Testing as a method of motivation of pupils in teaching English language

Introduction 

    Every teacher wants to give his pupils the best knowledge, which they will use every time, anywhere where it is necessary. But how to achieve this aim? Of course he must be qualified teacher, he must teach them letters, new words, phonetic, grammar, and etc., but also he must rightly evaluate pupils’ knowledge and makes them do it without any fear and with ease. Because pupils should improve their skills and knowledge in foreign language.

    There are many methods and ways to evaluate children’s knowledge. One of them is test. Sometimes this word usually makes the students shudder. There is hardly a person who would claim that she/he favours tests and finds them very motivating. However, tests cannot be avoided completely, for they are inevitable elements of learning process. They are included into curriculum at schools and are to check the students’ level of knowledge and what they are able to do; they could be accomplished at the beginning of the study year and at the end of it; the students could be tested after working on new topics and acquiring new vocabulary. Moreover, the students are to face the tests in order to enter any foreign university or reveal the level of their English language skills for themselves. Although tests are used for measuring the achievement of the objective in language learning, they fulfill educational function as well, namely, each test makes pupil concentrate their attention to certain language material and language skill and thereby mastering it successfully. Since testing is accompanied by the evaluation of the achievement of every pupil this stimulates pupils’ desire to learn.

    Thus, the aim of my course work is to tell about varieties of test and how it can motivate pupils to study English language.

    The next tasks must be solved in order to achieve this aim:

• To consider the origin of testing methods
• To present a classification of tests and describe their advantages and disadvantages
• To show some exercises, where tests are used and how they motivate pupils to study English language

    The object of the paper is testing methods

    This theme is topical because there are a lot of educational establishments which use tests in order to evaluate pupils, students’ knowledge. Of course, tests should be correct, because it will not give good results, if it is made in wrong way.

    Also, test seems more interesting for pupils. It is interesting to choose right answer, to fill gaps, to find synonyms and etc. That is why it makes pupils, students desire to learn, because they like it and it seems them easy.

        The paper consists of introduction, three chapters, each including sub-chapters, conclusion and bibliography. Chapter 1 discusses the general data about tests. Chapter 2 describes motivational characteristics of tests. Chapter 3 focuses on practical application of the given methods in the classroom of English.

I. Theoretical bases of testing

1.1 The history of testing and the meaning of testing methods 

    

Test is a method of research where tester makes special tasks (test). Tester’s level of possession with language and other features are defined and evaluated with the help of such kind of tasks.

    

The first testing in pedagogical practice was used in Great Britain in 1864 by G. Fisher for examination pupils’ knowledge. He wrote the book which contains questions and answers; pupils had to choose the right answer.

    

F. Gamilton is considered the founder of testology. In the end of XX century he elaborated and then widely used tasks for evaluating people’s individual features. For the first time term “test” was come into scientific use by American psychologist M. Kettel (1890), who elaborated the series of tests which measure person’s intellectual level. One of the first methods of testing in Russia was suggested by G.I. Rossolimo (1910), who suggested graphic system of measuring of mental processes./1,48-49/

    

Now we use testing not only in psychoanalysis, but also in other different spheres of science.

    

 Hicks consider that the role of tests is very useful and important, especially in language learning. It is a means to show both the students and the teacher how much the learners have learnt during a course. It helps to see whether the students have acquired the material and are making constant progress, the teacher will inevitably have to test his/her learners. It does not mean that a usual test format with a set of activities will be used all the time. To check the students’ knowledge the teacher can apply a great range of assessment techniques, including even the self-evaluation technique that is so beloved and favoured by the students /2, 155/. Moreover, according to Heaton, tests could be used to display the strength and weaknesses of the teaching process and help the teacher improve it. They can demonstrate what should be paid more attention to, should be worked on and practised. Furthermore, the tests results will display the students their weak points, and if carefully guided by the teacher, the students will be even able to take any remedial actions/3, 6/.

    

Thompson believes that students learn more when they have tests. Here we can both agree and disagree. Certainly, preparing for a test, the student has to study the material that is supposed to be tested, but often it does not mean that such type of learning will obligatory lead to acquisition and full understanding of it. On the opposite, it could often lead to the pure cramming. That, consequently, will result in a stressful situation the student will find her/himself before or during the test, and the final outcome will be a complete deletion of the studied material/4, 125/.

