Although we could think that standardized tests are nowadays a trend, they have been aroudn for a while, and for this reason they have suffered changes through the pass of time. This type of test is a very useful instrument at the moment of assessing our students since they provide the same criteria for evaluating them, they are easy to grade and they aim to measure the same amount of knowledge in the same way for all of the test-takers. Another possitive aspect of standardized assessment is the fact that based on those established standards, students of all ages and backgrounds can be evaluated and classified into a level, which will give institutions worldwide information about the knowledge of language test-takers have. This makes things easier, and we can't deny it, but... do these kind of tests really assess what we want to obtain in our objectives, or in the objectives of the institution?
Years ago, it was proved that those standardized tests that were applied did not match the students' needs, the instructional objectives or the practices carried out in class themselves. This shows that, in those cases, standardized tests were worthless, and did not manage to assess students in the right manner.
Nowadays, through experience and research more accurate standardized tests have been created, and they are a tool for this globalized society that demands knowing, understanding and using the language. In this cases, these tests provide the necessary information to classify, monitor progress or prove mastery of the language; and, since the different skills of the language are included in those tests, they do not exclude the possible strengths or weaknesses students may have.
It seems to me that, eventhough the students' performance on these tests may be influenced by a lot of external factors, they are really helpful in our current learning environment, they are reliable and they try to put every test-taker under the same circumstances and rules.
I know there are negative aspects about these tests too, but at the same time, I think that they exist because of a reason, and that is, classifying students according to their knowledge in order to teach them what they need, or helping them improving, or simply to prove what they learnt.
