ASSESSMENT AND TESTS SHOULDN’T BE …

SCARY
ASSESSMENT AND TESTS SHOULDN’T ….

PROVOKE ANXIETY
ASSESSMENT AND TESTS SHOULD BE….

A POSITIVE AND LEARNING EXPERIENCE

ASSESSMENT AND TESTS SHOULD ….

OFFER CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK TO OUR Ss’

ASSESSMENT AND TESTS SHOULD ….

BUILD STUDENTS CONFIDENCE

 DIFFERENCES
TESTING
 Tests are prepared administrative
procedures that occur at identifiable
times in a curriculum.
 When tested, learners know that their
performance are being measured and
evaluated.
 When tested, learners muster all their
faculties to offer peak performance.
 Tests are a subset of assessment. They are
only one among many procedures and
tasks that teachers can ultimately use to
assess students.
 Tests are usually time-constrained (usually
spanning a class period or at most several
hours) and draw on a limited sample of
behaviour.
ASSESSING
 Assessment is an ongoing process that
encompasses a much wider domain.
 A good teacher never ceases to assess
students, whether those assessments are
incidental or intended.
 Whenever a student responds to a
question, offers a comment, or tries out a
new word or structure, the teacher
subconsciously makes an assessment of
the student’s performance.
 Assessment includes testing.
 Assessment is more extended and it
includes a lot more components.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN ASSESSMENT AND
EVALUATION

We assess learning and we evaluate

results in terms of some set of criteria.
 Testing

Assessment

Teaching
Opportunities for Ss
to practice language
and process teachers
feedback.
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN INFORMAL AND
FORMAL ASSESSMENT
 INFORMAL FORMAL
ASSESSMENT ASSESSMENT
DIFFERENCES BETWEEN FORMATIVE AND
SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT
TEST, ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION
 A test is an instrument used to examine someone's
knowledge of something to determine what he or she
knows or has learned. Testing measures the level of skill or
knowledge that has been reached.
 Evaluation is the process of making judgments based on
criteria and evidence.
 Assessment is the process of documenting knowledge,
skills, attitudes and beliefs, usually in measurable terms.
The goal of assessment is to make improvements, as
opposed to simply being judged. In an educational context,
assessment is the process of describing, collecting,
recording, scoring, and interpreting information about
learning.
 PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE
ASSESSMENT
 There’re five testing criteria for “testing a
test”:
 Practicality
 Reliability
 Validity
 Authenticity
 Washback
PRACTICALITY
A practical test:

 Is not excessively expensive,

 Stays within appropriate time constraints,

 Is relatively easy to administer, and

 Has a scoring-evaluation procedure that is

specific and time efficient.
RELIABILITY
 A reliable test is consistent and dependable.

 The issue of reliability of a test may best be addressed by

considering a number of factors that may contribute to
the unreliability of a test.
 Consider following possibilities: fluctuations in the
student (Student-Related Reliability), in scoring (Rater
Reliability), in test administration (Test Administration
Reliability), and in the test (Test Reliability) itself.
VALIDITY
 Arguably, validity is the most important principle.
The extent to which the assessment requires
students to perform tasks that were included in the
previous classroom lessons, contents you have
taught, skills you want to assess.
AUTHENTICITY
In an authentic test:

 The language is as natural as possible,

 Items are as contextualized as possible,

 Topics and situations are interesting, enjoyable, and/or humorous,

 Some thematic organization, such as through a story line or episode

is provided,

 Tasks represent real-world tasks.

AUTHENTICITY
 Reading passages are selected from real-world sources that test

takers are likely to have encountered or will encounter.

 Listening comprehension sections feature natural language

with hesitations, white noise, and interruptions.

