What is ASSESSMENT?

•It is an estimation.
•It is how we measure the students’ performance.
•It measures progress
•Diagnoses problems for useful feedback.
•It is the most useful data on what is happening in a
learning environment.
What is Evaluation?
Itinvolves all the factors that influence
the learning process.
Aims of the syllabus
The Course design.
Materials.
Methodology.
Teacher’s performance and assessment.
Problems and Prejudices
Assessment
Teachers to students.
Obligatory.
Separation learning and teaching and
assessment. Because of lack of effective
feedback.
Type of feedback.
Real help is not given.
What is tested.
Importance to only one skill.
Exams are given at the end.
Doesn’t encourage what has been learnt
rather than what hasn’t.
Students are not taken into consideration.
TYPES OF ASSESSMENTS
Formal Assessment (Official Exams)
Informal assessment.
Self assessment.
When should we assess?
Needs to be continuously.
Informal assessment shlould be done
every lesson.
More in-depth assessment (Formal)
should be periodically.
Self-assessment needs to be done at
regural intervals, so the Ss know what are
their strength and weaknesses.
Who should assess?
Traditionally, the teachers job. Formal
assessment should only be done by the
teacher. Ask the Ss to participate in the
process.
Self assessments help the Ss think for
themselves and doesn’t diminishes the
role of the teacher.
How should we assess?
Must be done constructively.
Should demostrate what they know.
Must be reliable. Under the same conditions and
the same performance the Ss should give a
similar result.
Establish criteria and clear procedures. It would
be bias for some Ss.
Ensure what you are assessing.
Economical
Accountable: be able to report.
INFORMAL ASSESSMENT
It is a way of collecting information about
our students’ performance in normal
classroom conditions.
THE HOW
We need to work out what we are going to
assess.
We must establish clear criteria for
assessing Ss. Don’t rely on impressions.
Link the assessments.
Informal assessment is not:
Replacement.
A way to avoid tests.
A form of evaluation without criteria.
A single system
Isolated
When and What to assess?
Traditionally, we tend to think of this type
of assessment as consisting solely of
MARKING AN ESSAY done for
homework or the teacher walking around
the during an activity to get a vague idea
of whether they are doing alright or not.
In the classroom is where we can get the
most data and we can monitor the four
skills.
When and What to assess?
STEPS
How much we are going to assess?
Time is limited
Weighting (Which areas are the most
important)
Establish clear weighting
How much informal assessment
compared to Formal assessment?
Informal assessment of linguistic factors?
Normally written assignments.

Problems
We omit other skills and areas.
We mark through impression
Not a clear idea of what is being assess.
At the end we tend to make judgements in terms of
impression.
It Is very important to make an effort to assess oral
skills.
Informal assessment of linguistic factors
Assessment criteria can be described in
terms of what we expect our students to
be able to do.
An alternative is to create a band (e.g. 0
to 5)
The more bands we have the more
delicate and descriptive the system will
be.
SPEAKING
Informal assessment is particulary important
for speaking as many teachers have practical
difficulties in organizing oral tests.
Informal assessment of speaking can have
an important effect on learners.
Informal assessment of speaking is done by
observing students’ oral performance in
class, by monitoring speaking activities as
they happen.
SPEAKING
With time and effort you will become a
whole working unit.
Give students points based on pre-difined
criteria. (systemize)
Unreliability and inaccuracy should be
considered.
Distorted idea do to large classes.
Monitored students (harder or worse)
SPEAKING
Possible solutions for unreliability and
inaccuracy
Produce a system that is objective and
reliable.
Create a band (reliable)
Establish our own criteria.
Work with collegues on a standard
criteria.
SPEAKING
ORAL ASSESSMENT CRITERIA
5 Speaks fluently-almost no errors
4 Speaks quite fluently-some errors
3 Some difficulty speaking-many errors.
2 Difficulty with speaking-almost
incomprehensible.
1 Unable to use language-incomprehensible
SPEAKING
Fluency
Message
Accuracy
Pronunciation
SPEAKING
HOW TO ASSESS SPEAKING
Assess Ss at a particular time.
Assess over a few lessons.
Prepare a series of speaking tasks.
Divide the Ss.
Type of tasks:
Pair work, interviews, group surveys,
roleplays, information gap activities,
expositions
SPEAKING
When should informal assessment of
speaking be carried out?

