d. Placement Test
Placement test is the test that is arranged for measuring student’s ability in language and assigning
student’s major in an appropriate grade of educational organization. Moreover, Gronlund defines placement tests are
“pretests designed to measure 1 whether pupils possess the perquisite skills need to succeed in a unit or course or 2 to what extent pupils have
already a chieved the objectives of the planned instruction”.
17
Meanwhile, Hughes states “placement tests are intended to provide information that
will help to place students at the stage of the teaching program most appropriate to their abilities”.
18
The writer can conclude that placement test is a test which is held before the teaching program for getting information about students’ need
and placing students’ stage based on their ability.
B. The Criteria of a Good Test
The test that will be administered should have a good quality; it is important because it decides its result. Besides, the test should also well-constructed. A
well-constructed means that the test fulfills the criteria of a good test. If the test is good, its result will reflect the true information about the test-
takers’ achievement. There are three common criteria which always become a consideration to make
a good test for a test-maker based on Farhady in Coombe et al „s book
19
:
1.
Validity
Validity is the essential requirement or characteristic in a test. If the test does not have validity, it is not worth much; even, it has reliability.
20
Validity is also the most complex criterion of a good test which the test usually
17
Gronlund, loc.cit.
18
Hughes, op.cit., p. 16.
19
Christine Coombe, Peter Davidson, et al ed., The Cambridge Guide to Second Language Assessment, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012, p. 37-43.
20
Ibid., p. 37.
measures what is intended to measure.
21
Besides, validity is also as the test- makers construction or as a selection of classroom assessments.
Moreover, there are more explanations about a validity which defined by Gronlund; like:
a. Validity refers to the result of a test or evaluation instrument for a given group of individuals, not to the instruments itself. Test makers
sometimes speak the validity of the test, for the sake of the convenience, but it is more appropriate to speak of the validity of the
test result, or more special, of the validity of the interpretation to be made from the result.
b. Validity is a matter of degree. It doesn’t exist in an all or none basis.
Consequently, test makers should avoid thinking of evaluation results as valid or invalid. Valid is best considered in terms of categories that
specify degree, such as high validity, moderate validity, and low validity.
c. Validity is always specific to some particular use. It should be never considered a general quality.
22
Here, the example of validity: if the test-maker wants to measure the students’ writing ability, he or she can ask the students to write as many words
as they can in fifteen minutes, then simply count the words for the final score. However, if the test-
maker wants to measure the students’ ability in speaking, he or she uses an objective test or an essay test. It means that he or she does not
measure what should be measured. The writer emphasizes that validity is the important good criteria of a good
test refers to the test which measure what should be measured or intended.
2. Reliability
A test which is administered in different time, but it has a consistent score or the recent test score is not too different with the previous test score called
21
Brown, op.cit., p. 387.
22
Gronlund, op.cit., p. 66-67.
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