Testing Multiple Vocabulary Associations for Effective Long-term Learning

Abstract

This article aims to give a comprehensive guide to planning and designing vocabulary tests which include Identifying the skills to be covered by the test; outlining the course content covered; preparing a table of specifications that shows the skill, content topics and number of questions allocated to each; and preparing the test instructions. The test should meet several criteria as the instructions should be brief and clear; the questions should cover all kinds of skills, tasks and exercises covered in the classroom and textbook; the test items should require the students to perform tasks at the phoneme, grapheme, affix, word, phrase and paragraph levels. The questions should test student’s ability to think, apply, infer, connect, and synthesize information, not mere recall, and should not use exact sentences and examples from the textbook. The test should have as many production questions as possible. It should have adequate discrimination power; should be reliable and valid;  and should be a power and a speed test. In addition, the article describes the optimal test length, when to give the tests during the semester and the test duration. It describes the test paper format; how the tests are scored, marks allocated for each question type and whole test, using whole marks, not fractions; deducting points for spelling and grammatical mistakes. After scoring the answer sheets, the instructor returns the marked answer sheets to the students, shows the marking system and goes through the questions one by one, gives the correct answers and mentions the common errors. Follow-up issues such as calculating the test validity, reliability, and discrimination power, using the test results for diagnosing weaknesses and providing remedial work are given.  The effects of the proposed test model on learning outcomes and students’ views are also given.