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English Teaching and Learning Evaluation Reaction Paper N1 CREATING INTERACTIVE, INTRINSICALLY MOTIVATING TESTS By: Professor Anet

Brea de Cortez The main purpose of a test is to provide test takers with the opportunity to demonstrate skills and knowledge and to provide test appliers with the opportunity to have feedback to know in which stage the process of teaching and learning is in reference to the final goals. This process is not supposed to be stressful nor painful, but actually it is so, and very much; it is far distant of being a pleasant part of the process of formal education. Testing is immersed in the teaching process and they can not be separated from each other. We can observe in testing that there are two types of testing: formal and informal. Informal testing is found during all the teaching process in almost every activity, because during all the classes every time we demand any type of response from the students, we, teachers are assessing their knowledge and assessing how well we are conducting our teaching, before exposing learners to a summative, formal testing, which on the contrary, are specifically designed to evaluate skills and knowledge in a short time limit. They are systematic, planned sampling techniques which lead to sum up scores that will indicate in figures, the learner progress. Modern research tells us that learners should play with language in the classroom to find the way to a positive performance, especially when formally tested, and this is based in research done by specialists like Howard Gardner and Robert Sternberg. Gardner, besides linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence adds other types of intelligence: spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal. This new concept of intelligence gives us freedom and responsibility, we must test interpersonal, creative, communicative, interactive skill and place some trust in our subjectivity, our intuition. (page 64 hand written) This new optic takes us into new ways of testing too: performance based tests, like open-ended problems, hands-on projects, student portfolios, experiments, labs, essay writing or group projects. Although time consuming and expensive, they provide higher validity. Based on Gardner and Stenberg theories, tests should get people involved in actually performing the behavior to be measured. In testing so, intrinsic motivation must be taken into account. This get learners in cooperative group preparation, and get them to see testing as a valid and fair mean of measuring competence. It has four major principles: giving students advance preparation (give information about the test), providing face validity to the test (perception of test being valid), authenticity (language in context), and washback (feedback on time).

Test construction should take into consideration some practical steps: clear, unambiguous objectives (what to measure is clear), test specifications in reference with objectives (outline test, time and look), draft the test (real outlook), revise the test (question the test), final-edit and type the test (go through all the test, time it, adjustments), feedback after test (notes on students reaction), work for washback (feedback for students). Reading about creating interactive, intrinsically motivating tests has been very interesting. Ive read about the new theory of intelligences, but was missing readings about how to evaluate this type of teaching. I consider that I still need to read more about the performance-based testing techniques. To me these techniques are somehow more complex than the traditional ones. But this reading makes me think over my students and ask myself if I have observed them to know or get the idea of what type of intelligence they have. I think that I have never paid really attention to it even though I know theories say it exists. A line that called my attention during the reading was This new concept of intelligence gives us freedom and responsibility, we must test and place some trust in our subjectivity, our intuition. (page 64 hand written). I have always been afraid of subjectivity in evaluation and I have always tried to be objective and as fair as I can. Subjectivity and intuition as any human aspect may be tools well used on hands of fair, good teachers, but what about of being used by unfair, neglect, bad teachers? So, it is a tool that should be used carefully and well thought. I for sure will do my best to research and get a closer idea of performance-based techniques as well as I will work on applying the ideas provided on the reading about test construction.

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