Week 14 Class reffection - Testing and Evaluation

We started the class by actually doing a test designed for ESL students called AccuplacerESL. I was in group 2 and the test i did contained a writing exercise, a grammar and sentence meaning exercise. Considering the principles of testing that we learned in the previous class, i think this part of the test meets the requirement of validity, since it is challenging enough for students whose English is under evaluation. However, i could hardly see authenticity on display, because all the questions were asked separately and divorced from the context. One more thing, which also was a matter of concern for many students in the class, was the fact that our essays in the writing part were graded by the computer! I was really surprised at first when receiving the writing score after submitting my answer, and seriously had no clue how the computer, a machine with practically no brain, is intelligent and flexible enough to read and evaluate human writing. I believe by making the grading process quicker and easier, the designers of the test have, in some way, undervalued human ability and intelligence.

After discussing the test and voicing all our concerns and comments, we continued with a test-designing activity which was done based on a reading text. Our group was assigned a text about US history, and we had fun creating the exercises.