Academic Year 2014-2015

Teaching Methodology

Semester 2, Year 4

Summary of TM for State Exam

Semester 2:
1. Syllabus is a document which consists, essentially, of a list. This list specifies all the things that are
to be taught in the course for which the syllabus was designed.
2. Types of syllabuses:
i.

Grammatical

ii.

Lexical

iii.

Grammatical-lexical

iv.

Situational

v.

Topic-based

vi.

Notional

vii.

Functional-notional

viii.

Mixed or multi-strand

ix.

Procedural

x.

Process

3. Grammatical structures, such as the present tense, comparison of adjectives, relative clauses,
usually divided into sections graded according to difficulty or the importance of this course.
4. Lexical a list of item such as (girl, boy, go way) with associated collocations and idioms, usually
divided into graded section. One such syllabus, based on a corpus (computerized collection of
samples of authentic language).
5. Grammatical-lexical a very common king of syllabus, both structures and lexis are specified either
together, in sections that correspond to the units of a course, or in two separate lists.
6. Situational these syllabuses take the real life contexts of language uses as their together, in sections
would be headed by names of situations or locations such as eating a meal or in the street.
7. Topic-based including thing like food or the family; these usually indicate a fairly clear set of
vocabulary items, which may be specified.
8. Notional are concepts that language can express. General notion may include number, for example,
or time, place, color; specific notion look more like vocabulary items: man, woman, morning and
afternoon.
9. Foundation-notional is things you can do with language, as distinct from notions you can express:
example are identifying.

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Academic Year 2014-2015

Teaching Methodology

Semester 2, Year 4

10. Mix-multi-strand syllabuses are combining different aspects in order to be maximally

comprehensive and helpful to teachers and learners; in these you may find specification of topic,
tasks, function and notions, as well as grammar and vocabulary.
11. Procedural these syllabuses specify the learning tasks to be done rather than the language itself or
even its meanings. Examples of tasks might be: map, reading, doing scientific experiments, storywriting.
12. Process this is the only syllabus which is not pre-set. The content of the course is negotiated with
the learners at the beginning of the course and during it, and actually listed only retrospectively.
13. Advantages of course book:
i.

Framework: provides a clear framework, teacher and learner know where they are going
and what is coming next.

ii.

Syllabus: is followed systematically, a carefully planned and balanced selection of

language content will be covered.

iii.

Read-made texts and tasks: provides texts and learning tasks which appropriates to level
for most of the class and saves time for teacher.

iv.

Economy: is the cheapest way of providing learning material for each learner.

v.

Convenience: sticks together, stay in order and it is light and small enough to carry
around easily.

vi.

Guidance: provides useful guidance and support to teachers who are inexperienced or
occasionally unsure of their knowledge of the language.

vii.

Autonomy: the learner can use the course book to learn new material, review and
monitor progress.

14. Disadvantages of course book:

i.

Inadequacy: every learner has their own learning needs, no one course book can
possibly supply these satisfactorily.

ii.

Irrelevance, lack of interest: may not necessarily be relevant or interesting in class.

iii.

Limitation: course book is confining, lead to boredom and lack of motivation.

iv.

Homogeneity: do not usually cater for the variety of levels of ability and knowledge.

v.

Over-easiness: too easy to follow the course book uncritically instead of using their
initiative.

15. There are 4 types of tests:

i.

Proficiency tests are designed to measure peoples ability in a language regardless of

any training they have in that language.

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Academic Year 2014-2015

ii.

Teaching Methodology

Semester 2, Year 4

Achievement tests are directly related to language course, their purpose being to
establish how successful individual student, groups of students, or the courses
themselves have been in achieving objective.
There are two kinds of achievement tests:
Final achievement tests: are those administered at the end of a course of study
and maybe written and administered by ministries of education, official
examining board that relate the course with which they are concerned.
Progress achievement tests: are intended to measure the progress that students
are making towards the achievement of course objective.

iii.

Diagnostic tests are used to identify students strengths and weaknesses.

iv.

Placement tests are intended to provided information which will help to place students at
the stage (or in the part) of the teaching programme most appropriate to their abilities.

16. Test Development Process:

i.

Assess the constraints and resources

ii.

Determine the purpose of the test

iii.

Determine the objectives of the test

iv.

Define the content area of the test

v.

Determine the relative weights of all objective and different parts of the test

vi.

Determine test method and procedures

vii.

Write test items and tasks assemble them, and write directions

viii.

Review and revise the test

ix.

Develop scoring methods

17. Types of test item:

i.

Direct test items refer to test items which perform the communicative skill which is
being tested.

ii.

Indirect test items refer to test items which try to measure a students knowledge and
ability by getting at what lies beneath their receptive and productive.

