The Types of the Test

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3. Achievement Test

According to Arthur Hughes, achievement test is “The test that is related to language courses, their purpose being to establish how successful individual student, group of students, or the courses themselves have been achieving the objectives. 16 It could be concluded that the achievement test is a type of test which is designed to measure students’ mastery related to the objective of the learning process. According to Woolfolk, the measurement of achievement can be divided into two types; formative and summative test. 17 It means that the teacher can measure the achievement of the students by using formative and summative test.

a. Formative Test

According to Baxter, “Formative evaluation is done during a process so that the process can be changed to make it more effective.” 18 It is indicated that formative test is designed to measure an individual’s comprehension in a term. Another definition comes from Arthur Hughes who said that Assessment is formative when the teachers use it to check on the progress of their students, to see how far they have mastered what they should have learned, and then use this information to modify their future teaching plans. 19 It can be indicated that formative test can be used to know the success of an individual to measure the mastery of few chapters. From any statements above, the writer can conclude that formative test is a kind of test which is constructed by teacher to 16 Arthur Hughes, Testing for Language Teachers, Second Edition, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 13. 17 Anita E. Woolfolk, Educational Psychology, Englewood Cliffs: Prenctice-Hall, 1990, 4 th Ed., p. 530. 18 Andy Baxter, Evaluating Your Students, London: Richmond Publishing, 1997, p. 32. 19 Hughes, op, cit.,p. 16. 12 know how successful the learning and teaching process in the classroom in a periodical time.

b. Summative Test

Based on Gronlund, “summative test typically comes at the end of a course or unit of instruction. It is designed to determine the extent to which the instructional objectives have been achieved and is used primarily for assigning course grades or for certifying pupil mastery of the intended learning outcomes.” 20 It implies that summative test is used to gauge an individual’s skill after finishing all of the teaching learning process. It means that this kind of test is designed at the end of the course and used for measuring the effectiveness of instructional objectives. Moreover, according to Harmer on The Practice of English Language Teaching , “Summative assessment, as the name suggests, is the kind of measurement that takes place to round things off or make a one-off measurement. Such test include the end-of-year tests that students take or the big public exams which many students enter for.” 21 To sum up, summative test is a type of test which is constructed at the end of study after the students have finished all materials. The purpose is for certifying the students’ achievement and judging the appropriateness of the material given, method used and the goal of the study.

c. The Proficiency Test

McNamara assumes that proficiency test is a test which is designed to see language use in the future, and it is not related to the course or training that an individual has had. 22 Meanwhile, according to Valette, 20 Norman E. Gronlund, Measurement and Evaluationin Teaching, 5 th Edition, New York: McMillan Publishing Company, 1981, pp. 11-12. 21 Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching, Essex: Pearson Education Limited,4 th Ed., p. 379. 22 Tim McNamara, Language Testing, Hongkong: Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 7 13 proficiency test is a kind of test to exam an individual’s language ability related to specific language requirements. 23 It can be concluded that proficiency test is kind of test whose purpose to measure an individual’s language mastery based on the material required.

D. The Criteria of a Good Test

According to Henning, there are three criteria that should be considered to make a good test; validity, reliability, and practicality. 24

1. Validity

Henning defines, ”Validity in general refers to the appropriateness of given test of any of its component parts as a measure of what it is purported to measure. 25 From the definition above, the writer assumes that the validity of a test is totally needed because it relates to the conformity of the test to some goals in curriculum or course of the study. 2. Practicality Practicality means that the test should be easy to practice. Practicality is concerned with a wide range of factors of economy, convenience, and interpretability that determine whether a test is practical for widespread use.” 26 It means that practicality is related to the process of the administration of the test which concerns with economy, convenience, and interpretability aspects. Based on statement above, it is inferred that there are three important aspects related to the practicality of the test. The first is the efficiency of the time, the efficiency of the cost and the ease of administration. 23 Valette, op, cit., p.6. 24 Grant Henning, A Guide to Language Testing: Development, Evaluation, Research,Cambridge: Newburry House Publishers, 1987, p. 88. 25 Ibid., p. 89. 26 Robert L. Thorndike and Elizabeth Hagen, Measurement and Evaluation in Psychology and Education, New York: Jhon Willey Son’s Ltd, 1977, p. 160. 14

3. Reliability

Reliability of the test can be related to the different candidates, occasions and the results of the test. It means that if the test is administered to the different candidates in the different time makes same result, so the test will be reliable. 27 Regarded to this statement the writer concludes that the test can be said reliable if the test is administered to the different test takers in same or different time and then it produces same score.

E. Validity

Validity is often defined as the degree of the successful a test measures what is intended to measure. validity of the test is admitted if there is correspondence between the purpose and the skill that want to be measured. According to Gronlund, validity of the test is the extent to which the test measures what it is supposed to be measured. 28 It means that the test must provide real measurement related to the particular skill. Validity also has the meaning the appropriateness between the material given and the recommended skills which arise in the test. 29 To sum up, validity is the basic thing in constructing the test, because without the appropriateness between the material and the skill in the test, the purpose of the test could not be reached. Concerning the types of the validity, Hughes divided it into four; content validity, face validity, criterion-related validity, and construct validity. 30 27 Heaton, op. cit., p. 162. 28 Heaton, op. cit., p. 159. 29 Norman E. Gronlund, Measurement and Evaluating in Teaching, New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1981, p. 65 - 67. 30 Arthur Hughes, op, cit., p. 26 15

1. Content Validity

Content validity is a test whose test items appropriate with the material and instruction which is given in the teaching learning process. However, according to Hopkins, the definition of content validity itself is the level of representativeness sample of content universe andor behavior of the domain which is measured in the test. 31 Moreover, Alderson et al. stated that “content validity is the representativeness or sampling adequacy of the content-the substance, the matter, and the topics-of a measuring instrument. The content means the material in the curriculum. That is why this kind of validity is also called as curricular validity. 32 Content validity is also defined as how good the representativeness of the domain of tasks in the test items. In analyzing content validity of the test, the tester should compare between test tasks and domain of the test in which it must be described considerately. According to Wiersma and Jurs, there are two methods for demonstrating the content validity of a test. The first method is by listing the specific objectives of the test that want to be reached and match them with each test item. And then, decide whether they have been appropriate or not. Another method is by constructing a table to classify the items’ content and taxonomic level, that is, student outcome required on the item. 33 The methods mentioned above are known as validation process. If a test does not have content validity, there could be some problem appeared. The first problem is the students could not show the skill that they have related to the material in the class. The second problem is the students 31 Kenneth D. Hopkins, Educational and Psychological Measurement and Evaluation, Boston: Viacom Company, Eight Edition., 1998, p. 77 32 J. Charles Alderson et al., Language Test Construction and Evaluation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 173 33 William Wiersma and Stephen G Jurs, loc, cit.