 More and more tests offer items that are “episodic” in that they

are sequenced to form meaningful units, paragraphs, or

stories.
 WASHBACK
 Washback includes the effects of an assessment on
teaching and learning prior to the assessment itself, that
is, on preparation for the assessment. How the Ss’ prepare
for the test.
 Informal performance assessment is by nature more
likely to have built-in washback effects.
 Formal tests provide no washback if the students receive
a simple letter grade or a single overall numerical
score.
WASHBACK
 Classroom tests should serve as learning devices.
 Students’ incorrect responses can become windows of
insight into further work.
 Their correct responses need to be praised.
 Washback enhances a number of basic principles of
language acquisition: intrinsic motivation, autonomy,
self-confidence, language ego, inter-language, and
strategic investment, among others.
WASHBACK
 One way to enhance washback is to comment generously
and specifically on test performance.
 Washback implies that students have ready access to the
teacher to discuss the feedback and evaluation he has
given.
 Teachers can raise the washback potential by asking
students to use test results as a guide to setting goals for
their future effort.
 RECEPTIVE SKILLS

ways in which people

extraxt meaning

the discourse They don’t produce

They receive and
they understand
see hear
READING LISTENING
 PRODUCTIVE SKILLS

ways in which people

produce language
in

Oral Written
form form

SPEAKING WRITING
 LEARNING A NEW LANGUAGE
PROCESS
Learners begin later move onto

Receptive Productive
understanding
use
Wilkins
leads to
Extensive Receptive the productive
exposure skills ones
Wilkins
is required to
Rich Receptive get mastery and
exposure skills proficiency in
natural
production
 HEARING LISTENING
is is

Passive act Perceiving the sounds

that with

involves deliberate intention

the process and

fuction
of

perceiving sound
 THE LISTENING PROCESS

+ important: understand what the speaker says

 vocabulary,
Knowledge grammar
of the Accent /pronunciation
language Tone of voice
intonation

Knowledge
Situation
Knowledge THE Speech
About LISTENING is
the world PROCESS taking place

SCHEMATA

Knowledge
about
the topic
IMPORTANCE OF LISTENING

The most often skills used in receiving information.

Ss acquire vocabulary, grammar and better

pronunciation.

Speaking depends on listening.

The ICT promotes the listening: mobile pones,

earphones, inetrnet downloads, etc

Everywhere in real life we’re involved in listening

actively or attentively.
 Identify main
points(top-down) and Distinguish facts from
supporting details opinions
(buttom-up).
Listening
Active
process
Agree or disagree with a Like or dislike the speaker’s
tone of voice or choice of
speaker.
words.
The listener attitudes, values
Find the speaker’s topic
and interests affect his boring, interesting, morally
interpretation and response. objectionable, etc
STAGES OF THE LISTENING PROCESS

Oral reception: Sounds, words and

sounds enter the Once the meaning has
sentences are checked, been understood, it’s
ear and brain compared and seen in the context, by
organizes them matched with whom … SO REAL
into meaningful information that is MEANING ARRIVES
units stored in our memory
Stages in a listening activity
 Stages in a listening activity
Pre-listening
• Get the student's interest in
what he is about to listen.
• makes the student actively
aware of
information/experiences,
etc. to understand what he
will hear
• help students acquire or
revise the to understand
the listening input.
• gives pupils a purpose for
listening.
While-listening Post-Listening
• Teacher has to be specific
about what students need • Spin-off activities.
to listen for.
• Extend the topic
• SS can listen for selective
details or general content. and help sudents
• SS can listen for an remember bnew
emotional tone such as vocabulary,
happy, surprised or angry.
grammar, etc.
• Tell ahead of time what will
be required afterward.
 Listening activities
l
Pre-listening While-listening Post-listening
• Answering • Matching ideas.
• Informal teacher talk and
class discussion.; multiple-choice • Mixed-up sentence
• Looking at pictures and questions • Write a piece of
talking about them work.
• True false
• Making lists of • Give their opinions
possibilities/suggestions, question
• Reading a related text; • Spotting mistakes. • Look for extra
• Reading through information and
questions students need to
• Identifying words, report it.
answer while listening; structures, etc.
• Predicting outcomes;
• Previewing the language.
 DINNER TIME
http://www.esl-lab.com/cook/cookrd1.htm#top
Micro- and Macroskills of Listening
MicroSkills of Listening

