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論文
論文

Low-Stakes Testing
Stephen M. Ryan1)
Keywords: Testing, Low-stakes, Brain Science
High-stakes testing, where the test-taker has a lot to gain from a good score and asmuch to lose from a poor one, has always received a lot of attention from researchers
seeking to inform both the people who make the tests and the teachers who prepare theirlearners to take them. At least until recently, though, low-stakes tests, typically designed
and implemented by classroom teachers as wayposts along their students’ journey tolearning, have received less attention. Thanks to a renewed focus on evidence-basedteaching, however, it is now becoming clear that low-stakes testing has much to offer interms of support for and enhancement of learning.
High-Stakes Testing
The goal of a high-stakes test is to assess the amount of learning the test-taker has
achieved and the test-taker’s ability to make use of that learning (Association of
Language Testers in Europe, 1999). The “high stakes” are usually important decisions
about the test-taker’s future: What job will they get? Which school will they be admitted
to? What level of class will they be able to join? In the world of English Language
Teaching, high-stakes tests include not only the globally available TOEFL, TOEIC,
IALETS and their local equivalents such as the EIKEN suite of tests in Japan, but also
admissions and placement tests used by schools, universities, and language centres.
Since the stakes for the test-taker, and often for the teacher or institution that
prepares them to take the test, are high, the issues for researchers are fairness, validity,
and accuracy (Young et al., 2013). To achieve the credibility a test needs in order to be
used for high-stakes purposes, great efforts are made to see that the test will produce
the same results for all test-takers with comparable abilities (fairness); that it actually
measures what it appears to be measuring (validity); and that it measures that ability
without other intervening variables that may distort the result (accuracy). Consequently,
test-makers, such as the Educational Testing Service, Pearson Language Tests, and the
EIKEN Foundation of Japan, devote considerable resources to making fairer, more valid,more accurate tests; schools and teachers preparing learners to take these tests
scrutinise and analyse them to understand exactly what kind of items the experts areusing; and learners devote a large proportion of their time and energy for preparing for1)

山陽学園大学総合人間学部言語文化学科
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those testable items.
Clearly, there is a certain amount of distortion involved here (Jones et al., 2003). A
particular skill or area of knowledge is likely to be selected for testing, not because it isa core to the ability the test claims to measure, but because it is testable under theconditions imposed by the need for high levels of fairness, validity, and accuracy. An
obvious example, from language testing, is the issue of testing speaking fluency (De Jong,2018). “They are fluent speakers of X” is a commonly heard layperson’s assessment of alearners’ ability to use language X, but fluency has proved very difficult to assess withthe high degree of accuracy required for this kind of testing. Accuracy in grammaticalstructure and in pronunciation are more amenable to high-stakes testing, so it is often
these skills that are tested, studied, and practiced, rather than the more intuitive but
also more elusive fluency. Since the stakes for learners are high, the conscientious
language teacher has little choice but to teach to the somewhat distorted focus of“speaking” tests such as the IELTS Speaking Test, the TOEIC Speaking and Writing
Test, or the EIKEN interview test.
Researchers have also shown considerable interest in variables that are beyond thecontrol of test-setters, notably the level of stress experienced by individual learners
taking high-stakes tests. We have known since Yerkes and Dodson conducted theirfamous experiment with mice in 1908 that, while a certain amount of stress enhance
performance, too much stress is detrimental to it. Unfortunately for those who seek tostandardise the experience of being tested, it is equally clear that the level of stressexperienced by test-takers depends not only on how high the stakes are but also theindividual’s susceptibility to test anxiety (see, for example, Gorjian, 2012) and thus
varies from person to person.
Low-Stakes TestingLow-stakes testing “involves the frequent use of evaluation instruments that havelittle impact on a student's course grade” (Oswego State University of New York, 2022).
Despite superficial similarities to the high-stakes variety, low-stakes testing is much
more concerned with helping a learner to learn than it is with determining their future
prospects. As part of a teacher’s everyday practice, it offers a chance for learners topractice certain items repeatedly, to space out the practice of those items over time, toallow the learner to understand where their strengths and weaknesses lie, and to show
the teacher where remedial work might be required. Examples from the language
classroom include frequent vocabulary testing, challenges to use recently acquired
knowledge in a new context, requests for information previously studied, and review
quizzes which do not form a substantial part of a student’s grade. While fairness, validity,
and accuracy are desirable in such testing opportunities, the desire for them does not
dominate decisions about what is to be tested and how. Stress levels are intentionally
low so that the learner has little to lose from trying out new knowledge or fromrecognising areas in which their knowledge is, as yet, insufficient.
