How to Constructing a Test

I want to contribute to Noras´s questions, about how to prepare or construct a test, because as good teachers, we have to know this:

The construction of an educational test includes the following steps:

First, we have to planning the test, because an effective testing requieres careful planning by determining the general course objectives. The objectives, we have to dividing into their components:
phonology/ortography, grammatical structure, vocabulary and general fluency of the students.
After done this, we have to establish the General Design of the test (how much items we need on the test); at this point, two extremely important factor must be considered: one is the time to be provides for testing and the other is the degree of Speededness we wish to build into our test.

Second, preparing the test items and directions. The items can be multiple-choice or short-answer and the directions should be brief, simple to understand and free from possible ambiguities.

Third, we have to reviewinfg the items, some days before giving the test to the students and correct the items if it is needed.

Pretesting the material is another step. This consist on review the items and check if they are statiscally satisfactory. To know it, they meet two requirements:
1. If they are of a suitable level of difficulty (neither too hard or too easy)
2. if they discriminate between those students who have the skills or abilities being tested and those who do not.

After done all this steps, we are able to reproducing the test, been sure that it has Validity, reliability (creible) and Practicality, which are characteristics of a good test.

I hope this can help you to prepare a good test.