The language of assessment, in plain terms.

Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom's Taxonomy is a six-level model of thinking, from remembering facts up to creating new work, used to pitch questions at the right cognitive demand. The revised version names the levels Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyse, Evaluate, and Create.

CEFR

The CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) is a six-level scale of language ability, from A1 (beginner) to C2 (mastery), used to pitch and compare language assessments.

Distractor

A distractor is an incorrect option in a multiple-choice question. Good distractors are the specific wrong answers real students actually arrive at, not obvious throwaways.

Formative assessment

Formative assessment is low-stakes checking done during learning to guide what happens next, not to produce a final grade. Its job is to tell the teacher and the student what to do differently.

Item difficulty

Item difficulty is the proportion of students who answer a question correctly. Counter-intuitively, a higher value means an easier item.

Question bank

A question bank is a shared, organised store of assessment questions that a teacher or department can search and reuse, rather than writing every paper from scratch.

Recall question

A recall question asks a student to reproduce something from memory, such as a definition or a list. It measures what was remembered, not what the student can do with it.

Reliability

Reliability is the consistency of an assessment: whether it would give a similar result on a retake, across different markers, or across equivalent versions of the paper.

Retrieval practice

Retrieval practice is the act of recalling information from memory, through low-stakes testing, which strengthens long-term retention more than rereading does. This is often called the testing effect.

Rubric

A rubric is a set of written criteria and performance levels used to mark open-ended work consistently. It states what earns each band before the work comes in.

Scenario-based question

A scenario-based question puts a concept into a concrete, often unfamiliar situation and asks the student to apply it. Because the case is new, it cannot be answered by recognition alone.

Summative assessment

Summative assessment measures what a student has learned at the end of a unit, term, or course, and produces a grade or a pass/fail decision.

Validity

Validity is whether an assessment actually measures what it claims to. A reading test that a student can pass on background knowledge alone is not a valid reading test.