Making Effective Teacher Made Tests of English : A Major KPI for Thai Teachers of English

Abstract

Central to school’s evaluation process are teacher-made tests. Such instruments are designed to appraise the outcomes of local classroom instruction. Generally, commercial standardized tests are too general in scope and too inflexible to meet the special requirements of each subject or group of students, plus other diversified elements involved.

Experienced educators and teachers know that “good” tests do not simply happen. Nevertheless, test construction all too often occurs at the last possible moment and in haste. This is unfortunate, since testing is an integral aspect of the total teaching-learning program. In preparing a test, the teacher needs to have a clear conception of how the test, together with the test results are to be functioned and used; and requires prior specification of instructional objectives and decisions regarding the sequence and method of instruction.

Educational and psychological testing can help individuals at all levels of schooling make better decisions. Testing data may be employed in placing students, formative evaluation, diagnostic evaluation, making selection decisions, arriving at curricular decisions, personal decision making, and for summation purposes.

Consequently, it is very essential that the teachers, especially the Thai teachers who are involved and concerned in teaching ESP to Thai students, must have a good quality of competency, or KPI,  in constructing effective teacher-made tests of the ESP courses taught and learned in schools of any level to competently evaluate the learning outcomes of the learners more effectively, by integrating their instruction and evaluation as one phase in an encompassing web of continual classroom planning.