The area of progress testing has been neglected and has lagged far behind developments in language teaching and testing in general. In most classrooms today, English is taught through communicative textbooks that provide neither accompanying tests nor any guidance for test construction. Teachers are on their own in constructing tests to measure student progress and performance. The result is they write traditional grammar-based items in a discrete-point format that does not fit the communicative orientation of the textbook or the underlying teaching principles. Yet progress testing has a crucial role. This article offers a rationale for testing and presents guidelines for designing appropriate tests.