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Although low-stakes testing has been part of the teacher’s tool-kit for a long time
(Howatt, 1984), recent findings from the field of Mind, Brain, and Education (Sousa,
2010; Tokuhama-Espinosa, 2014) have led to renewed attention being paid to it. Thesefindings are themselves part of a movement towards “evidenced-based teaching.”
Evidence-Based Teaching
While the tendency of educators to “teach as they were taught” or to use “tried andtrusted” methods in the classroom has long been noticed, it has been difficult to produce
objective, scientific evidence that these ways of teaching are in fact the most efficaciousand likely to lead to learning success. The main explanation for this lack of scientificevidence lies in the complexity of the teaching-learning process: there are so many
variables in and around the classroom that it is impossible to control all extraneous
variable in order to isolate and measure the effects of a particular teaching approach or
methodology. This is why, for example, efforts to prove the superiority of Communicative
Language Teaching over the Grammar Translation Method have so often ended in
ambiguity and defeat (Natsir & Senjaya, 2014). Lack of convincing evidence may also
explain why learners have, for generations, used study techniques (such as underlining,or reading their textbook repeatedly) which their teachers know to be inefficient(Dunlosky et al. 2013).
Recently, however, the ability to scan brains in the act of learning has provided newopportunities to examine effective ways of learning and teaching. The results, from
cognitive neuroscience, are seldom surprising to experienced teachers, but do provide asolid, evidential guide to best practice. The increasing confidence of book titles such as

How we Learn (Dehaene, 2020) and Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning(Brown, 2014) reflects growing assurance that our understanding of learning processes
is becoming clearer and more complete.
In particular, neuroscientists have identified a number of strategies that lead tomore effective learning. This list of strategies is taken from a guide (Pashler et al., 2007)
produced by the U.S. Department of Education:
Spaced Repetition. Studying the same information at different times.
Interleaving. Studying a variety of topics one after another before returning to theinitial topic.
Retrieval Practice. Recalling previously learned information.
Elaboration. Consciously connecting new information to things already known.
Concrete Examples. Connecting new knowledge to previous experiences.
Dual coding. Accessing the same information in various forms (visual, auditory,etc.)
While elements of all six of these strategies can be in play in low-stakes testing, anexamination of the first three (Spaced Repetition, Interleaving, and Retrieval Practice)provides a convincing explanation of the efficacity of its use.
Spaced Repetition
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Since Ebbinghaus (1885) pointed out that most information is lost to memory
within a very short time of being learned, the search has been on for better mnemonics,
better ways of ensuring that learners do not forget their lessons.
It is now understood that our brain tends to remember things that are salient to it(Sousa, 2010). An encounter that represents a threat to our survival is likely to beremembered very well, thanks to a release of dopamine, a neurochemical that enhances
neuronal connections (LaLumiere, 2014). Similarly, a pleasant surprise, especially one
that enhances our prospects of survival, is also likely to increase dopamine production
and so be remembered. These bio-neural mechanisms are easy to understand in termsof species and organism survival but, unfortunately, difficult to reproduce in theclassroom.
Fortunately, there is another factor that increases the salience of a particularexperience or piece of information: encountering the same thing repeatedly. Repetitionof new language (“Repeat after me”) has long been an important feature of the language
classroom. What neuroscience is adding to our understanding is that, to be effective, therepetition should be spaced out over time: not “repeat . . .again . . again . .again. . .OK,
you’ve got it” but “repeat now, an hour later, after lunch, again tomorrow, a few days
after that, next week, and so on.” This specific pattern—repeating a few minutes later,
an hour or so later, two days later and a week later—is recommended by Smolen et al.
(2016).
Reviews (Carpenter at al., 2012; Cepeda et al., 2006) of studies comparing spaced
repetition with its opposite (“massed practice”) find overwhelming evidence that spaced
repetition results in better long- and short-term retention in both laboratory andclassroom settings.
