Language assessment

Language assessment has a distinct place in the field of foreign language teaching and learning. This is so because only through assessment can teachers determine student’s language ability, measure how successful their teaching process is, and gain feedback on the teaching-learning process. In addition, they can also reflect and improve professionally and pedagogically so that continuous improvement on the part of teachers can be expected to take place.

However, assessing students language is not an easy task to do. There are a number of factors that need to be considered in order to make an effective assessment. In classroom practices, English teachers often encounter difficulties when doing this particular part of their duties. These kinds of difficulties often met by teachers vary in nature, but in large portion, these difficulties stem from teachers’ lack of knowledge and skills on how to assess students competence. With that in mind, this material is designed to help teachers gain insights and practical knowledge on how to effectively assess students language ability in four English skills. It is expected that by having sufficient knowledge and understanding of what constitutes effective assessment, teachers can perform better in their profession and, in turn, will produce a better quality of vocational school graduates in terms of their English competence.

2. Assessment, Evaluation, and Test.

· What is an assessment?

Assessment is basically ways of gathering information about people’s language ability. It is useful here to make a clear difference between formative and summative assessment. Assessment is formative when teachers use it to check on the progress of their students, to see how far they have mastered what they should have learned, and then use this information to modify their future teaching plans. Such an assessment can also be the basis for feedback to the students. Informal tests or quizzes may have a part to play in formative assessment but so will simple observation (or performance on learning tasks, for example) and the study of portfolios that students have made of their work. Students themselves may be encouraged to carry out self- assessment in order to monitor their progress, and then modify their own learning objectives.

Summative assessment is used at, say, at the end of the term, semester, or year in order to measure what has been achieved both by groups and by individuals. Here formal tests are usually called for. However, the results of such tests should not be looked at isolation. A complete view of has been achieved should include information from as many sources as possible. In an ideal world, the different pieces of information from all resources, including formal tests, should be consistent with each other. If they are not, the possible source of these discrepancies needs to be investigated.

· What is evaluation?

It is important to note that some scholars mark clear differences in their definitions of the terms ‘assessment’ and ‘evaluation’. Airasian defines assessment as a general term which includes all the ways information is gathered– whereas he believes that evaluation involves making judgments (concerning what is desirable) based on that gathered material. On the other hand, Bachman regards both terms as essentially synonymous – although he favors evaluation when given a choice between the two.

· What is testing?

Testing is just one form of assessment. These are types of common test based on the purposes

Achievement test A test showing how well students have learned the section of a course that has just been taught. Such a test may be called a 'progress test' or an 'attainment test'. A summative test is a form of achievement test. C.f. formative test.  

Aptitude test A test showing how well a student is likely to learn a particular skill. A language aptitude test may contain, for example, subtests of memory, inductive ability, and grammatical understanding.  

Diagnostic test A test which diagnoses a student's linguistic strengths and weaknesses. For example, a diagnostic test might reveal that a student has trouble using articles.  

Performance test A form of assessment, for example, an essay or an oral interview, which usually tests a candidate's productive rather than receptive skills.  

Placement test A test which assigns to the candidate a level so that he or she can be placed in a particular class  

Proficiency test A test of the current language level of the candidate. It is distinguished from an achievement test by the fact that its candidates may come from a range of different language backgrounds and may have acquired their foreign language in many different ways.  

Subjective test The opposite of an objective test. This test type must be marked subjectively. Most writing and speaking tests are subjectively marked, and so are many dictations and translations. Subjective tests are often marked by raters using 'analytic' or 'holistic' marking scales.  

Objective test A test in which the answers have already been decided so that the candidate's answers can be compared to an answer key. Examples of objective test items are multiple-choice and short answer questions. Such tests are often easily marked by a computer.

3. Principles of Assessment

3.1. Validity

'Validity' is an all-encompassing term which is related to questions about what the test is actually assessing. Is the test telling you what you want to know? Does it measure what it is intended to measure? A test is not valid, for example, if it is intended to test a student's level of reading comprehension in a foreign language but instead tests intelligence or background knowledge.

