Understanding Language Testing Book

1 Introduction: The Rubber Ruler
1.1 Why test Language Learning?
1.2 What is a Language Test?
1.3 The Rubber Ruler
1.4 Tests, Measurement and Evaluation
1.5 Ethical Uses of Language Tests
2 Measuring Language Ability and Making Decisions
2.1 Measuring Language Ability
2.2 Making Decisions about Learners, Teachers, Programmes, and Policies
2.3 Contexts of Language Use
2.4 Making Valid Interpretations of Test Performance
2.5 Conclusion: Bias for Best
3 Test Development
3.1 What Do I Need to Test? Needs Analysis
3.2 How am I Going to Test Language Abilities?
3.3 How am I Going to Give the Test? Test Administration
3.4 How can my Computer Assist me in Test Development?
3.5 Conclusion
4 Alternatives in Assessment
4.1 Norm-referenced and Criterion-Referenced Tests
4.2 Communicative Language Tests
4.3 'General' and 'Specific Purpose' Language Tests
4.4 Discrete-Point and Integrative Tests
4.5 Formative and Summative Assessment
4.6 Alternative Approaches to Assessment
4.7 Conclusion
5 By the Numbers: A Statistics Mini-course
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Normal Distribution
5.3 The Average or Mean
5.4 Standard Deviation
5.5 Correlation
5.6 Probability and Statistical Significance
5.7 The T-test of the Difference Between Two Averages
5.8 Analysis of Variance
5.9 Reliability
5.10 The Reliability of Human Raters
5.11 Conclusion
6 Technology and Language Testing
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Issues in Technology and Language Testing
6.3 Technology and Language Task Types
6.4 The promise and Threats of Automated Scoring
6.5 Test Feedback and Reporting
6.6 Online and Computer-based Resources for Statistics
6.7 Conclusion Afterword: The Rubber Ruler Revisited