cheese cake or a New York cheese cake for an evening tea; you’d consider the pros and cons of the two before picking.

Testing – this is a common word the person in charge of the technical in an event will use to test out the microphone. Come to think of it, a microphone is not so micro. Anyway, of course, testing means test. With paper, pencil (pen for the excruciatingly long essay writing), really specific seating and a time limit.

After the explanation, I found out that:

1. There is measurement and non-measurement where the former involves a certain value and the latter is more of an observation and it is rather informal.

2. Evaluation is a summary – it determines the significance and value to produce a certain judgement.

3. Any procedure to test students’ performance is an assessment. 

4. Test is an instrument to test students’ performance. Testing is the process – it consists of three stages: preparation, implementation, and evaluation.

Well, some of it is almost similar to what I previously had in mind, but I didn’t dare to say it in class because I was extremely unsure. Sorry! I’ll compensate it in this blog.