1. Discriminate among the distinctive sounds of English.

2. Retain chunks of language of different lengths in short-
term memory.
3. Recognize English stress patterns, words in stressed and
unstressed positions, rhythmic structure, intonation
contours, and their role in signaling information.
4. Recognize reduced forms of words.
5. Distinguish word boundaries, recognize a core of words,
and interpret word order patterns and their significance.
6. Process speech at different rates of delivery.
MicroSkills of Listening

7. Process speech containing pauses, errors, corrections, and other

performance variables.
8. Recognize grammatical word classes (noun, verbs, etc.) system (e.g.,
tense, agreement, pluralization) patterns, rules and elliptical forms.
9. Detect sentence constituents and distinguish between major and
minor constituents.
10. Recognize that a particular meaning may be expressed in different
grammatical forms.
11. Recognize cohesive devices in spoken discourse.
 Macroskills of Listening
1. Recognize the communicative functions of utterances, according to situations,
participants, goals.

2. Infer situations, participants, goals using real-world knowledge.

3. From events, ideas, and so on, described, predict outcomes, infer links, and
connections between events, deduce causes and effects, and detect such
relations as main idea, supporting idea, new information, given information,
generalization, and exemplification.

4. Distinguish between literal and implied meaning.

5. Use facial, kinetic, body language, and other nonverbal clues to decipher
meanings.

6. Develop and use a battery of listening strategies, such as detecting key words,
guessing the meaning from context, appealing for help, and signaling
comprehension or lack thereof.
 ASSESSING LISTENING
 Listening performance assessment tasks are:

 Intensive: Listening for perception of the components (phonemes, words,

intonation, discourse markers, etc.) of a large stretch of language.

 Responsive: listening to a relatively short stretch of language (a greeting,

question, command, comprehension check, etc.) in order to make an equally
short response.

 Selective: Processing stretches of discourse such as short monologues for

several minutes in order to “scan” for certain information.

 Extensive: Listening to develop a top-down, global understanding of spoken

language. Extensive performance ranges from listening to lengthy lectures to
listening to a conversation and deriving a comprehensive message or purpose.
 What’s a rubric?
It’s a great tool for teachers, because it is a simple way to set
up a grading criteria for assignments
It’s a helpful tool for students as well. A rubric defines in writing
what is expected of the student to get a particular grade on an
assignment.
Heidi Goodrich, a rubrics expert, defines a rubric as "a
scoring tool that lists the criteria for a piece of work

A good rubric also describes levels of quality for each of the criteria.

These levels of performance may be written as different ratings

(e.g., Excellent, Good, Needs Improvement) or as numerical scores
(e.g., 4, 3, 2, 1)
If students use rubrics
regularly to judge their own
Reduce the time teachers
work, they begin to accept
spend grading student work.
more responsibility for the
end product

WHY
RUBRICS?

Parents usually like the

Make it easier for teachers to
rubrics concept once they
explain to students why they
understand it, and they find
got the grade they did and
rubrics useful when helping
what they can do to improve.
with homework
 1. What are the essential learning objectives?

2. List the criteria that will be used in assessing performance

The teacher has to break the activity down into its most basic elements. For example, speech is comprised
of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation/stress/intonation, logical meaning and order, purpose, and in the
case of retelling story, an element of cohesion. For this specific task, you might want to also consider the
accuracy of the retelling, the amount of detail included, number or length of pauses and inappropriate filler
noises, etc

3. Determine the performance levels.

Descriptors :
- In Progress, Basic, Proficient, Advanced
- Poor, fair, good, excellent
- Excellent, satisfactory, and needs improvement
- Unacceptable, Marginal, Meets Expectations, Exceeds Expectations
Numbers (1,2,3,4)
- Beginner, Developing, Acceptable, Exemplary
- Does Not Meet Expectations, Almost Meets Expectations,
Meets Expectations, Exceeds Expectations
- Novice, Developing, Proficient, Expert
- Beginner, Developing, Accomplished, Mastery
4. Write a description for each performance level.

Describe the different levels of performance that match each criterion.

