Language Testing and Evaluation

Muhajirah Idman
171052501029
English Department, Graduate Program
Univeristas Negeri Makassar

In learning teaching process, teacher’s responsibility is not only delivering the subject matter
to the student, but teacher is also accountable to do assessment and evaluation. Thus, these two
things considered to be conducted as part of learning-teaching process to obtain its goal. To do the
divine assessment and evaluation, teacher should pay heed to several things.

Firstly, need analysis is conducted to obtain information about student needs. It used to aid
the teacher provides a material based on their level, preference, competence and ability. It can’t be
denied that, student can’t enjoy the learning process because of they are not interest in the topic
presented or the material exceed their competence and vice versa. Furthermore, teacher should
put this thing as a necessary.

Secondly, the kind of test that determined based on the focus of skill that will be assessed.
There are vary kind of test that can be employed in testing students skills, such as multiple choice,
essay question, fill in the blank, matching, and others. Commonly, in constructing the test, teacher
used multiple choice and essay question to test the students. The reason is both those kind of test
are easier for the teacher to give the grade. The multiple-choice, however, should be noticed in
providing the options. It is challenging, because the teacher have to put a swiz option among the
other possibility options. In other hand, multiple-choice is suitable to test various skills like speaking,
listening, grammar, on so on. Then, using essay for testing let the students to answer the question
freely. Students can make the answer long or short. Essay test reveals students competence in
understanding the subject matter. For those reasons, the teacher likewise the lecturer use it to test
the students in post learning process or mid test and final test in most cases.

The kind of test is essential because the test is made by considering several things like the
level of the student and the subject or the skill that will be assed. The level of the students should be
noticed to determine the kind of test that will be used, because the higher the level of the students
the higher the complexity of the test. Even the teacher gives the same kind of the test, but the
appropriateness for the students’ competence cannot be declined. Meanwhile, the skill that to be
tested should be reflected by the test that used. It is should be covered and can be assessed.

The other thing that teacher should consider in constructing good assessment and evaluation
is validity and reliability of the test. Validity refers to the test can measure what is supposed to
measure. Then, reliability tends to reflect a consistency of the test. The test will be categorized as
reliable if it should not make any differences whether the students take the test in the morning or in
the afternoon. These both things are essential for constructing the test that will confirm the test is
proper and sufficient for the students. If the test can’t cover both of them, thus, the test is
categorized as a good test.

Then, instrument in doing assessment is a tool to assess the students either their skills or
attitude. To assess students’ skills, mostly the teacher is using the minimum passing criteria or KKM.
Likewise the rubric and score scale are used to give the score for the students. On the other hand,
the other instrument of assessment is observation. This instrument is used to assess students’
attitude during teaching-learning process.

Lastly, evaluation. Evaluation is a last process after two previous steps; test and assessment.
Evaluation is conducted to make a further decision for the program involves the appropriateness of
the teaching material, method, kind of test that used, and all of its components. Doing evaluation
may be done in each semester or each year, but it depends on the institution regulation. In some
schools, evaluation is conducted each month moreover each week. It involves all of subjects in the
school, like head master, teachers, and students. The evaluation that is done by the head master
together with the teachers is regularly administered each semester or each academic year. It is a
process of to make a judgment whether the entire program is success or not, whether the program
should be revised or change, and which part is should be adapted or removed. Students also have a
role in this evaluation; teachers sometimes involve them to find a solution for the problem that
students faced during the program. It is commonly conducted personally between teacher of subject
and a particular student. For the reasons, evaluation should be conducted in proper way to make the
program runs effectively and efficiently.

In conclusion, those things explain previously is very important to be noticed to get a

successful of a teaching program assessment and evaluation.