Assessment means judging learners’ performance by collecting information about it. We assess learners for different reasons, using different methods to do so. Assessment tasks are the tasks teachers use for assessing learners. We can assess learners formally or informally. Formal assessment is when we assess learners through tests or exams and give their work a mark or a grade. Informal assessment is when we observe learners to see how well they are doing something and then often give them comments on their performance.
A. Formal assessment
1. At the beginning of a course teachers might give students a test to find out (diagnose) what they know and don’t know. This is called diagnostic test. The information from the test helps teachers decide what to teach and which learners need help in which areas of language.
2. When learners go to a language school or evening classes, the school may want to know what level the learners are at, so they give them a test. This is called a placement test. Teachers use the information from a placement test to decide what level of class the learners should go into.
3. After we have finished teaching a part of a course, we may want to find out how well the learners have learnt it. A test for this purpose is called a progress test. A progress test looks back over a recent block of the syllabus, e.g. a unit from the coursebook. Teachers use the information from this test to decide if they need to do more work on that area of the syllabus or not, and to give learners feedback on their strengths and difficulties in this area. This type of assessment is called formative assessment.
4. Some teachers prefer not to assess their learners’ progress through tests but through pieces of work given throughout the term, e.g. a composition, a presentation, an essay. Then they base the learner’s final mark on the average mark for the pieces of work. This method of assessment is called continuous assessment. In young learners classes this form of assessment is sometimes called classroom-based assessment.
5. Another way of assessing learners’ work throughout the term is through a portfolio. This is a collection of learners’ work done during the course, which the learner puts together during a course and presents it to the teacher. Putting the portfolio together can also be a opportunity for the learner to revise and improve their work.
6. At the end of a term or course, teachers may give learners a test to see how well they have learnt the contents of the whole course. This kind of assessment is called a summative test or an achievement test.
7. Sometimes learners take tests to see how good they are at language. This kind of test is called a proficiency test. The contents of the test are not based on a course or syllabus that the learner has followed. The test measures the learner’s general skills or ability in the language as a whole (e.g. the IELTS test) or a use of it (e.g. English for nurses).
There are many different tasks a teacher can use to assess his/her students, e.g. multiple-choice questions, interviews, gap-fill, table completion for listening, or reading for specific information. The tasks a teacher chooses to use for formal assessment depend on what aspect of language or skills the teacher wants to assess. Assessment tasks are often described as objective and subjective. The difference between objective and subjective tasks is how much the marker needs to use their own judgement to mark the right answer.
– In an objective task the marker does not have to judge whether an answer is right or wrong, because there is only one answer. Example of objective tasks: multiple-choice, true/false, gap-fills, matching tasks.
The advantage of objective tasks is that they are quick to mark, and the results are accurate. The disadvantage of objective tests are that they are difficult to write and that they do not test real use of the language.
– In a subjective task the marker needs to use their own judgement to decide if an answer is right or how right it is. Examples of subjective tasks: role-plays, essays, interviews, group discussions, compositions. There are many things to mark in tasks like this: grammar, range of vocabulary, quality of ideas, task achievement, use of register, organisation.
B. Informal assessment
Informal assessment does not use assessment tasks and is rarely used to give the learner a grade, as that is not the purpose of informal assessment. It is also generally less reliable or accurate than formal assessment. Informal assessment can be carried out by the teacher or the learners. A teacher might observe a class doing group work to judge their general level of fluency, or watch them doing project work to see how motivated they are or how well they work together. The teacher might also just focus on how a particular learner is getting on, observing them as they do written work or pairwork in class. Informal assessment of this kind helps the teacher learn about the needs of individual learners.
Informal assessment is often used with young learners, as they may not respond well to formal assessment. Informal assessment is formative, it provides the teacher with feedback that can feed into future teaching or could be used to give advice to learners on how to improve in future.
Learners can also carry out informal assessment, and so become more autonomous. They can assess themselves (self-assessment) or one another (peer assessment). They can do this with checklist to guide them. Informal assessment is often followed up by feedback from the teacher to the learners on the strengths and weaknesses of their performance, and suggestions how to improve.
When a teacher is assessing informally or using formal subjective tests they often use assessment criteria. These are the general features of a skill which can be used as a basis for judging students’ performance. In school tests, the assessment criteria should reflect the focus of what has been taught. Assessment criteria help to make subjective tests less subjective.
Bibliography
• Mary Spratt, Alan Pulverness, Melanie Williams, The Teaching Knowledge Test Course, Second edition, Cambridge University Press, 2011
• Jeremy Harmer, Essential Teacher Knowledge, Pearson Education Limited, 2012
• Jeremy Harmer, The Practice of English Language Teaching, Longman 2007
• Jim Scrivener, Learning Teaching, Second Edition, Macmillan, 2005