    However, very often the tests can facilitate the students’ acquisition process, i.e.: the students are to be checked the knowledge of the irregular verbs forms. Being constantly tested by means of a small test, they can learn them successfully and transfer them to their long-term memory, as well. Although, according to Thompson tests decrease practice and instruction time. What he means is that the students are as if limited; they are exposed to practice of a new material, however, very often the time implied for it is strictly recommended and observed by a syllabus. That denotes that there will be certain requirements when to use a test. Thus, the students find themselves in definite frames that the teacher will employ. Nevertheless, there could be advantages that tests can offer: they increase learning, for the students are supposed to study harder during the preparation time before a test.  
 

 

1.2 Types of tests  

    Different scholars (Alderson, 1996; Heaton, 1990; Underhill, 1991) in their researches ask the similar question – why test, do the teachers really need them and for what purpose. Further, they all agree that test is not the teacher’s desire to catch the students unprepared with what they are not acquainted. In fact, the test is a request for information and possibility to learn what the teachers did not know about their students before. We can add here that the test is important for the students, too, though they are unaware of that. The test is supposed to display not only the students’ weak points, but also their strong sides. It could act as an indicator of progress the student is gradually making learning the language. Moreover, Hughes emphasises that we can check the progress, general or specific knowledge of the students, etc. This claim will directly lead us to the statement that for each of these purposes there is a special type of testing/5, 5/. According to some scholars (Thompson, 2001; Hughes, 1989; Alderson, 1996; Heaton, 1990; Underhill, 1991), there are four traditional categories or types of tests: proficiency tests, achievement tests, diagnostic tests, and placement tests. 

Diagnostic tests

         Referring to Longman Dictionary of LTAL diagnostic tests is a test that is meant to display what the student knows and what she/he does not know/12, 106/. Diagnostic tests identify students’ strengths and weaknesses. They provide the teachers with the information on what further teaching is necessary and what problems the students might have in coping with the instruction demands. /7, 9-12/

     To conclude, we can conceive that interpreting the results of diagnostic tests the teachers apart from predicting why the student has done the exercises the way she/he has, but not the other, will receive a significant information about his/her group she/he is going to work with and later use the information as a basis for the forming syllabus.  

Placement tests 

    Another type of test we are intended to discuss is a placement test. Concerning Longman Dictionary of LTAL again we can see that a placement test is a test that places the students at an appropriate level in a programme or a course/12, 279-280/. Placement tests provide information that helps to place the students at the most suitable stage of the teaching curriculum, bearing in mind their level of the language achieved so far. /7, 9-12/  

Progress test

    According to Alderson, progress test will show the teacher whether the students have learnt the recently taught material successfully. Basically, the teacher intends to check certain items, not general topics covered during the school or study year. Commonly, it is not very long and is determined to check the recent material. Progress test typically employed during the study year to check the students’ development /6, 217/. 

Achievement tests 

    Apart from a progress test the teachers employ another type – achievement test. According to Longman Dictionary of LTAL, an achievement test is a test, which measures a language someone has learned during a specific course, study or program/12, 3/. Here the progress is significant and, therefore, is the main point tested. Achievement tests are directly related to the language courses taught to the examinees. The purpose of achievement tests is to judge upon the success of individual learners or groups in achieving the objectives of the language course. /7, 9-12/ 

Proficiency tests

      The last type of test to be discussed is a proficiency test. Regarding Longman Dictionary of LTAL proficiency test is a test, which measures how much of a language a person knows or has learnt. It is not bound to any curriculum or syllabus, but is intended to check the learners’ language competence/12, 292/. Proficiency tests measure learners’ language ability regardless of the training they may have had or the vocabulary and topics they may have studied. Proficiency tests are not based on the contents of a language course but rather on the general knowledge of the target language and culture. /7, 9-12/ 

 

    Multiple-choice tests have a “stem” (the basic and unaltered part of the sentence) and a number of “options”, only one of which is correct. The other options are wrong in the particular context and are called “distracters”. The advantages of the multiple-choice test are that they can produce a reliable and economical scoring. A test can include a fairly long list of items and increase the reliability of procedure, thus decreasing the randomness of the results. The disadvantages of the multiple-choice test are that it checks only recognition knowledge. Guessing can have an effect on the scores. The plausible (looking correct) distracters are not always available and this makes test writers include “fool-proof” distracters. The “correct answer” can in quite a few cases be questioned. /6, 47-51/

