5 Tips for Effective ESL Testing
When teaching ESL to learners, regardless of age, you should always make sure that your methods of testing are effective. Whether you’re testing students with face-to-face interviews, homework assignments, quizzes, or exams, the results of these assessments serve as a measure of what the students have learned, as well as a reflection on how well you have taught them. With that in mind, here are five effective ways to sharpen your ESL testing skills.
1. Aim for Outcomes that Match Stakeholder Expectations
One of the most important considerations when teaching is your stakeholders’ expectations. A stakeholder is any person that expects to see results or progress from the course or lessons that you’re teaching. If you’re teaching adult students then the stakeholders are your students. If you’re teaching younger learners, the stakeholders are their parents or guardians, and if you’re working in a school, then the school administrators would also be stakeholders.
When both teaching and designing assessments, you should ensure that the results, or outcomes, match what the stakeholders expect to see. To determine what the expectations are, you should consult with school administrators, parents, or any adult students themselves long before the lesson and assessment creation process begins.
If a student’s parents expect them to be able to speak English in everyday scenarios, your tests should contain some type of verbal assessment to demonstrate this and not just writing or listening skills. If your students are adults who are taking English courses for business purposes, then they’ll want to learn enough English during your course to be able to use it in business scenarios.
If you are teaching a class English conversation skill but the school is judging their grade on a TOEIC test score result, which is mostly a grammar-based test, conflicts may arise. This often happens in TEFL classes as language barriers may hinder expectations between students, teacher and administration. Matching expected outcomes beforehand prevents issues arising later on.
2. Make Testing Accommodations, Not Modifications for Struggling Students
During an oral test or test that involves interactions of English skills, we sometimes need to change the approach for some students who may struggle with symbols, linking directions with tasks or may be confused as to purpose or intent, especially with younger learners. Something other than the target question may be the concern that needs to be addressed before continuing.
When you make a change that does not alter the skill or proficiency (aka the construct) that’s being tested, this is accommodation. When a change does alter the construct that you originally plan to test for, this is a modification. As a general rule, you should steer clear of making any testing modifications while also looking for valid reasons to make accommodations. Be aware of the function and goal of the change.
The point of making accommodations is to make the test process more inclusive so that all students are comfortable and able to demonstrate their skills. However, you don’t want to make too many modifications as the skills that are demonstrated on the test may change in the process, invalidating the test very quickly.
3. Use Alternative Assessments to Reduce Test Anxiety
Humans normally don’t perform cognitive tasks well when they’re under pressure, and linguistic students are no exception. Students of all ages can experience test anxiety where they may feel stressed during assessments and for different reasons.
In addition to feeling worried about how well they will perform during a test, some students have other factors involved that add to the stress. Young learners may be feeling the pressure of high expectations from their parents, while older learners may be worried about how the results of a test may impact their ability to conduct business in English-speaking scenarios.
Therefore, it’s sometimes prudent to consider using alternative options instead of traditional tests or exams.
With children, assessments disguised as games often work very well as long as you ensure that they incorporate the use of the target skills you need to test for (e.g. speaking, writing, reading, memorization, etc.) For both younger and older students, one-on-one oral interviews in the form of Q&A sessions and roleplaying scenarios can work well for testing conversational skills, while games that involve writing can help to measure other grammar and English writing skills.
4. Use Images When and Where They’re Appropriate
Incorporating images into assessments can help learners of all ages but are especially useful when working with young learners. One popular theory on how young learners acquire languages is Piaget’s theory of cognitive development. This concept separates learners into four different development stages based on their age and how the brain sorts information and builds cognitive functions around it.
Children between the ages of 2 and 7 years are in the preoperational stage according to this theory, while those between the ages of 7 and 11 years are in the concrete operational stage. Symbolism and having the ability to draw links between objects and words is believed to start in the preoperational stage, which is why imagery can be especially useful for both teaching and testing language skills.
Students younger than 7 years old often have difficulty making connections between words and definitions if there are no images involved. This is because the ability to reason and think logically begins to form in the later preoperational stage of Piaget’s theory.
However, even in this more developed stage, children still have trouble with thinking in abstract terms. So, for young learners across the age spectrum, using images on tests or displaying them during verbal assessments is almost always a good idea.
5. Create Rubrics for Objective Scoring
Testing is meant to be an objective process where the desired outcomes and expectations for a test are clearly understood by both the teacher and students. When creating tests, you want to make sure that you notate these outcomes so that you don’t deviate from them when scoring tests or forget what skills you’re testing for. For this reason, many teachers use rubrics, which are scoring instruments that tell you what to measure or judge when evaluating assessments.
To create a rubric, you should start with identifying the criteria, which are normally the specific skills you’re testing for, such as reading, writing, or conversational skills. Once you have these identified, you can break them down into descriptor groups, which would be more specific aspects associated with these skills.
For example, when scoring a student’s writing skills, you could score the writing based on a rubric including 4 descriptors such as grammar/spelling errors, vocabulary choice, task achievement, and range of grammar used. These models will help you deconstruct a student’s writing ability as well.
To score the criteria, each skill should also have performance levels written and with a grade or score assigned to it. Did the students show beginner-level writing skills or did they show mastery of English writing and why? If those who displayed mastery receive 100% or a perfect score, what do those showing beginner-level or intermediate-level receive and why? The rubrics can help you break down your justification for scoring to the students, rather than a single score attached to their writing.
Creating rubrics not only helps you save time when testing, as you can quickly refer to them for scoring purposes, but they also serve as a benchmark for identifying students’ linguistic strengths and weaknesses.
In summary, effective testing mirrors strong teaching skills
Effective ESL testing takes place when you’ve ensured that your students are comfortable with the testing process and that it aligns with stakeholder expectations. Any assessments that you use or create should be outcome-oriented, objective, and paired with rubrics or other scoring tools to assist you with grading. With strong teaching comes observable learning outcomes, and effective testing is how you demonstrate this.