Critical study of elicitation techniques

The most and least effective test techniques

Most effective: Dictation, Essay, Cloze

Least effective: matching, true/false, questions and answers

- Questions and answers: Open questions are more effective than closed-ended questions because  thought-provoking ones are more difficult but test better

- True/false: is very easy to design, to administer and mark

- Multiple choice: offers more optional answers but come out ambiguous

- Gap-filling and completion: we have to be aware because it has more than a possible right answer

- Matching: it's effective to test vocabulary

- Dictation: it's effective mainly to test spelling, listening or reading comprehension

- Cloze: it test (intensive) reading, spelling, some knowledge of vocabulary and grammar

- Transformation: it test the ability of the testee to transform grammatical structures

- Rewriting: It test knowledge of vocabulary but it's not so effective as transformation

- Translation: the testee has to change the sentence according to some given instruction

- Essay: good test of general writing abilities but difficult to mark

- Monologue: test overall knowledge of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary

Three other ways to evaluate

1. Error Correction 
Find the mistakes in the sentence and correct them:

a. Ipswich Town was the more better team on the night
b. I went to the library to get as many information as I could

Errors must be found and corrected in a sentence or passage. It could be an extra word, mistakes with verb forms, words missed etc. One problem with this question type is that some errors can be corrected in more than one way.

-Error correction is useful for testing grammar and vocabulary as well as readings and listening.

2. Ordering words/phrases into a sequence and sentence construction 

a. (He/go/school/yesterday)

b. (she/sing/theatre/tonight)