Language Assessment: Types, Methods, and Best Practices

Language Assessment: Methods and Practices

Test: A method that measures understanding in a given domain. It is an instrument (set of techniques and procedures), structured, and offers a result. It can measure general or specific ability levels and occurs at an identifiable time in a curriculum.

Assessment: Encompasses a wider domain than tests. It can happen at any time, for example, when students are talking and the teacher corrects them. Students have the opportunity to use the language before a test.

Informal Assessment

Incidental, unplanned comments and responses like “Good job.” It is subconscious.

Formative Assessment

Forms competences and skills with the goal of helping students grow with appropriate feedback.

Summative Assessment

Summarizes what a student has learned, typically at the end of a unit, and includes a mark.

Norm-Referenced Tests

The score of the students is interpreted in a rank order, like PSU and TOEFL.

Criterion-Referenced Test

Gives feedback in the form of grades on specific course or lesson objectives, like classroom tests.

Discrete Point Tests

Deals with the isolated features of language, based on the assumption that language can be broken down into its component parts (4 skills) and those parts can be tested, along with phonology, lexis, morphology (discrete points), etc.

Integrative Tests

Gives a variety of contexts and measures overall proficiency. Examples include:

  • Cloze texts: Reading passage with fill-in-the-blanks.
  • Dictation: Taps into grammatical and discourse competences.

Communicative Language Testing

Quest for authenticity, centered on communicative performance. Language testing needs a correspondence between language test performance and language in use, using real-world tasks that learners are called to perform.

Performance-Based Assessment

Focused on written and oral production, using interactive tasks where students are assessed while they perform real tasks. It is student-centered and involves oral production, written open-ended responses, and integrated performance.

Traditional Assessment

Decontextualized type of assessment, standardized exams, timed, oriented to product, non-integrative performance.

Alternative Assessment

Continuous long-term assessment, contextualized communicative tasks, criterion-referenced scores, oriented to process, integrative performance.

Computer-Based Testing

Test takers perform responses on a computer, available on websites like TOEFL.

Informal Assessment (Continued)

Collection of information about students’ performance in a classroom without establishing test conditions. Done over a period of time, like an academic year, it needs systematic observation and is continuous assessment. Use clear criteria (don’t rely just on impressions, know what is a pass or fail), give feedback which can cause problems in formal assessment. It keeps track of students’ performance, sets priorities in what to assess, is NOT a replacement of formal assessment, can’t be done in isolation, and is not a way to avoid tests.

Assessing Speaking

Give points to students when they perform well, done by assessing oral performance in class. Agree with colleagues on criteria to assess and use band scales.

Assessing Writing

Try to do it in groups because it is time-consuming.

Analytic Scales

Different descriptors per band scale. It separates aspects like grammar and vocabulary, which can be one aspect, and give a score of 1, 2, 3, or 4.

Holistic Scales

General descriptions of the aspects to be evaluated (generally constructs correct grammar sentences).

Use Correction Codes

Examples: V (vocabulary), SP (spelling).

Assessing Listening

Recycle (summarize) what students have heard, discuss that, then assess. Give impression marks and then collect those impressions. Ask students to raise hands while giving answers to see how many have it correct.

Assessing Reading

Use rating scales and overall marks by getting an impression of what they understood of a text. Collect answers from the reading and have one-to-one conversations about something students have read.

Assessing Grammar and Vocabulary

Assess by listening to a student’s conversation and see common mistakes, and do class quizzes.

Non-Linguistic Factors

  1. Impression marks
  2. Scales
  3. Collect notebooks

Develops attitudes to language, cultures, and people. Encourages personal effort, for example, have a record of attendance and participation in class.

Attitude

Write profiles of students, for example, “Student A looks like a passive learner.”

Group Work

Important ability. Assess by having criteria like identifying if a student has difficulty working in groups, for example, role play, games.

Organization of Work

Set criteria for whether a student is able/unable to plan work. Take into account their notebook.

Independence

Students must be able to use dictionaries.

Formal Assessment

Washback Effects

We can provoke a positive or negative influence in students because of tests. Tell students what and when we are going to assess them. Exams are at the end of a term or year, which brings stress to teachers and students. Avoid this by balancing formal with informal assessment. What to test depends on our priorities; we can’t test everything.

When Writing a Test

  1. Avoid confusion and ambiguity.
  2. First, do the test yourself.
  3. Second, ask a colleague to do it.
  4. Agree with a colleague to do the test together or separately.
  5. Focus on instructions.
  6. Use rubrics (tell students exactly what to do).
  7. Content (reflect what students have been doing in class).

Progress Tests

Done during a course, for example, after 4 units. It gives an idea of how students are getting on at the moment. It can provide important feedback and allows us to know if students are reaching the class objectives.

Summative Tests

Done at the end of a course to see if students achieved the objectives in the syllabus.

Entry/Placement Test

Indicates at which level a student will learn more effectively, to produce homogeneous groups.

Diagnostic Test

Aim: find out problem areas. This test is based on failure and elicits errors.

Proficiency Tests

Aim: describe what students are capable of doing in a foreign language. It’s proof of a student’s ability in a language.

Planning Assessment Programs

Assess students systematically with a clear assessment program at the beginning of the year. Take into account syllabus objectives and make a program, think of what we are going to test and when with suitable test formats, and finally think about the results.

Assessment Task

The correction is during a term, gives an accurate picture of students’ ability, and is diagnostic data.

Test Formats

Must be valid (test what students want them to, integrative and open-ended test like stories it involves communication and interaction), practical (mustn’t take too long), and reliable (consistent measure of students’ performance, discrete points for this formats with short answers). The test should reflect what we do in class.

Administering Tests

While giving a test, reduce tension, test students’ performance individually, be aware of photocopies, separate the class, tell how much time they have to do the test, have enough copies, and check everything before.

Marking Tests

Time-consuming.

Objective Tests

Can be graded by anyone.

Subjective Tests

Based on opinions, judgment about a student’s performance.

Scales

  • Analytic: Breaks down activities into separate scales.
  • Holistic: Have descriptions of all activities within one level.

Results (Grades)

Norm-Referenced

Puts students in a scale depending on their mark (they are at the bottom of the scale if they got a bad mark).

Criterion-Referenced

More suitable, makes the decision about what is a pass or fail before the results.

Integration of 4 Skills

Segregated Skills

Mastery of discrete language skills, typically separated from meaning, non-communicative.

Integrated Skills

Use of authentic language and real-world tasks with natural interaction.

Two Ways:
  • Content-Based Learning: Emphasizes learning content through the language; the language is the medium to get to the content of interest.
  • TBL (Task-Based Learning).

Integration (Continued)

Students are given meaningful tasks, one skill reinforces another, and in the real world, we use 4 skills.

Theme-Based Learning

The course is structured around a theme or topic of interest (public health, environment).

Experiential Learning

Students experience to discover language principles by trial and error.