3. OUR OWN PRETESTING JOURNEY

We conducted a speaking test following MUET standards for our second assignment. We made few changes compared to the actual MUET test. In our test we had 5 candidates instead of 4 candidates.

We had the vetting session prior to the main trial whereby we vetted the questions together with our big group. So in sense we consider this as our “Pilot Test”. We spent at least 2 hours on the questions and other aspects. We had many disagreements regarding the timing and also mark divisions. As our test was rather a subjective test, we had less trouble in constructing the test itself but had troubling in assessing the candidates. There were few spelling errors and other errors highlighted in the vetting session.

We conducted our Main Trial on 30 students. We had separate sessions for every group. Most of the session was conducted in different venues. It is not an easy task to conduct the test as it took time and effort from both the test takers and makers. Some of the test even couldn’t be completed in the required time as some were rushing or they had nothing to speak about. We even received few feedbacks from the students stating that the topic of our test was not interesting. We realised many new things that we did not come across in the earlier part of our vetting session.

It is very interesting that there are certain things that only the candidates are able to see and judge. So pretesting is something that is to be given priority in designing and coming up with exam questions. 

our exam question

instruction to candidates