Tests can be categorised according to the types of information they provide. This categorisation will prove useful both in deciding whether an existing test is suitable for a particular purpose and in writing appropriate new tests where these are necessary. The four types of test are: 1. Proficiency Tests 2. Achievement Tests 3. Diagnostic Tests 4. Placement Tests

Proficiency Tests are designed to measure people’s ability in a language, regardless of any training they may have had in that language. The content of a proficiency test, therefore, is not based on the content or objectives of language courses that people taking the test may have followed. The example of this Proficiency Test is TOEFL.

Achievement tests are directly related to language courses, their purpose being to establish how successful individual students, groups of students, or the courses themselves have been in achieving objectives. They are of two kinds: final achievement tests and progress achievement tests. Final achievement tests are those administered at the end of a course of study.

Progress achievement tests are intended to measure the progress that students are making.

Diagnostic tests are used to identify learners’ strengths and weaknesses. They are intended primarily to ascertain what learning still needs to take place.

Placement tests are intended to provide information that will help to place students at the stage of teaching programme most appropriate to their abilities. Typically they are used to assign students to classes at different levels.

Direct testing 1. Requires the candidate to perform precisely the skill that we wish to measure. 2. Easy to carry out when it is intended to measure the productive skills of speaking and writing. 3. Has a number of attractions. 1. Attempts to measure that underlie the skills in which we are intended. 2. Offers the possibility of testing a representative sample of a finite number of abilities which underlie a potentially indefinite large number of manifestations of them. 3. Superior to direct testing in that its results are more generalisable. Indirect testing

Discrete Point 1. Refers to the testing of one element at a time, item by item. 2. Take the form of a series of items, each testing a particular grammatical structure. 3. Will almost always be indirect 1. Requires the candidate to combine many language elements in the completion of a task. 2. Involves writing a composition, making notes while listening to a lecture, taking a dictation, or completing a cloze passage. 3. Tends to be direct Integrative Testing

Norm-referenced 1. Relates one candidate’s performance to that of other candidates. 2. Not restricted 3. Procedures for use with norm-referenced tests are well established. 1. The tasks are set, and the performances are evaluated. 2. Have two positive virtues. 3. Have to based on analysis of what students had to be able to do with or through English at university. 4. Procedures for use with criterion-referenced tests are not well established. Criterion-referenced

Objective testing 1. No judgement required. 2. Short answers in response to questions on a reading passage. 1. A judgement is needed. 2. Scoring of a composition. Subjective testing

In most paper and pencil tests, the candidate is presented with all the items, usually in ascending order of difficulty, and is required to respond to as many of them as possible. This is not the most economical way of collecting information on someone’s ability. Computer adaptive testing offers a potentially more efficient way of collecting information on people’s ability.

Much has been written about ‘communicative language testing’. Discussions have centred on the desirability of measuring the ability to take part in acts of communication (including reading and listening) and on the best way to do this.