2. This chapter discusses some important factors to consider in order to choose tasks for
planning or designing tests. Additionally, it presents a guidelines for preparing closedended and open-ended tasks. Considering closed-ended task tests, they assess
comprehension skills rather than production skills. Moreover, they assess specific
language skills due to the fact that the responses are totally controlled by the examiner.
The range of language skills are also under the test taker’s control since the test taker is
force to respond specific test items.
In comparison, open-ended tasks do not control the students specific responses, in
here, they are free to respond a test in the way they choose, so they can find ingenious
ways of avoiding language they do not know or know superficially. In addition, openended tasks are not under test maker’s control as in ended- closed tasks.
3. It is important to highlight that open-ended tasks are more suitable for
assessing language proficiency in many different authentic situations, for
instance, a job interview or a conversation in the street, since students can
respond to a question in different forms using a real context. It means that, these
type of task are designed to assess speaking and writing skills.
Another characteristic to discuss is the guideline for devising closed- ended
task tests or open-ended test whatever you choose, it should be needed to
consider the following features: instructional objectives, the students’ level of
proficiency, instructional activities, and available testing resources in order to
know what aspects to assess.
4. To sum up and to give my opinion, I could say that in order to choose a test is
necessary to bear in mind if we want to assess students’ performance of the
language or students’ use of the language through authentic tasks, whatever
C
we choose, it is necessary to invest a great amount of time on devising reliable
and valid item tasks in order to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses by
evaluating specific aspects of the language learning and for making further
decisions based on the test results .