Interleaving
If repetition is to be spaced, what should come between the repeated iterations?
The answer seems to be “other topics.” The human mind is primed for variety (Sousa,
2010): it seeks out difference. Again, this is most likely a survival technique, as, in theenvironment in which humans evolved, what was different could easily be fatal or,alternatively, could present an opportunity for enhanced survival. Consequently, large
cognitive resources are devoted to recognising patterns in the environment and thenpaying attention to things that do not fit established patterns. As the new element
becomes more familiar (i.e. becomes integrated into existing patterns, modifying themas necessary), the brain pays less and less attention to them as it seeks more novel
experiences.
In the classroom, this leads to a limit to the length of time can pay attention to asingle topic. After a while (10 – 20 minutes) they begin to give more attention to thingsother than the topic being studied. This is why neuroscientists recommending a variety
of topics, a variety of activities and a variety of focuses for each lesson or study session.
Changing the topic, however, does not mean that learners will no longer process
information about the previous topic. There is ample evidence that the brain
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unconsciously continues to look for patterns and differences during any spare time it has.
If this happens during sleep, it is called dreaming; if the learner is awake, it is known as“mind-wandering.” Both are known to enhance both understanding and learning (Sousa,2020).
The evidence that interleaving enhances learning and memory is summarised by
Pan (2015) who highlights a study by Rohrer et al. (2015), which reported a 25%
advantage on a final test for learners who were given practice mixing up two different
types of math problems over classmates who practiced the two types of problems
separately,
Retrieval Practice
Just like a photo album which, when opened and looked at, improves recall of thepeople and events depicted there, retrieving memories improves recall of those memories.
In essence a memory is a group of neurons that fire together. The more they do this (firetogether), the stronger the connection between them becomes, and so the memory
becomes more firmly fixed. Each time, we retrieve a memory, we strengthen it.
Exercises that require learners to recall previously learnt material function as
retrieval practice, strengthening the recall of that material. Further, by recalling thematerial in a different context to the one in which it was initially encountered, thelearner is expanding the network of associations that material has for them. In otherwords, they are expanding the number and variety and neurons activated by theremembered material. A learner who encounters a new word may make efforts tomemorise the word and basic elements of its meaning, but it is repeated retrieval of theword that both solidifies the memory of the world and provides nuance and extended
range to the occasions when the learner might use the word (Karpicke, 2012; Pyc &Rawson, 2010).
Retrieval practice has other obvious advantages. It alerts learners to gaps in theirknowledge and, if done as a low-stakes test, has the potential also to bring such gaps tothe attention of the teacher.
Dunlosky et al. (2013) had students learn Swahili words and their English
equivalents. The experimental group was told to quiz themselves on the words (a formof retrieval practice) in preparation for the test, whereas the control group were told toread and re-read the words. The experimental group out-performed its peers by over 50%.
Low-Stakes Testing, Spaced Repetition, Interleaving, and Retrieval PracticeLow-stakes testing draws on the strengths of each of these three study strategies.
It allows the teacher to bring an item back to the attention of the learner at various
intervals after it is initially encountered, by including it in subsequent tests. It allows
for the mixing up of items taught in different lessons and lesson stages in a single test.
It affords practice in recalling items—or not recalling them if the item has been forgotten,
in which case further study is in order.
Furthermore, it allows teachers to add salience to certain items by repeating themmore often than others as test items. This indicates to learners the relative importance5- 49 -

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the teacher attaches to these items, consolidates the more important ones in the learner’s
memory, and focuses the learner’s (limited) attention where the teacher believes it
belongs.
Because the stakes are not only low but also demonstrated to the learners to be low,
test anxiety should not be a problem for learners taking these tests. They can focus onchecking their understanding and recall of the test items rather than worrying about theconsequences their test performance might have for their future. Attention remains
where it should be in the classroom: on learning.