There are different views on the best ways of assessing validity, but there are some key aspects, and it is good practice to investigate as many of these as possible:

·

Construct validity

The term 'construct validity' refers to the overall construct or trait being measured. It is an inclusive term which, according to some testing practitioners, covers all aspects of validity, and is, therefore, a synonym for 'validity'. If a test is supposed to be testing the construct of listening, it should indeed be testing listening, rather than reading, writing and/or memory. To assess construct validity the test constructor can use a combination of internal and external quantitative and qualitative methods. An example of a qualitative validation technique would be for the test constructors to ask test-takers to introspect while they take a test, and to say what they are doing as they do it, so that the test constructors can learn about what the test items are testing, as well as whether the instructions are clear, and so on.

Construct validation also relates to the test method, so it is often felt that the test should follow current pedagogical theories. If the current theory of language teaching emphasizes a communicative approach, for example, a test containing only out-of-context, single-sentence, multiple-choice items, which test only one linguistic point at a time, is unlikely to be considered to have construct validity.

·

Content validity

The content validity of a test is sometimes checked by subject specialists who compare test items with the test specifications to see whether the items are actually testing what they are supposed to be testing and whether the items are testing what the designers say they are. In the case of a classroom quiz, of course, there will be no test specifications, and the deviser of the quiz may simply need to check the teaching syllabus or the course textbook to see whether each item is appropriate for that quiz.

One of the advantages of even the most rudimentary content validation is that it identifies those items which are easy to test but which add nothing to our knowledge of what the students know; it is tempting for a test writer to write easy-to-test items, and to ignore essential aspects of a foreign language, for example, because they are difficult to assess.

·

Face validity

Face validity is an important aspect of a test; it relates to the question of whether non-professional testers such as parents and students think the test is appropriate. If these non-specialists do not think the test is testing candidates' knowledge in a suitable manner, they may, for example, complain vociferously and the candidates may not tackle the test with the required zeal.

·

Criterion-related validity

The aspects of test validity described so far relate to the 'internal' validity of the test, but some methods and these are widely used for 'high-stakes' tests, also assess the 'external', 'criterion-related' validity of a test. To assess criterion-related validity, the students' test scores may, for example, be correlated with other measures of the students' language ability such as teachers' rankings of the students, or with the scores on a similar test. Such measures assess the concurrent validity of the measure. Similarly, the future ability of the students can be assessed (the test's predictive validity) to see if the test can accurately foretell how the candidates will fare in the future.

3.2. Reliability

The reliability of a test is an estimate of the consistency of its marks; a reliable test is one where, for example, a student will get the same mark if he or she takes the test, possibly with a different examiner, on a Monday morning or a Tuesday afternoon. A test must be reliable, as a test cannot be valid unless it is reliable. However, the converse is not true: it is perfectly possible to have a reliable test which is not valid. For example, a multiple-choice test of grammatical structures may be wonderfully reliable, but it is not valid if teachers are not interested in the grammatical abilities of their students and/or if the grammar is not taught in the related language course.

4.  Washback

Any language test or piece of assessment must have positive washback (backwash), by which I mean that the effect of the test on the teaching must be beneficial. This should be held in mind by the test constructors; it is only too easy to construct a test which leads, for example, to candidates learning the material by heart or achieving high marks by simply applying test-taking skills rather than genuine language skills.

4. Alternative/Authentic Assessment

The alternative assessment has been described as an alternative to standardized testing and all of the problems found with such testing. The main goal of alternative assessment is to gather evidence about how students are approaching, processing, and completing ‘real-life’ tasks in a particular domain. The advantages are it (a) does not intrude on regular classroom activities; (b) reflects the curriculum that is actually being implemented in the classroom; (c) provides information on the strengths and weaknesses of each individual student; (d) provides multiple indices that can be used to gauge student progress; and (e) is more multiculturally sensitive and free of norm, linguistic, and cultural biases found in traditional testing.

