Assessment and Testing in ESP

ENGLISH FOR SPECIFIC PURPOSES (ESP)

“ASSESSMENT AND TESTING IN ESP”

By:

Group 5

1.     Aldo Novanda

2.     Elviyasa Gaberia S.

3.     Nurlaisa

4.     Putri Liana Fransiska

ENGLISH STUDY PROGRAM

STATE COLLEGE FOR ISLAMIC STUDIES (STAIN) CURUP

2015

Assessment and Testing in ESP

A.  Assessment

Assessment is a process of measuring, and one formal method of measuring is to test. Assessment is the systematic collection, review, and use of information about educational programs undertaken for the purpose of improving learning and development. Assessment is central importance. Every teacher has an interest in knowing whether, and to what degree, his/her teaching has been successful.

1.   Principles of Assessment

According to Tracey Hall, et al., (2009, pp. 2) “not all students are alike.” Therefore, in order to best promote learning and to give a valid picture of individual achievement, the assessment process should incorporate the following principles:

ü Assessment process should be planned and communicated to learners and parents prior to instruction;

ü Assessment strategies must align with the prescribed curriculum objectives and with the teaching strategies used;

ü Assessment must be fair and designed to enable each student to demonstrate the full extent of their own learning;

ü Assessments should measure how well students learn as well as what they have learned;

ü Assessment instrument should be highly varied in type; assessments should cover a full range of instructional objectives including knowledge, skills, and affective items;

ü And set personal achievement goals; students must receive clear instructions for improvement in what they have learned as well as how they learn.

B.  Testing

ESP tests are related in content, themes and topics to particular disciplines, and involve a higher degree of language specificity. ESP tests are more concerned to present learners with tasks that involve them in reading, listening to, speaking or writing the target language, and evaluating how well they can do this. Of course, an important component in assessing how well somebody can use English is how accurately they can produce or understand texts written or spoken in the language, but the key to this assessment is to present learners with tasks that resemble in some way the sort of things they may have to

In ESP there are three basic types of test, they are:

a.  Placement Test

Placement tests are used to place learners’ in the ESP course most suited to their neeeds. The placement test is dagnostic, indicating how far and in what ways the learner fall short of the proficiency level. The placement tests are normally comes at the beginning of the course. Placement tests are usually comes in the form as follows:

o  Reading test (cloze passages)

o  Listening test (note-taking)

o  Quickly & sufficient reliable for group students

o  Short-written exercises

b.  Achievement Test

Achievement tests are used to know how well the learner in keeping up with the syllabus and can be administered any time through the course. These are basic principles in constructing good ESP achievement test(Heaten,1975, Oller,1979):

o  The form of the test must based on what the ESP teacher have taught to the lerners.

o  The test must measured what the ESP teacher want to test.

o  The test must avoid bias, for example the test contain of specific cultural or religion knowledge. This test of course may result bias because every learner come from different background of culture and religion.

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c.  Proficiency Test

Proficiency Tests are used to know whether or not the student can cope with the demands of a particular situation, for example, study at a university of reading technical manuals. Proficiency test for specific purpose should be able to give a reliable indication of whether a candidate is proficient enough to carry out the task that will be required.

A good test will automatically have beneficial effects on classroom instruction. Other variables such as teacher competence, motivation and innovation, the climate of the school, socioeconomic status of pupils and teachers combine to exert an equally important influence on what goes on in an ESP classroom.

  

C.  Conclussion

Assessment is a process of measuring, and one formal method of measuring is to test. Assessment is needed in order to know whether, and in what degree, the teaching of ESP has been successful. Instrument used in assessing ESP learners is test. ESP tests are related in content, themes and topics to particular disciplines, and involve a higher degree of language specificity. ESP tests are more concerned to present learners with tasks that involve them in reading, listening to, speaking or writing the target language, and evaluating how well they can do this. There are three kinds of test in ESP, they are :

a.     Placement Test

b.    Proficiency Test

c.    Achievement Test

A good test will automatically have beneficial effects on classroom instruction. Other variables such as teacher competence, motivation and innovation, the climate of the school, socioeconomic status of pupils and teachers combine to exert an equally important influence on what goes on in an ESP classroom.

References

Hutchinson Tom and Waters Alan. English For Specific Purpose. 1987. Cambridge University Press.

Evans Dudley and John St. Assessment: Continous Assessment and Testing. 1998. Published Journal.