Additionally, low-stakes testing makes possible learning-friendly practices thatwould be unthinkable if the stakes were higher. Educational psychologists, for example,
report that students learn best when they learn in a social context (Cozolino, 2014). Thisfinding is reinforced by the discovery that the brain uses two different neural networks
for “social learning” (learning from each other) and for “analytical learning” (the kind ofanalysis-and-memorisation activities familiar in most school settings), and that thesocial learning network is more effective than the analytical is (Lieberman, 2013). Yet,
working with a classmate to understand and answer questions would simply not be
acceptable in a high-stakes test. When the stakes are low, though, and the focus is onlearning, consulting a classmate can be not only desirable but encouraged.
Two Examples of Low-Stakes Test
Vocabulary Test
As an English teacher, I am aware of the need for my learners to become familiar
with, remember, and use more and more words. They themselves express the difficulties
they have in understanding and using English in terms of their need for new words.
I am also aware that the approach to vocabulary adopted by most textbook-based
lessons is insufficient to ensure retention and future use of the word. Typically, a newwords is presented in the context of a particular textbook unit. It may be explained or
exemplified. Its morphological, phonological, and orthographic features may behighlighted. It may even appear in a glossary at the end of the chapter or book or bequizzed in a “Unit Review.” Then, however, attention moves on to the next chapter andthe next, where the word will most probably not re-occur. Some enlightened textbook
authors make a feature of “recycling vocabulary,” ensuring that certain words occur in
not one but two or three chapters. This is still, though, a long way from the “at least 12
encounters” that Nation (2014) says are needed in order to learn a new word.
In an attempt to remedy the situation, I begin each lesson with a low-stakes
vocabulary test. The stakes are low because, though the tests are graded, scores on all
the vocabulary tests combined (a total of some 700 individual items over a semester)
account for only 10% of the learner’s grade for the semester. Learners know the stakes
are low because they are told this at the beginning of the semester, and also because theteacher’s attitude is not judgmental (“You didn’t do well on this test”) but supportive (“Weneed to look again at this word”).
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Obviously, the tests provide an opportunity for retrieval practice. Spaced repetition
is provided by including not only words from the previous lesson but a selection of words
from all previous lessons. The fact that items from various lessons are mixed together inthe test provides interleaving of semantic fields encountered when studying different
topics.
The design of the test is intended to provide motivation for review of previously
encountered vocabulary (spaced repetition and retrieval practice) and learners who do
this are rewarded with good scores and a sense of progress. Not all students, though, arewilling to review vocabulary between lessons. For these students, the test itself functions
as an opportunity for spaced repetition and retrieval, as they encounter prompts forwords they have been taught in the past.
Feedback on test answers is provided as quickly as possible. Agarawal and Bain.
(2019) list immediate feedback as one of the elements of effective retrieval practice.
Feedback on the vocabulary tests occurs in two ways: after the test papers have collected
in, the teacher asks learners individually to answer orally the questions from the test,
continuing until a correct answer is heard for each question; and, in anticipation of this,many learners consult their vocabulary notebooks as soon as they surrender their test
paper to check on answers they were not sure of. The pleasure that learners experienceon discovering (whether from another learner or from their notes) the correct answer toa question that has been puzzling them is the result of a dopamine release, theneurochemical that helps to fix things in memory (LaLumiere, 2014).
The fact that the testing procedure takes up a substantial part of the lesson (20 outof 90 minutes most days) communicates to the learners the seriousness they should
accord to vocabulary learning and review. Additionally, the teacher’s selection of words
for each test and the frequency with which certain words are recycled provides salienceto the words that are chosen, indicating that these words are especially important anduseful, playing to the brain’s tendency to commit more resources to remembering salient
items.
A social element can be added to the test when it is clear that some learners arehaving difficulty with answers. A second learner can be assigned to help their strugglingclassmate. For the helper, providing an answer to a classmate affords anotheropportunity to retrieve a word from memory. For the helped, learning from a classmate
activates the social learning network, which Lieberman (2013) has told us is a more
powerful way of learning than facing alone a list of new words. For both helper andhelped, solving a puzzle may result in a memory-consolidating shot of dopamine(LaLumiere, 2014).
Finally, if there are some questions which no one can answer, learners can beallowed to consult their notebooks, but not copy from them. They need to hold theanswers in their mind long enough to close the notebook, put it away, pick up a pencil
and write. The same item is then included in the test given in the next lesson, giving
learners a chance to retrieve the memory trace.
