DIDACTIC TESTING: WHAT IS IT AND WHY IS IT DONE?

The basic question and task for teachers is how to obtain the information about the results of student learning activities efficiently and reliably. Didactic test is one of the tools for monitoring and evaluating student's and teacher's educational activity. Its supervisory function is how to get the feedback needed to regulate teaching and learning. Education and training focused on evaluating the results of teachers' and pupils' knowledge requires an intensive addition of information particularly in the creation of didactic tests. Didactic tests are one of the effective ways how to find out what level of knowledge or skill has been acquired. The teacher is able to verify the level of the knowledge achieved by pupils through properly composed tasks in the test. The results may help in comparison with previous or later process information to assert their qualities. Didactic test must meet the following requirements: to be properly assembled, properly used and properly evaluated. The quality of the teacher's preparation has a key role in each educational process. In this paper we present two draft variants of the achievement test and their verification in practice. The didactic test is a possibility for the teacher to find some subsequence and mistakes in well known topic and it is the result of an interaction of a student and a teacher. The proposed variants of achievement test were focused on the subject matter of inorganic chemistry called "p - elements". We checked the knowledge of chosen secondary schools students during the learning process. The survey was conducted in five Slovak grammar schools in the school year 2010/2011. It was taken by 245 respondents, students in the second grade of four-year grammar schools and students in the sixth grade of eight-year grammar school.