Topic: Assessment and Evaluation

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Topic Assessment and Evaluation

• General objectives
• Trainees will be able to evaluate methodology
  teachers ways of assessing trainees.

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Lesson OneEvaluating Methodology Teachers
Assessment

• Pre-task activities
• Step One assessing trainees achievements by
  questionary.
• Step Two assessing trainees achievements by
  interview.
• Step Three assessing trainees achievements by
  discussion.
• Step Four definition ,directions, purposes,
  methods, criteria of language assessment.
• Step Five making comparison between the
  standardized testing and the communicative
  assessment
• While-task activities
• Step Six evaluating the trainers assessments by
  debate.
• Post-task activities
• Step Seven evaluate the loop input mapping
  content with process.

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• A definition of assessment
• Directions in assessment in languages
• Purposes of assessment
• Methods of assessment
• Criteria of assessment
• Comparison of standardized testing and
  communicative assessment

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A definition of assessment

• Assessment involves making considered judgments
  about learners performance. It is a dynamic
  process and is concerned with determining how
  satisfactorily learners have achieved the
  objectives of a particular course or unit of
  work. Assessment has the educational function of
  describing the performance and promoting the
  development of the learner, while, at the same
  time, meeting the needs of the school, the
  educational system, and society at large to know
  the outcomes of a particular learning program.

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Directions in assessment in languages

• Changes in assessment in languages have taken
  place together with changes in our understanding
  of what language and how it is learned, and
  change in approaches to language teaching. With
  the grammar/translation approach to language
  teaching and learning, for example, assessment
  mostly involved tests of discrete items of
  grammatical knowledge and translation. The same
  assessment procedures prevailed when audiovisual
  and audiolingual approaches were adopted. Because
  it was believed that learners learned patterns
  through stimulus-response habit formation,
  testing focused on discrete linguistic patterns.
  The communicative approach, with its emphasis on
  purposeful language use, has resulted in a move
  towards communicative assessment.
• Communicative assessment involves the assessment
  of learners language on the basis of how well
  they carry out activities. It represents a
  holistic approach to language testing, and
  focuses on language as it is used in
  communication, rather than on the discrete
  components of language.

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Purposes of communicative assessment

• The purposes of assessment are closely related to
  both the goals towards which learners are aiming
  and the teaching and learning process. They can
  be described as follows
• l      To motivate learners and teachers
• l   To inform the teaching and learning process,
  and to guide future curriculum planning
• l   To inform other relevant people
• l   To encourage cooperative styles of work
• l    To encourage responsibility and involvement

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Methods of assessment

• Summative assessment--- End of stage tests
• Formative assessment. The following are useful
  methods of formative assessment
• 1. Oral interview(of learners by the teacher)
• 2. story or text retelling (with listening or
  reading inputs)
• 3. writing samples (with a variety of topics and
  registers)
• 4. projects and exhibitions (presenting
  collaborative effort)
• 5. experiments and demonstrations (with oral or
  written reports)
• 6. constructed-response items (to open-ended
  questions)
• 7. teacher observation (of learners work in
  class, making notes)
• 8. portfolios ( focused collections of learners
  work to show progress)

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Assessment criteria

• Criterion-referenced assessment
• Norm-referenced assessment
• Individual referenced assessment

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Ads. And disads of differently-referenced
assessments
advantages disadvantages
Criterion-referenced Objective standard of ability level Difficult to design, especially for classroom teachers
Norm-referenced Maximize the distinction among individuals in a given group Difficult to decide the norms
Individual referenced Make students aware of their progress, Encourage students Lack of comparison among students.
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Comparison of standardized testing and
communicative assessment

• STANDARDIZED TESTING
• 1. Testing instruction regarded as separate
  activities
• 2. Ss treated in a uniform way
• 3. Decisions based on single sets of data (test
  scores)

• COMMUNICATIVE ASSESSMENT
• 1. Assessment as an integral part of instruction
• 2. Each learner is a unique person
• 3. Provides multiple sources of data, a more
  informative view

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• 4. Emphasis on weakness/ failures what Ss cannot
  do
• 5. One-shot exams
• 6. Cultural/socio-economic status bias
• 7. Focus on one right answer
• 8. Judgment without suggestions for improvement

• 4. Emphasis on strengths/ progress what learners
  can do
• 5. Ongoing assessment
• 6. More culture-fair
• 7. Possibility of several perspectives
• 8. Useful information for improving/guiding
  learning

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• 9. Pressures teachers to narrow teaching to what
  is tested
• 10. Focus on lower-order knowledge and skills
• 11. Forbids Ss to interact promotes comparisons
  btn Ss(norm-ref)
• 12. Extrinsic learning for a grade

• 9. Allows teachers to develop meaningful
  curricula
• 10.Emphasis on higher-order
• learning outcomes thinking skills
• 11. Encourages collaborative learning
  (criterion-ref)
• 12. Intrinsic learning for its own sake