18. Worksheet is a page (or two) of tasks, distributed to each student to do either in class or at home,
intended to be written on, and usually taken in by the teacher to be checked.
19. Workcards are made in sets, each card offering a different, fairly short task.
20. Classroom tests refer to test which is written and administered by teachers.
21. External tests refer to test which is planned and administered by an external agency such as a
Ministry of Education.
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Academic Year 2014-2015

Teaching Methodology

Semester 2, Year 4

22. The benefit of :

i.

Classroom Tests
Find out whether what was taught was also successfully acquired
Evaluate and improve instruction
Obtain information on students progress and language knowledge
Help organize learning/teaching material
Provide information to students on their language progress
Provide information for grades
Help diagnose students strengths and weaknesses in the language
Motivate students to learn

ii.

External tests
Evaluate proficiency
Decide whether to accept students to certain programs
Provide information for administrative decision-special treatment to certain groups,
assist in selection and grouping
Help evaluate the curriculum
Serve research purposes
Obtain information for grading

23. Direct testing: refers to tests which require the candidate to perform precisely the skill which
we wish to measure.
Direct testing has a number of attractions:
i.

Provided that we are clear about just what abilities we want to assess.

ii.

The assessment and interpretation of students performance is also quite straightforward.

iii.

Be a helpful backwash effect.

24. Indirect testing: attempts to measure the abilities which underlie the skill in which we are
interested.
25. Discrete point testing: refers to the testing of one element at a time, item by item.
26. Integrative testing: requires the candidate to combine many language elements in the
completion of a task.
27. Norm-referenced testing: refers to a test which is designed to give this kind o information
directly. It relates one candidates performance to that of other candidates.
28. Criterion-referenced testing: refer to tests which are designed to provide this kind of
information directly.
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Academic Year 2014-2015

Teaching Methodology

Semester 2, Year 4

29. Objective testing: refer to tests which no judgement is required on the part of scorer example a
multiple choice test.
30. Subjective testing: refer to tests which judgement is required on the part of scorer example
reading test.
31. The format of multiple choice:
i.

Discrete item: a single complete item

ii.

Stem: the initial part of the item in which the task is stated; it may be in the form of a
question, directions or an incomplete sentence

iii.

Option: all the alternative choices/answers (usually four or five available to the
respondent)

iv.

Key: the correct answer

v.

Distractors: the incorrect alternative choices

vi.

Item Sets: two or more items based upon common material, for example a passage of
text, problem, graph, experiment or chart.

32. A test can be judged according to six qualities such as reliability, (construct) validity,
authenticity, impact, practicality, and interactiveness.
33. Reliability refers to the consistency of test results or measurement in different testing
situations.
There are a number of ways to ensure reliability of a test:
Taking enough samples of student behavior or work
Where appropriate there should be only one answer to a question or item.
34. Validity test is a test which measure what it is intended to measure and not something else.
Three types of validity that are to be mentioned here include:
Construct validity is defined as the extent to which we can interpret a given test score as
an indicator of the abilities or constructs we want to measure.
Content validity is that the test content should be carefully selected so that it can be
representative not only of what is not included but also of what the students are expected
to deal with in their jobs.
Face validity refers to the appearance of validity.
35. Authenticity is the degree of correspondence between the characteristics of a given language
task to the features of a target language use task.
36. Impact is washback which is the direct effect of testing on teaching as well as individuals.

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Academic Year 2014-2015

Teaching Methodology

Semester 2, Year 4

(Washback is a type of impact, which relates to the effects of high-stake test on classroom
practices- particularly teaching and learning.)
37. Practicality considers the relationship between the resources required for the design,
construction, and administration of the test and the resources available for these activities.
38. An item is the smallest unit that produces distinctive and meaningful information on a test or
rating scale.
39. The mode refers to the score which most candidates obtained.
40. The median refers to the score gained by the middle candidate in the order of merit.
41. The mean is the arithmetical average i.e the sum of the separate scores divided by the total
number of testees.
42. Range is one simple way of measuring the spread of marks is based on the difference between
the highest and lowest scores.
43. Standard Deviation (s.d. or ) refers the way of showing the spread of scores which
measures the degree to which the group of scores deviates from the mean.
Formula: s.d .

d
N

, (N is the number of scores, d is the deviation of each score from

the mean)
44. Test analysis examines how the test items perform as a set.
45. Item analysis investigates the performance of items considered individually either in relation to
some external criterion or in relation to the remaining items on the test.
46. Item difficulty is simply the percentage of students taking the test who answered the item
correctly.
47. Item Discrimination is the number of people in the upper group who answered the item
correctly minus the number of people in the lower group who answered the item correctly,
divided by the number of people in the largest of the two groups.
48. Guessing refers to the percentage of correction answer.
Formula: N R

W
, ( N = the corrected score, R = the number of correct answers, W =
A 1

the number of incorrect answers, A = the number of options in each items)

The End
Good Luck in Exam!!!

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