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The Principles of Language Assessment

Brown (2004) in his book, “Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices “mentioned five major principles of language assessment which consist of practicality, reliability, validity, authenticity, and washback.

Practicality refers to tests that should be true. A practical test considers not only the limitation of budget and time, but also has clear administration, scoring, and interpretation (Brown, 2004, p. 26-27). Reliability refers to tests that are consistent and dependable. Students or groups of target students are given the same test in two different periods of time, the test result would be similar. For test-takers, they are not ambiguous to a given field of study. Also, a reliable test not only gives learners clear directions but also offers administrated rubrics for grading or evaluation (Brown, 2004, p. 27). Compared to reliability, validity talks about a test which “is valid if it is measured what it is supposed to measure” and when it is used for the purpose of assessment (Nation & Newton, 2009, p. 167).

 Brown (2004) pointed out that a valid test should measure according to its purpose, but not “irrelevant or contaminating variables” (Brown, 2004, p. 30). Thus, a test’s meaningful information for criterion, and evidence of performance should be considered in order to measure a student’s learning ability. Furthermore, there are many ways to measure the validity of a test, including content validity, construct validity, criterion-related validity (concurrent & predictive) and face validity. Authenticity emphasizes that language is natural, contextualized and meaningful. Besides, authenticity offers language theme-based organization, story-line, or episode to reproduce real-world tasks. The last principle is washback which refers to “criterion for a test is the influence of the form and the content of the test” in the classrooms (Nation & Newton, 2009, p. 169). This is also what Hughes (2003) said,” the effect of testing on teaching and learning” (as cited in Brown, 2004, p. 37).

Can these principles apply to classrooms?

According to five principles: practicality, reliability, validity, authenticity, and washback, they can be provided as guidelines for evaluating a step-by-step procedure in the classrooms (Brown, 2004, p.40). Clearly, validity is the first priority choice to consider, and practicality is a minor important. Brown (2004) showed eight tips based on five principles’ features below,

(1) Are the test procedures practical? (2) Is the test itself reliable? (3) Can you ensure rater reliability?(4) Does the procedure demonstrate content validity? (5) Has the impact of the test been carefully accounted for? (6) Is the procedure “biased for best?” (7) Are the test tasks as authentic as possible? (8)Does the test offer beneficial washback to the learner? (pp. 41-48)

Teachers can take these mentioned tips along with checklists into consideration in order to evaluate test designs themselves for their own classrooms (Brown, 2004, p. 40). As a school teacher and a language school instructor, I realize that “quizzes, tests, final exams, and standardized proficiency tests” can be examined through five principles (Brown, 2004, p. 40). The lesson not only helps me understand how five principles are but also assists me to know they are connected to current classroom assessment design. Based on twelve-year compulsory educational system, teachers need to consider these principles as part of daily lesson design, also evaluate students based on a variety of assessment during class or after class.