DESCRIPTION OF THE TEST

DESCRIPTION OF THE TEST

Purpose of the test

The purpose of this test is to assess the students on the several topics and grammatical structures that were reviewed during unit 4, in order to give them the corresponding feedback, so we can reinforce what wasn’t clear to them, and for them to overcome, the difficulties that they may have had. Firstly we will assess the correct use of the present perfect tense and the past simple tense, so they can be appropriately used inside a conversation; secondly, we will assess the students’ ability to use the adverbs of sequence in order to form a recipe, here, we will also observe if students are able to make a coherent and adequate description and lastly, we will assess the vocabulary that was seen during the unit, which will only require them to identify the words with the correct picture.

Description of the exercises

The first part, is a fill in the gap exercise, in which the student has to choose between the form of the verb of the past simple or the present perfect tense, so they are only two choices, with one just being the correct answer, so the teacher can easily correct them if there is any error.

The second part, is a picture composition exercise, where the student has to look at the given pictures and write a recipe, this one can be a bit more complicated, but since we are only going to assess in here the adverbs of sequence, we shall not pay attention to any other kinds of errors, like the tenses, spelling or punctuation, as long, as it is coherent and understandable.

The last part, is about labeling some pictures, this will based on the vocabulary that we saw and taught during the unit, so we believe that this last part will be very easy correct, because there is only one answer for each picture. Overall, we can see that it won’t be hard or time consuming to check or make corrections.

It is very valid, because it only contains assessment tasks with examples of exercises that the students were taught during the unit, so it only measures what students saw in the course, and nothing else. Also, we tried to include exercises that were similar to the ones that we supposedly applied to the students before, so they would be familiar with them, making it easier for them to answer and get a good grade.

The test is reliable, because since we covered everything that was seen during the unit, if it is applied in other classes with another students, there is absolutely no reason for them to provide different results, on the contrary, the grades will be consistent, similar or very much alike, as long as they have been taught too, what the test includes.

We believe that this test is practical, because, as we previously mentioned it, it contains exercises which are easy to check or correct. Overall, we can see that it won’t be hard or time consuming to check or make corrections. It also isn’t very long for the students to answer it, and we planned that they will be finished with it in maximum 40 minutes, that is, about one entire class.

It isn’t expensive at all, and the test is about three pages long, so it can be printed in 2 sheets of paper. It contains mostly pictures, but this are in black in white, so this shouldn’t be a problem.

Regarding to the backwash effect, we believe, that this tests contains examples of real life situations, where we can see that we are applying everything, or most of the things, that were seen during class. For example, we can see that the first part is about an example that imitates or follows the pattern of a real-life conversation, but at the same time, we can check if the correct grammar is being applied; next, we have the recipe, we believe that it is authentic, because we see recipes in many cooking shows on the tv, maybe we hear them on the radio too, or we can give them to a friends; and lastly, there is the vocabulary, which is useful in the real world, mainly because humans depend on food, and most of us, go to restaurants, so we need to be familiar with that kind of words.

Since it isn’t a difficult test at all, if students really paid attention in their classes, handed in all of their homework and assignments, and participated actively, there is no reason for them to get a low grade. Therefore, we hope that with this test, most of the students will get satisfactory results, so they will feel happy with their respective grades, which will motivate them, so in the early future, they will keep making an effort to make improvements, and they will feel like they are making a great progress in learning a second language.