You may want to start with the best and worst levels of quality, and then
fill in the middle levels based on your knowledge of common problems.

5. Give your students the rubric you will be using for a particular task.
Explain it and give some examples of what you expect.

6. Once you have used the rubric to assess your student’s task, feedback your
students using the rubric’s criteria.

7. Evalaute the rubric and make the changes needed.

 STAGES OF THE SPEAKING PROCESS
AUTOMATICITY (pre-fabricated chunks, pause fillers,
vagueness expressions, repeats, discourse markers)

FORMULATION:
ARTICULATION
CONCEPTUALIZATION The intention is
verbalized in mind Involves the use
Internal or external LEXICON
stimuli cause of organs of
GRAMMATICAL
intention ENCODER speech to
PHONOLOGICAL produce sounds
ENCODER

SELF-MONITORING AND REPAIR

 What speakers know?
Linguistic
Sociocultural knowledge
Extralinguistic
knowledge - Discourse knowledge
knowledge
Social values and the - Speech act
- Topic knowledge norms of behaviour in knowledge
- Context knowledge a given society. - Grammar
Familiarity with other For ex. Greetings - Vocabulary
speakers.
- phonology
DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WRITTEN AND SPOKEN
GRAMMAR
 SPEAKING LEARNING
PROCESS

APPROPRIATION
• To be aware of • To develop the
the features of capacity to mobilize
• To integrate these features to
the target these features real-time conditions
language into their and unassisted
existing
AWARENESS
knowledge AUTONOMY
Micro- and Macroskills of Speaking
MicroSkills of Speaking
 Produce differences among English phonemes and
allophonic variants.
 Produce chunks of language of different lengths.
 Produce English stress patterns, words in stressed and
unstressed positions, rhythmic structure, and
intonation features.
 Produce reduced forms of words and phrases.
 Use an adequate number of lexical units (words) to
accomplish pragmatic purposes.
 Produce fluent speech at different rates of delivery.
MicroSkills of Listening
 Monitor one’s own oral production and use various
strategic devices- pauses, fillers, self-corrections,
backtracking- to enhance the clarity of the message.
 Use grammatical word classes (nouns, verbs, etc), systems,
(e.g. tense agreement, pluralization), word order, patterns,
rules, and elliptical forms.
 Produce speech in natural constituents: in appropriate
phrases, pause groups, breath groups, and sentence
constituents.
 Express a particular meaning in different grammatical
forms.
 Use cohesive devices in spoken discourse.
 Macroskills of Listening
 Appropriately accomplish communicative functions
according to situations, participants, and goals.
 Use appropriate styles, registers, implicature, redundancies,
pragmatic conventions, conversation rules, floor-keeping and –
yielding, interrupting, and other sociolinguistic features in face-to-
face conversations.
 Convey links and connections between events and communicative
such relations as focal and peripherical ideas, events and feelings,
new information and given information, generalization and
exemplification.
 Convey facial features, kinesics, body language, and other
nonverbal cues along with verbal language.
 Develop and use a battery of speaking strategies, such as
emphasizing key words, rephrasing, providing a context for
interpreting the meaning of words, appealing for help, and
accurately assessing how well your interlocutor is understanding
you.
 ASSESSING SPEAKING
Speaking performance assessment tasks are:

 Imitative: the ability to simply parrot back (imitate) a word or

phrase or possibly a sentence. We are interested only in what is
traditionally labeled “pronunciation”
 Intensive: is the production of short sentences or oral language
designed to demonstrate competence in a narrow band of grammatical,
phrasal, lexical, or phonological relationships
 Responsive: includes interaction and test comprehension but at
the somewhat limited level of very short conversations, standard
greetings, and small talk, simple requests and comments, and the like.
 Interactive: the difference between responsive and interactive
speaking is the length and complexity of the interaction, which
sometimes includes multiple exchanges and/or multiple
participants. Interaction can take two forms of transactional
language, which has the purpose of exchanging specific information; or
interpersonal exchanges, which have the purpose of maintaining
social relationships.
 Extensive (monologue): includes speeches, oral presentations, and
storytelling.