Principles of Authentic Assessment

Assessment is a part of classroom learning and instruction, not apart from it

Assessment mirrors “real” world, not school work kinds of problems

Uses multiple measures/methods/criteria

Comprehensive and holistic

PORTFOLIO

A portfolio is a collection of student work which shows the students efforts, progress and in a subject. Others define it as a cumulative and ongoing collection of entries that are selected and commented on by the student, the teacher and/or peers, to assess the student's progress in the development of competency.

Portfolios encourage active student involvement and invite students to apply known principles and generalizations to new problems and situations; to think creatively; to gain skills in using materials, tools, and technology germane to the subject; and to prepare for transfer, graduate school, or employment. They also commit students to personal achievement (empowerment) and encourage them to develop realistic self-evaluative skills. Finally, the portfolios illustrate the students' depth of knowledge and skills.

The followings are characteristic of the use of portfolio:

· Collaboration is common;

· Students revisit and revise their work;

· Students and teachers reflect on the work of individuals and the class as a whole;

· Students understand and use explicit standards for judging the quality of their own and others' work;

Students take pride in their work, polishing it for performance, publication, and exhibition.

4. 1 Learning with portfolios

Depending on the objectives of a particular portfolio three areas of learning can be identified:

· Skills

· (Applied) Knowledge

· Attitudes or behavioral changes

Some of the transferable skills acquired in the production of a portfolio are a presentation, including word processing, power point, and other IT skills, structuring a portfolio; documentation, which may involve digitization of media for digital portfolios; and the selection or evaluation skills. Knowledge is acquired in the various stages of reflection in choosing items for inclusion in a portfolio, reflecting on and responding to peer feedback and on the learning process as a whole. Finally, attitudes and behavior can be changed by increasing the learners' awareness of how they learn, their weaknesses and strengths as well as developing their ability to work collaboratively. However, the ability to change attitudes may depend on the educational or institutional culture the learners are accustomed to and which may conflict with the learning strategies necessary for portfolio assessments

For portfolios meet the goals of literacy assessment, they must be developed as follows:

· Teachers and students both add materials to the portfolios

· Students are viewed as the owners of the portfolios.

· Conferencing between the students and teachers is needed.

· Conference notes and reflections of both the teacher and the student are kept in the portfolio

· Portfolios need to reflect a wide range of student work

· Samples of the student’s reading and writing activities are collected in the portfolios, including unfinished projects

Here are suggestions on how to use portfolio.

1. Do be positive and let students know what they have achieved

2. Do draw student’s attention to specific techniques, skills or strategies they have used in their work and the result of using them

3. Do draw student’s attention to what could be better and how

4. Do pay attention to what the students about any problems or concerns they may have in making progress and suggest possible solutions

5. Do pay attention to and discuss both the process and the product

6. Do encourage them at all times

7. Do keep a record of your conferences with each student for future reference

8. Do make sure that the goals and objectives set by you (and the student) are realistic and achievable in terms of students ability, interest and time

Protocol analysis

Protocol analysis is also known as the composing aloud protocol or a think-aloud activity. In this approach, students are asked to record every thought that comes to mind during the writing process. The transcripts are analyzed and used as one of the instruments for assessing students writing. The teacher should first act as a model. She should show the class how to proceed by making the class listen to a tape-recorded model of her own protocol analysis procedure, or by doing actual protocol analysis in the classroom with students listening and observing. Through this technique, a teacher can tell how students write, the strategies they use to generate ideas, how often they revise and edit their work, and whether their written work has improved.

Learning Log

In a learning log, students write on the knowledge they have gained from studying in their writing classes, and from their own thinking. A teacher need not grade learning logs but can access how much a student has gained or benefited from the writing class. These learning log help teachers see what their students are learning, particularly in the wiring class, and in the language class as a whole.