In addition, according to Rebecca M. Valette, “achievement tests are usually not built around one set of teaching materials but are
designed for use with students from a variety of different schools and programs.”
8
In the writer’s opinion, achievement test is a test which is designed to know how successful students have mastered the previous materials
of a long period of course and whether they have achieved the educational objectives. So, by achievement test, it is able to compare
among individual students, classes and school progress with others across the country.
According to Wilmar Tinambunan, there are four types of achievement test: placement, formative, diagnostic, and summative
test.
9
1. Placement Test
“Placement tests are designed to assess students’ level of language ability so that they can be placed in the appropriate
course or class. Such tests may be based on aspects of the syllabus taught at the institution concerned, or may be based
on unrelated material. In some language centres students are placed according to their rank in the test results so that, for
example, the students with the top eight scores might go into the top class. In other
centres the students’ ability in different skills such as reading and writing may need to be identified. In
such a centre a student could conceivably be placed in the top reading class, but in the bottom writing class, or some other
combination. In yet other centres placement test may have the purpose of deciding whether students need any further tuition
at all.”
10
Also, a quote by James Dean Brown in his book Testing in Language Programs states that the purpose of this test is to make a
8
Rebecca M. Valette, Modern Language ..., p. 5.
9
Wilmar Tinambunan, Evaluation of Students Achievement, Jakarta: Depdikbud, 1988, p. 7.
10
J, Charles Alderson, et. al., Language Test Construction and Evaluation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, p. 11-12.
