CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW A. The Nature of ...

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CHAPTER II

LITERATURE REVIEW

A. The Nature of Language Testing

1. The Definition of Test

Testing plays important roles in language teaching. Without testing, there

is no reliable means of knowing how effective a teaching sequence has been

(Thornbury, 2002: 129). Testing provides a form of feedback, both for learners

and teachers.

Gronlund and Linn define testing as an instrument or systematic procedure

for measuring a sample of behavior. Gronlund and Linn defines that it answers

the question how individual perform, either in comparison with others or in

comparison with domain of performance tasks.

Heaton (1990: 5) adds that tests may be constructed primarily as devices

to reinforce learning and motivate the student or primarily as means of assessing

the student’s performance in the language. In the former case, the test is geared to

the teaching that has taken place, whereas in the later case the teaching is often

geared largely to the test, standardized test and public examination. In fact, may

exert such a considerately influence on the average teacher that they are often

instrumental in determining the kind of teaching that takes place before the test.

A Comparative Study On..., Basuki Wibowo, FKIP UMP, 2012

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2. The Reason for Testing

There are many reasons for testing which authors of different

methodological books present and they divide them according to various criteria.

Heaton (1990: 9) divides teacher’s reasons for testing into several categories:

a. Finding out about progress

b. Encouraging students

c. Finding out about learning difficulties

d. Placing students

e. Finding about proficiency

3. The Principles of Test

Every test should fulfil some criteria to be useful and full-value. There are

some factors a testing needs to take:

a. Validity

Hughes (1989: 23) declares that a test is said to be valid if it measures

accurately what is intended to measure. Hughes (1989: 23) also mentions

some aspects of validity:

1) Content Validity

A test is said to have content validity if its content constitutes a

representative sample of the language skills, structure, etc. with which it is


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meant to be concerned. It is obvious that vocabulary test, for instance,

must be made up of items testing knowledge or control vocabulary.

2) Criterion-related Validity

A test is said to have criterion-related validity if the test can be

used to see how far results on the test agree with those provided by some

independent and highly dependable assessment of the candidate’s ability.

There are essentially two kinds of criterion-related validity: concurrent

validity and predictive validity. Concurrent validity is established when

the test and the criterion are administered at about the same time. While

predictive validity concerns the degree to which a test can predict

candidates’ future performance.

3) Construct Validity

A test, part of test, or a testing technique is said to have construct

validity if it can be demonstrated that it measures just the ability which it

is supposed to measure. The word ‘construct’ refers to any underlying

ability (or trait) which is hypothesized in a theory of language ability.

4) Face Validity

A test is said to have face validity if it looks as if it measure what it

is supposed to measure. For example, a test which pretended to measure

pronunciation ability but which did not require the candidate to speak (and

there have been some) might be thought to lack face validity.


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b. Reliability

Anastasi in Weir (1990: 31) said that a fundamental criterion against

which any language test had to be judged is its reliability. The concern here is

with how far we can depend on the results that a test produces or, in other

words, could the results be produced consistently. Anastasi in Weir (1990: 32)

also mentioned three aspects of reliability usually taken into account. The first

concerns the consistency of scoring among different markers. The degree of

inter–marker reliability is established by correlating the scores obtained by

candidates from marker A with those from marker B.

It is also considered necessary to try and ensure that relevant sub-tests

are internally consistent in the sense that all items in sub-test are judged to be

measuring the same attribute. The third aspect of reliability is that of parallel-

forms reliability, the requirements of which have to be borne in mind when

future alternative forms of a test have to be devised

c. Practicality

Thonbury, (2002: 142) considers practicality another principle which

is important for a good test. He suggests that every test should be easy to mark

and evaluate for teacher. It means that correcting and assessing a test should

be as simple as possible. In addition, there should not be much space for

several variants of a task because it takes so much time when a teacher has to

think about every item individually.


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B. Vocabulary

1. The Basic aspects of vocabulary

Vocabulary is the basic element in learning English that should be

mastered well by learners. Learners should have a great number of words in their

mind and know how to use them accurately in order to master all of the English

skills which have to do with vocabulary. Harmer (1991: 153) says that if

language structures make up the skeleton of language, then it is vocabulary that

provides the vital organs and the flesh. In other words, no matter how brilliantly

one masters his or her English grammar, without the knowledge of vocabulary it

is useless because words are the basis that creates the speech.

To know a word is a boarder term because we need to know several

aspects of it. Ur in Pavlu described the individual aspects in this order: form,

grammar, collocation, meaning, and word formation. Ur in Pavlu added that to

know the form of a word means to know the pronunciation and spelling of a

word. The order aspect is grammar if it is necessary, for example, when teaching

irregular verb we should present the other two forms, as well. Another important

thing is teaching collocation, so that students know in what context they can use

the word.

The next aspect is meaning which can be divided into several categories.

The most used are synonyms (pretty- beautiful), antonyms (young- old), and


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hyponyms (lion, cat, zebra- animals). More advanced learners will probably deal

with word formation in which we create new words by modification of the old

ones, there are several ways how to form a new words such as compounding

(second-hand), adding a prefix (in/decisive) or a suffix (comfort-able) etc. The

last basic thing is to know the word class, which we usually distinguish eight

word classes: noun, adjective, pronounce, numeral, verb, adverb, preposition,

and conjunction.

