testing techniques

Techniques for testing

Well we were reading some pages of the book “A course in language teaching” and the teacher asked to us look for two techniques the first one which should be the best technique and the second one the last one for testing.

I think that the best one for testing is:

Questions and answers: Simple questions, very often following reading, or as part of an interview; may require short or long answers.

For me this is the best because if we really want testing somebody in a right way we need to evaluate important things and they are including in this, because the student who is being tested must think and answer with his/her own words in English, so it is better for his/her learning and is reliable for the teacher who is evaluating to the students through questioning and answering. Here we note easily where the students are failing and we can help them to understand the subject.

The last one testing technique for me is:

Translation: The text is asked to translate expressions, sentences or entire passages to or from the target language.

Here in my opinion we have the biggest problem in the school, because in most of them, they try or think to teach through translation and I think it does not work for teaching. One of the points which makes me think it, is personal experience. When I was in high school there were many English teachers who gave us homework and the majority of it was translation and I never understood English until other teachers taught us the grammar structures verb tenses etc. and some teachers gave bad grades and they did not even told us why, different the other teacher, for me good teachers which could tell us when we were wrong easily than the bad ones.