Abstract:

For decades, enhancing language learning is in the centre of attention of education including tertiary studies. A foreign language that is taught at the Department of Foreign Languages is aimed at English for specific purposes according to the needs of individual departments of the University of Žilina. Knowledge of professional vocabulary, a satisfactory level of reading and listening comprehension and fluent communication competence are crucial to be attained. Because of these requirements, there is a need to gain reliable information about students’ achievements so foreign language teachers can successfully implement targeted professional language in the education process. For the purpose of enhancement and efficiency of foreign language learning, we consider an assessment of students to be one of the key indicators of students’ attainments and objective tool which may be used to improve education. In the terms of reliable feedback, if the targeted language was implemented successfully, it was essential to introduce a specification of suitable test tasks with emphasis on objectivity of a test as the basis for the process of analysis and following enhancement of the process of education. Online testing has profoundly changed the process of assessment and enabled us to statistically process and evaluate received data. The article explores the advantages and disadvantages of online testing via the specification of appropriate test tasks. Furthermore, the article aims to draw attention to the importance of item analysis of continuous tests and subsequent statistical processing of students’ results which can possibly improve the overall quality of language learning.

Keywords:

Assessment, test specification, gain, item analysis, test, statistics.