The Impact of Testing Frequency on the Performance of Students of Croatian as a Foreign Language

Abstract

Constructing a valid, reliable, authentic, interactive, impactful and practical language test can be a daunting task, especially if one tries to harmonise it with the CEFR. When assessing students’ performance on an achievement test, the question arises whether it is preferable to administer shorter tests more often, or one comprehensive test at the end of a teaching unit. The latter option corresponds to one research group that claims that students’ performance is better when such tests are administered, but is in contrast to another group with the opposite results. However, a third group indicates that testing frequency does not have a significant effect on students’ performance, nor is there a universally appropriate test length. Another possible effect on students’ performance are their attitudes towards test length and testing frequency and their effect on performance Therefore, the goal of this study is to compare the performance of students on progress achievement tests (PAT) and on a final comprehensive test (FCT), as well as to analyse their attitudes towards test length and testing frequency. The participants of the study were 14 Ukrainian students of Croatian as a Second Language at A1 level in Croatia. Our results show that, although the participant show their overall preference to taking PATs, which is in accordance with the results of Vaessen et al. (2017) and Öncül (2017), their performance was insignificantly better in an FCT than in PATs in all the sections apart from the writing production, which is in line with the research by Mines (2014) and Prosenjak (2020), and in part contrary to the results of Bangert-Drowns et al. (1991) and Gholami i Moghaddam (2013).