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Makale Özeti:
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The paper discusses the challenges of test
design in the context of a research project focusing on
the analysis of tertiary students’ spoken production in
English. One of the project aims is to create a corpus of
learner-spoken English. The participants in the study
are Czech first-year students in English language
teacher education study programmes at three
universities. In order to elicit samples of the students’
oral production, a test of speaking, including a
pronunciation subtest,was designed with respect to the
research aims and objectives and in accordance with
the current trends in the field. The challenges faced by
the research team may be divided into three groups –
those pertinent to the construction phase of the research
instrument, the pilot phase, and the data-collection
phase. The paper discusses how the team responded to
the perceived challenges.The process of test designing
was informed by relevant literature (e.g. Bachman,
1990, Hughes, 2003, Luoma, 2004);the team strove to
achieve the highest possible level of ‘test usefulness’, i.e.
test qualities including reliability, construct validity,
authenticity, interactiveness, impact and practicality, as
introduced by Bachman and Palmer (2009).
Consequently, the decisions regarding the abilities that
the candidates, prospective English teachers, should
demonstrate, as well as the decisions about the test
format (elicitation techniques, number of tasks, etc.),
were made with respect to the proposed ‘test
usefulness’. The pilot phase confirmed the usability of
the tool to elicit the required data, but also necessitated
a few content- and procedure-related modifications.
They reflected the results of the analysis of the
performances recorded during the trial testing as well
as the analysis of feedback questionnaires.Having
revised the test, the researchers then implemented it in
the data-collection processin three universities in the
Czech Republic. The number of studentstested was 176.
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