Teachers who develop useful assessments, provide corrective instruction, and give

students second chances to demonstrate success can help them in improve their
understanding in learning. It is crucial for teachers to design a suitable classroom test to
measure the students understanding of topic learnt. In this essay, I will discuss more on a
classroom test for a year3 class, using the occupation topic that can be found in the KSSR
syllabus. This essay will be divided into 5 elements which are skills to be tested, level of
difficulty of test items, test format that will be utilised, allocation of marks for each
items, and lastly the effectiveness of the test.
Before I go into depth with the skills to be tested, I will elaborate more on the details
of the year3 students. The level of the year3 students are in range from low to average level
of proficiencies. Most of the students can read well but cannot speak fluently. The
numbers of the students in the year3 class are not more than 10 students, as the students
went to an SKM school in a rural area. We decided to design a classroom test for a week
3, listening and speaking skills in production stage.
The first element that needs to be focus on while designing a classroom test is the
skills that need to be tested. We chose listening and speaking skills as we believe that
both of the skills are fundamental skills that need to be master in order to learn English as
second language better. Listening provides input that can be very significant for second
language acquisition in general and for the development of the speaking skill in particular.
Furthermore, many students nowadays, even the postgraduates still cannot speak the
English language fluently. This problem needs to be tackle as soon as possible, so that
the same problem will not occur in the future. Thus, by focusing on both skills, teachers
can test and improve students listening and speaking skills.
The second element that needs to be emphasis on is the level of difficulty of test
items. In my opinion, the level of difficulty of test has to be depending on the students
level of proficiencies. Teachers cannot provide a test that is too easy nor too hard for the
students. Thus, the level of difficulty of test that I have chosen to design the test for the year3
class is average level. This is to make sure it is suitable and tally with the students level
of proficiencies which consist from low to average levels.
The third element to be considered is the test format. I would conduct subjective
question. I will write the sentence structure on the board and demonstrate how to use it.
The sentence structures are as below:
My ambition is to be a _________________.
I want to be a ________ because I ___________.
I will select the students randomly to write their name and ambition on the board. Then, I will
guide to them to speak by asking wh-questions such as what is your ambition? and why do
you want to be a ______? The students will use the sentence structures given to answer the
questions. I choose this format to test the students speaking skills as well as a guidance
for them to speak. The test gives the students freedom in a sense that different students
might have different answer. I also believe that this test format is effective to assess the
students understanding on the topic. This may be because the test is valid where it tests the
students understanding about different types of occupation and what their job is. It is also
practical because the number of students is no so many so each student could get the
chance to speak in front about their ambition. Based on Bloom Taxonomy, this type of
question requires the students to apply their understanding on the types of occupation in
their real life situation.
In terms of allocation of marks, I choose to give feedback, comment and star to
the students. This is because this test is conducted at the post-activity of the listening and
speaking class. I think that by giving feedback or comment, it would enable the students to
know what their mistake is the correct way of doing it. The star would be given to the
students who able to use the sentence structures correctly. As this also could encourage
them to use the language more and develop confidence in speaking.
All in all, certain criteria such as skills to be assessed, level of difficulty of the test
item, test format, and also allocation of marks, weightage, or feedback should be considered
when doing a test to check the students understanding on the topic learnt.