 Hello, this presentation will focus on the testing, evaluation and teaching of special groups. Firstly, we should say that regardless of which teaching situation you find yourself in, in terms of in a school, in a language centre or teaching young learners or adults or whatever, you will always be involved in some way or other, in some form of testing or evaluation. Those tests may include things that are done internally for the school, including such things as homework, course unit tests, maybe half year exams, certainly end of year exams, and you may also be involved in the testing for external tests such as preparation for IELTS and other such examinations. So let's have a look first of all at the more common types of tests that take place. These tests could include things such as placement tests, what are called diagnostic tests, progress tests, many different forms of practice tests, and finally what are often referred to as proficiency tests. So what we'll do is we'll take each of these in turn and have a look at some of the more common detail relating to each. So our first type of test is called the placement test, often they're also called level tests, and as the name implies what we're trying to do is to place students in a particular level of class. Some of the more common features of these are that all four skills are commonly tested, that means reading, writing, speaking and listening, and they tend to be what's called progressive. By progressive what we mean is that the questions tend to start easy and gradually become harder and harder. That means that not all students will get to the end of the test and how far they actually get will determine the actual level of the students. If we take a speaking test for example, we might start off with some very simple things like does the student know the vocabulary for the days of the week? And if they do, can they put today's day into a sentence? So they may say something like okay today is Wednesday. We can then raise the level of the question and say alright if today is Wednesday can you give me a sentence for yesterday and a sentence for tomorrow? Then we will hopefully be using the past form of is and the future form to find out whether the next level. Once we've done that we could perhaps check a further grammar point. We could say something like okay if I am eating rice could you tell me what tense this is? If they are able to identify that tense as the present continuous then can they actually identify each of the parts of speech within that question? If so we could then give them another sentence of a different tense for example present perfect and see if they can indicate the parts of speech for that one. Looking particularly at this new form the adverb of frequency. That will then give us up to the higher levels and we can then ask them some general questions to find out whether we think they should be in the intermediate or the upper intermediate groups. So it tends to be progressive starting easy the further the students go the higher the level they are actually at. The next type of test is called the diagnostic test and what a diagnostic test is really doing is telling us about the students current strengths and weaknesses. A diagnostic test can also give us some indication of the students aptitude and tell us something about whether or not they are going to be able to learn a particular type of material. One of the main things that a diagnostic test can do is that it will allow us to concentrate our planning by telling us what the students already know and the gaps in their knowledge. So a diagnostic test is very very useful for the teacher in terms of the curriculum plan. The next type of test is called the progress test and it's one that whatever teaching situation you find yourself in you're probably going to be involved in one way or another. Typically for progress tests again all four skills are tested. This type of test is often required by the school or the language centre that you're working in and even so by the parents to show that learning has taken place. The duration of time that the progress test is taken over can vary. It could be a particular unit test that's done when a unit is completed in a book. It could be a term test. It could be half year or it could be an end of year. So there are different lengths of time over which these progress tests are covering. The progress test can be a very very useful test for the teacher because quite often it will indicate from the whole class if there are any areas that they're struggling with and it tells us that we need to cover that particular area of the curriculum again. If we have a particular topic that all the students are getting incorrect and it tells us that that class weakness needs to be readdressed we need to cover that particular area again. The practice test is any type of test that will cover any of the other tests that we've already mentioned. So they use basically for revision purposes. The types of tests that we may be wanting to practice for certainly will include the longer progress tests like half year exams and end of year exams, but also things like external examinations that we'll look at later. As they are practice tests what we should ensure with each of these is that the practice test follows as near as possible the actual test that it's being used to practice for. There's very little point in having a practice test that is only 10 questions long and lasts half an hour if that's being used to practice for an exam that actually contains 50 questions and lasts three hours. So try to make your practice test as near to the silent content of the actual thing you're practicing for. Our next category is what are often called external proficiency tests. Within these types of tests there are three general categories and we can label those categories as general English tests, the next business tests or business English and the final category academic. And within these three categories there are various subcategories of tests so we'll have a look at each of these in turn now. So our first main category was called general English and there are a number of organisations or companies that offer these types of exams. Perhaps the most well known is the Cambridge suite of examinations and within the Cambridge suite there are five different examinations at five different levels. The entry level examination for the Cambridge suite is known as the key English test and it's often known by its acronym KETT. This is actually an entry level examination and both this and the next test are really used to show that people are ready for the third level of the Cambridge test. Moving on from the key English test is the second level known by the name PET and that stands for the preliminary English test. Again these two as we've mentioned are entry level exams and in terms of the five levels that we often have in a school in terms of starter, elementary then pre-intermediate, these two exams would cover the starter elementary level within a school. Getting us up to perhaps the pre-intermediate level at the very most. The next level examination is given the name the FCE and this is known as the first certificate in English and this level of examination is approximately equivalent to the upper intermediate level in a school. So typically the FCE is the type of level within the ESL teaching situation that would be the highest level that we normally go to. Beyond that we're moving into very complex examinations in terms of grammar knowledge and the first one is called the certificate in advanced English. Most native speakers who've not studied formal grammar and indeed perhaps most teachers of ESL would find this examination extremely difficult. However having said that, that's still not the highest level of examination that's offered. The final level is called the CPE which is called the Certificates of Proficiency in English. Rather ironic perhaps that it's called the Certificate of Proficiency when it's the highest level of exam that you can take. So the Cambridge suite offering five different levels of examination. One point to consider with these exams is that if you're ever given a teaching situation where you're expected to prepare students for either level four or level five, you need to be very careful about that because it will involve a lot of work for you to do above the level of a normal ESL certificate. There are other types of examinations other than the Cambridge that offer these sorts of things. Perhaps one of the best well known is given the name Cells which is the certificate in English language skills. So a number of examinations at this level. Our next main category is that of business exams and again perhaps the most well known example of this is the TOEIC. And TOEIC stands for the Test of English for International Communication. In terms of the exam itself it covers all four skills and the examination itself is often used by companies and agencies throughout the world for employing and promoting staff. So by doing the TOEIC examination you're showing that your English level is at a particular level that's needed within a company or agency for a particular type of job. Some universities will also accept the TOEIC as an entry level examination. There are other types of business examination available. The other two main well known ones perhaps are the Cambridge BEC and that one is the Cambridge Business English certificate. This particular examination has three levels and those three levels are given the name of preliminary, vantage and hire. The final type of business category that we might look at is what's known as the Business English Language Testing Service or BULAPS. And the BULAPS is mainly used within companies themselves to show a particular level of business English knowledge. Our next main category is that of academic English and here perhaps the two best known exams are those of the TOEFL and the IELTS. The TOEFL, the acronym stands for the Test of English as a Foreign Language. And some of the main features of this particular examination is that it's used by universities, particularly in the US, to check that students from a different country have a high enough level of English to enter into a normal US academic programme. It's not only used in the US, in fact this particular exam is recognised through over 90 countries worldwide. And you don't get a particular grade with this type of examination. What they do is they test all the skills and you then get a cumulative score. There are two ways in which the examination can be taken, either in a centre where you do a paper exam, so your multiple choice type questions are on paper or it can also be done via computer. The tests actually cover the same things be it on paper or the computer version. It's just a different method of marking. The second major academic English exam is that of the IELTS. And IELTS itself stands for the International English Language Testing System. It's a very similar exam to that of the TOEFL. In other words it covers all skills and again it's used by universities, so it's recognised by universities as an entry level exam. One particular thing about this particular exam is that for both the reading and writing skills you get to choose which type of examination that you take. So within the reading and writing examinations you can choose to do either an academic exam or a more general option.