2. Why Test Vocabulary

Thornbury (2002: 129) states that the main reason for testing is that it

gives us information about how well our students proceed in their learning of

English. It gives a useful feedback to both teacher and students. In addition,

when the teacher announces her or his students that a vocabulary test is coming

in a period of time, they will probably start to study the vocabulary harder than

before, so it will have a positive effect. In general, testing helps to recycle

vocabulary as well as to consolidate it.

However, vocabulary testing does not have to be always marked. We can

prepare a test on vocabulary which will only revise words. The ideal model is to

revise vocabulary from the previous lesson at the beginning of another lesson.

Thornbury (2002: 130) calls it informal testing. Testing vocabulary also occurs


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in placement tests or diagnostic tests to find out students’ level of knowledge or

in achievement tests at the end of the school year (Thornbury, 2002: 130).

3. What to Test

We have to decide about the purpose of such a test before giving a test to

our students. According to the purpose, we design the test which is either

contextualized or de-contextualized. Contextualized test means that the

vocabulary is examined through a text whereas de-contextualized test there are

only words without any text. If the teacher needs to test student’s knowledge of

spelling, he or she can dictate words without any context. On the other hand,

when we test meanings of words, we have to put them into a context. These

contextualized tests can be further divided into tests that test active vocabulary or

passive vocabulary (Thornbury, 2002: 131).

4. The Vocabulary Testing Technique

We can use a lot of types of techniques when testing vocabulary. In this

research, the writer focuses only on three types of techniques: multiple choice,

cloze procedure, and translation.


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a. Multiple Choice

Multiple choice is a question which consists of a so called stem and four

options from which only one is correct. The examinee has to choose the right

answer (Ur, 1991: 38). The biggest advantage of this kind of testing is that we do

not have to worry about subjectivity because only one answer should be correct.

Secondly, it is very easy and quick for the examiner to correct this test because

he or she just puts ticks or crosses. On the other hand, Hughes (1989: 60) proves

that it does not show the real level of someone’s abilities because the examiner

or the teacher cannot discover the knowledge of grammar, for instance, because

we do not know if the examinee can use it in writing or speaking. He explains

that in multiple choice the chance for guess the right answer is about 33 percent

which means that from 100 questions someone is able to guess about 33. The

result is that the teacher cannot be really sure if the student has mastered the

curriculum (Hughes, 1989: 60).

The other difficulty with multiple choice is that we have to find three

distracters which are items that would distract or confuse the examinee.

Therefore, it is hard to create a good multiple choice test. This causes problems

with more correct answers or even no correct answer. This all means that it is

very difficult and time-demining to write such a test (Hughes, 1989: 60).

Next disadvantage is that these tests also enable cheating because if a

potential cheater looks at someone’s paper which near, he or she can easily


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recognize what the person answered as there can be seen circles A, B, C, or D

(Hughes, 1989: 62). It means it can be prevented by giving several versions of

tests. Here is the possible form of multiple choice:

He accused me of..... lies. a. speaking b. saying c. telling d. talking

b. Cloze Procedure

In the cloze procedure words are deleted from a text after allowing

a few sentences of introduction. The deletion rate is mechanical set,

usually between every fifth and eleventh word. Candidates have to fill

each gap by supplying the word they think has been deleted (Weir, 1990:

46).

There are some advantages and disadvantages from cloze

procedure. Weir (1990: 46) mentions the advantages of cloze procedure as

follow:

1. Cloze tests are easy to construct and easily scored if the exact

word scoring procedure is adopted. They are claimed to be

valid indicators of overall language proficiency.

2. With a fifth word deletion rate a large number of items can

be set on a relatively short text and these can exhibit a high

degree of internal consistency.


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3. In the literature cloze tests are often feted as valid and

uniform measures of reading comprehension.

Weir (1990: 47) also mentions the disadvantages of cloze

procedure as follow:

1. Despite the arguments adduced in favour of cloze procedure,

a number of doubts have been expressed, largely concerning

its validity as a testing device. It has been shown to be

irritating and unacceptable to students and doubt has been

thrown on the underlying assumption that it randomly

samples the elements in a text.

2. If one changes the text, changes the deletion rate, starts at a

different place or alters the scoring procedure, one gets a

different test in terms of reliability and validity coefficients

and overall test difficulty.

3. The evidence is contradictory about the differing scoring

methods to be adopted in marking a cloze procedure.

4. The cloze procedure seems to produce more successful tests

syntax and lexis at sentence level than of reading

comprehension in general or of inferential or deductive

abilities, what might be termed higher order abilities.


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5. Perhaps the most crucial reservation is the question of what

performance on a cloze test really tells us about a candidate’s

language ability. It is difficult to translate scores on a cloze

test to a description of what a candidate can or cannot do in

real life.

c. Translation

Learners can be stated through translation quiet well and it can test

both meaning and form, however, we may have troubles with finding the

right equivalent between two languages (Ur, 1991: 72). Through

translation we can test either single words or whole sentences. Another

possibility is to test collocation or phrase which could be a well-balanced

compromise between testing single words and sentences. Here students

must show if they can use the words in context.


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