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It should be noted that all of these helping techniques—the immediate feedback,the help from a classmate, and the notebook consultation—serve to communicate that it
is not their performance on the test but the chance to learn that is the most importantpart of this procedure. This further amplifies the message that the stakes for the test arelow.
Facts-and-Figures Test
I recently had the chance to apply the principles of low-stakes testing in anothercontext. This was not a language course, where skills and practice are at least as
important as memory in determining outcomes, but an information-based course aboutlife in various English-speaking countries, where remembering facts and figures about
the country was the heart of the course.
The test consisted of a pile of note cards. After each lesson, I wrote on the notecards information from the lesson that I wanted learners to remember, with one piece of
information on each card. A typical card would say “It’s independence day is July 1” or“Many people celebrate Christmas on the beach.”
In the next lesson, all cards from all previous lessons were used. One card washanded to each learner. The learner was to identify the country the information on thecard referred to and go and stand in a corner of the classroom where that country’s flag
was displayed. Once all learners had chosen a country, each read the words from theircard aloud. If the answer was correct, the card was discarded (until the next lesson). If
not, the card was returned to the bottom of the pack. The second round began with acard from the top of the pack being distributed to each learner, and so on until all cards
had been correctly identified with a flag and discarded.
No limits were placed on the means used to answer the questions. Some learners
remembered answers from week to week, providing retrieval practice and spaced
repetition for them. Others consulted classmates, adding a social learning aspects to theretrieval of information. Still others consulted their notes or even their smartphones,
providing spaced repetition of the information, if not practice in retrieving it from theirown brains.
What was evident in the classroom was a desire to find the answer. Learners
wanted to solve the puzzle of the card in their hands. They were engaged with the searchfor knowledge. Engagement, focussed attention, is one of the pre-requisites for learning(Lodge & Harrison, 2019). Consolidation of the learning was provided by the dopamine
release that was evident in their satisfaction at finding the answer (LaLumiere, 2014).
Interleaving of topics was achieved simply by shuffling the cards between lessons,so that topics covered recently were dealt alongside those further back in the course.
Retrieval practice was evident in learners’ answering specific questions they (or theirless knowledgeable classmate) were dealt. Spaced repetition was available to learners
for all questions as their classmates read their cards aloud during the checking phase of
the test. The power of spaced repetition was demonstrated by the way in which learners,
quite unconsciously, became more and more familiar with the flags of the various
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countries week by week.
A further aspect of this test should be noted: it was multi-modal and multi-sensory.
Dual coding (expressing information in more than one way) was mentioned by Pasler etal. (2007) as one of the six main evidence-based learning strategies. Learners read thequestion on their card and say it aloud during checking; they hear classmates read theirown cards; and they get to express their answer by moving to a certain part of theclassroom. It used to be thought that each learner had a favoured learning style: visual,auditory, or kinesthetic (Walsh, 2011), but more recent research suggests that all ablebodied learners make use of all of these modes of learning and that the use of multiple
modes allows each mode to reinforce the others (Riener & Willingham, 2010). So, the useof various of various learning modes is another strength of this kind of test.
As with the first example, it is the low-stakes nature of this test that allows theinclusion of elements, such as social learning and multi-modality, that support andencourage learning. In this case, learners are not even awarded a score for theirperformance. The focus is on finding the answer, on learning.
Conclusion
Although high-stakes and low-stakes tests may appear similar and, at times, theexperience of taking them may feel similar, in fact they are very different. The purposeof a high-stakes test is to provide a snapshot of what the test-taker is capable of, so thatdecisions about the test-taker’s future can be made. The purpose of a low-stakes test is
to encourage and support learning, and only secondarily to provide feedback to thelearner and teacher about areas that need extra support.
High-stakes tests are designed and implemented under stringent conditions
designed to remove as many intervening variables as possible from the assessment of
the test-taker’s ability. The absence of these constraints in low-stakes testing allows forthe introduction of elements that are known to enhance learning. The evidence
supporting these elements is being provided by neurological and cognitive psychologicalstudies into the very nature of learning.
As more such evidence becomes available, teachers should feel free to abandon astrict understanding of what a test should be and how it should be conducted in favourof evidence-based practices that use tests as just one of the strategies available to help
students learn.
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