The Significance of Assessing Students’ Writing Performance for Teachers

The major weakness of junior high school students' test is generally not in the form and type of questions, but the teacher competence to construct the test items well. The factors influencing the teacher competence to measure the student achievement include teachers’ writing test literacy, belief of scoring accuracy, belief of writing assessment method, belief of writing assessment issues, feeling when rating assessment, education background, and teaching experience. Also, the tests are often considered as a part of the educational process only, not as measuring tool of learning process result. The main function of the test results of learning is to measure the students’ learning outcomes and to improve the upcoming instructional design. Thus, there are two common types of tests, namely subjective and objective tests. The objective test has several types, including true-false, match matching, and multiple choice which each has advantages and limitations. Other significant things in constructing a proper test include sampling and selection of test items, types of tests to be used, aspects to be tested, the item format, the number of test items and the distribution of the item range.