Choose the correct answer of the multiple choice and comment on your difficulties

        

        Gap filling refers to tasks where the test-takers are given separate sentences with some words or phrases deleted. The task is to restore the missing words. In these tests answer keys can sometimes have more than one answer for a space. Some missing words can have a structural value for the sentence (e.g. prepositions or conjunctions). Other words can have full lexical meaning. Sometime a list of the words can be given to the test-takers to be used in filling in the gaps. In such cases the number of words in the list is usually larger than the number of gaps in the text. /8, 155/

Complete the gaps in the text and comment on your difficulties

 

         Close procedure involves deleting a number of words in the whole text, requiring the test-takers to restore the original words. Disadvantages of the test are that some words prove more difficult to restore than others. There could be more than one answer for any one gap. It is not always easy to say what language area (grammar, lexis, prepositions etc) or skills (receptive or productive) are actually measured by the close procedure. /7, 55-56/

Do the close procedure and comment on the difficulties that you have experienced

 

    Matching is a test format when students are given a list of items, which they have to match with the other list of words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs or visual images. The disadvantage of it is that once the test-takers have successfully made sufficient amount of matches, the remaining pairs can be guessed more easily and the last pair will be correct by default. /6, 51-52/

    Match the verbs in A with the structures that can follow them in B. Some verbs can be followed by more than one structure. Mark the time you needed to perform the test.  Comment on your experience in performing this test

 

C-Tests

    It is worth mentioning that in the 80s German school introduced an alternative to cloze test another type of testing – C-Tests. This test was based on the close test system; however, every second word there was deleted. It could seem quite a complicated type, though it is not.  According to Weir in this type every deleted word is partially preserved. Thus, the students, if they possess a fairly good knowledge of the language and can activate their schemata, or background knowledge of a topic or the world, they will succeed in completing the test/9, 47/. Such test format could look as follows:

      Cats ha…. always been surro………by superstitions. In anc……Egypt ca….were cons……. sacred, but in medi…..Europe ma….. people beli…… cats we…. witches in disgu…… A popular supers……... about ca…. is that a blac…cat, cros… your pa… from left to rig…., will bri… you bad lu…. However, in some cult….. a black ca… is thought to be a go… omen rat… than a ba… one.

(First certificate Star, Luke Prodromou, p.134)

True/False items

    This test format is familiar for all the teachers and students. Each reading task will always be followed with true/false activities that will intend to check the students’ comprehension of a text. /9, 48/. The students will be offered a set of statements some of which are true and some are wrong, e.g.: 
 

People went to see ‘Cats’ because of the story. T F

Lloyd Webber’s father helped his career. T F

Lloyd Webber comes from a musical family. T F  

( Famous Britons, Michael Dean)  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

II. Theoretical aspects of testing as a method of motivation

2.1 Motivation in language teaching 

    

Learners' motivation is a key variable that frequently concerns and challenges practitioners or teacher in language classrooms. It is an abstract construct that has been defined in a number of ways. /10, 65/

            Learners' motivation varies because of numerous endogenous (i.e., internal or inner inspiration) and exogenous (i.e., external to human personality) factors, such as socio-cultural circumstances, professional needs, and language requirements for international education. Endogenous factors bring pleasure and satisfaction to a student, and exogenous factors relate to the tangible benefits attached to an activity /11, 23-34/. A number of studies over the past couple of decades have analyzed patterns of motivation in language classrooms in a variety of situations. These studies have established a consistently strong relationship between motivation and second language success. There are two main challenges in teaching—motivating learners and sustaining their motivation, and learners' motivation as a vital element in language teaching.

    Teacher should create a safe atmosphere for learners in the class. She/he should try to create a safe as well as supportive environment in which learners can learn and practice the language comfortably. This positive environment is maintained through good teacher–student working relationships. It means that between them would be understanding. First of all teacher should give texts, audiovisual materials, tasks, and class activities which are related to students' interests and all tasks must be properly organized. Second, the teacher should always give learners choices in assigning a task, and learners' preferences should get priority. Third, an extracurricular component in the course is a very desirable feature so that elements such as music and humor can be incorporated in teaching, thus increasing learning opportunities beyond regular lessons. These extracurricular activities can be simple speaking and writing acts such as sharing a cultural object from one's country/region, giving a musical or dramatic performance, and having poster competitions. These activities are successful in enhancing and maintaining learners' motivation /10, 297/.