Developing Standards-Based Assessment Tasks for English as a First Foreign Language: Context, Processes, and Outcomes in Germany

Volume 1
In collaboration with: Rita Green, Michael Leucht, Daniela Neumann, Raphaela Oehler, Hans-Anand Pant, Henning Rossa & Konrad Schröder

This report is the first in a multi-part technical report series that describes the development, calibration, and validation of standards-based tests for English as a first foreign language at the Institute for Educational Progress (Institut zur Qualitätsentwicklung im Bildungswesen, IQB) in Berlin, Germany. It describes the process of task development in alignment with the National Educational Standards (NES) (Länderübergreifende Bildungsstandards) for English as a first foreign language at the secondary level for the Hauptschulabschluss and the Mittlerer Schulabschluss. The objective of this first volume is to provide a transparent description of the task development process that illustrates the numerous decisions that were made during this process to make overt the resulting consequences for interpreting scores from the standards-based tests as well as the decisions that could be based on these interpretations.

This volume comprises background information about the context within which the NES were formulated, the theoretical frameworks for the test development, the test specifications and constructs, as well as a detailed description of the item writing process. Furthermore, key results from various pre-trials that were conducted to obtain preliminary empirical evidence for the functioning of the items are presented, and the pool of newly developed English tasks is characterized.