HomeNewsAcademicDesigning an English Test Is Like Cultivating a Piece of Art, College of Liberal Arts Dean Says
2007.1221
Designing an English Test Is Like Cultivating a Piece of Art, College of Liberal Arts Dean Says
<p><font face="Arial">By Chen Wei-yang<br />
Campus Reporter</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial">To design an appropriate English test is like cultivating a piece of art, College of Liberal Arts Dean Vincent Chang (張武昌) said during his speech at the English conference room on the main campus this noon.</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial">"You cannot be careful enough to design a well-organized English test and its questions. The result of the test will honestly reflect the fact how much the student understands the subject if the teacher designs the test with a lot of brains,” Chang said.</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial">The dean continued his conversation by taking the English finals for NTNU’s non-English major freshmen last summer as an example. He said that the test could be divided into two main portions. The first section was designed for evaluating students’ English reading abilities and the other part of the test was designed for evaluating their writing abilities.</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial">Chang, however, affirmed the test as a well-formulated test for English proficiency because the weight of each section was about 50-50. But, he said that the test would not be able to reflect students’ English comprehensive abilities as what an English replacement test would do, now that listening and speaking are not covered in the test.</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial">Chang made a checking list of formulating an appropriate English test. On the list, the length of the questions, the ratio of traps, the sufficiency of clues, etc. were all crucial facts that an English teacher must be aware of whenever she or he is designing a test.</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial">Vianne Fan Chiang (范姜頤), an English major junior, said that she did not realize how much efforts it would take to formulate an appropriate English test for students prior to today’s speech. She was not expecting it to be so demanding for designing an English test but now she understood the importance of the bottom lines to be followed.</font></p>
<p><font face="Arial">"I cannot wait to practice what I learned today on my Educational Evaluations and Tests on English course to see how it works,” she said.</font></p>
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