Depends on time
Frequency of reports
WRITING
Assessing our student’s written work can be very
time consuming and unless you are careful you
can find yourself with many hours of marking.
We need to decide how many and what sort of
compositions we are going to assess.
The importance should be reflected on your
syllabus plan.
How the writing will be done.
Feedback
Link between writing and self-assessment is vital.
WRITING
Crucial factors:
Must be reliable
Avoid grading from your head
Establish criteria
WRITING
Writing Criteria
5 Excellent writer
6 Good Writer
7 Modest Writer
8 Marginal writer
9 Poor writer
Comprehensibility, Accuracy, Spelling,
Organization
WRITING
HOLISTIC SCALES
General Overall Descriptions

ANALYTIC SCALES
Separated aspects of abilities
WRITING
MARKING
Analytic or Holistic Scales
Focus on a couple of aspects
Clear criteria for self assessment.
De-motivation
Correction code
Complement with formal assessment.
WRITING
CORRECTION CODE
S-spelling
P-pronunciation
WO-word order
V-vocabulary

Involve the Ss.

LISTENING
We normally develop listening skils in the
classroom in lockstep fashion.
On text at the same time.
Fill in information
Ordering
True or false
LISTENING
We can monitor and assess students’
listening proficiency while monitoring
activities such as pair work activities or
reactions from instructions from you.
Extralinguistic clues can often be a basis
on which to assess a student’s listening
proficiency.
LISTENING
MARKING
 Body Language (usually unreliable)
Answers one by one (least threating)
Recycle what they have heard
Summerizing
Recorded texts as basis for a speaking
activity
Monitoring speaking tasks
READING
HOW DO WE ASSESS READING?
Skimming
Scanning
Readingfor gist
Answering “comprehensive questions”
Answering multiple choice questions
READING
How can we assess reading?
Monitoring
Asking opinions about the topic
Being neutral
Discussion of the reading
Translation (Low levels/High levels)
Student’s own tasks
Drawing
Cloze text
READING
Something to take into consideration
Subject knowledge
Reading Styles
Reading Speed
Interets
Abilities
READING
In mixed abilities classes it can be
interesting to assess individual reading.
If available at a library
A mini library
Graded-readers
One-to-one conversations
Reading records
Reading
Reading record from page 18
Monitor
Assess understanding
Assess Opinion
In some cases could be combined with
written assessment
READING
Grading criteria should reflect what they
have been reading.
Bands
Yes and No
GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY
Nomarlly assess by periodically progress
tests.
Other formal instruments
Homework
GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY
How to assess grammar and vocabulary.
Present the structure and assess
understanding and ability to use it.
* not immidiately
CONTROL PRACTICE ACTIVITIES
Extra activities when necessary
Free writing and speaking activities
Focus only on language
GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY
Informal Practices of speaking
Prepare for formal tests
Pop quizes
Short language test throughout the term
Weekly,Bi-weekly, etc..
NON-LINGUISTIC FACTORS
Overall educational development
The ability to take responsibility for and
organize their knowledge
Not only language is important
Clear criteria
NON-LINGUISTIC FACTORS
Attitude
Group work
Organization of work
independence
RESULTS FROM INFORMAL
ASSESSMENTS
Once we have implemented our informal
assessment program we will have results in
the form of information about our Ss.
In order to use these results they will need to
be recorded against each students name so it
could be accessible to the students, the
institution and the teacher.
As one part of an overall assessment
program, the results could be compared to the
other types of assessments.
What to do
In any case, information about students
should be looked at in each individual
case and should at all times feedback into
the teaching-learning process.
As language teachers we are concerned
with linguistic aspects of our Ss’
performance and competence not
forgetting the non-linguistic factors
WHAT TO DO
Our job as teachers must be to assess and
through our assessment maximize the
learning potential of our Ss in all aspects
of their learning experience.
It should not be forgotten that we are not
solely concerned with language but in
education in the broadest sense of the
word.
Types of Test
Placement tests
Diagnostic tests
Progress and achievement tests
Proficiency tests
CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD
TEST
Validity
Reliability
Efficiency
Economy
TYPE OF TEST ITEMS
Whatever the purpose a test or exam has,
a major factor in the success or failure as
a good measuring instrument will be
determined by the types of items it
contains.
TYPE OF ITEMS
Direct and indirect items
DIRECT: a test item that asks candidates
to perform the communication skill which
is being tested. It tries to be as much like
real-life language use as possible.
TYPES OF TEST ITEMS
INDIRECT ITEMS: Measures the
student’s knowledge and ability by
getting at what lies beneath their receptive
and productive skills, it tries to find out
students’ knowledge through more
controlled items, like Multiple Choice
Questions or Grammar Transformation
items.
DISCRETE POINT
To test one thing at a time.

Example: Correct verb completion.

INTEGRATIVE TESTING
These test items expect students to use a
variety of language at any one given time.

Example: Written compositions or oral

exams.
INDIRECT ITEMS
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS
A traditional vocabulary multiple choice
questions look like this:
MCQ’s
Very popular
Easy to mark

Problems
Extremely to be written effectively
Distractors
Best answer
CLOZE PROCEDURE
 Deforestation used to be something that few people apart from
environmentalists talked about, but in the last twenty years or so, it has
received increasing (1)___________ from governments and the media, and
is now generally considered one of the world’s most serious environmental
problems.
There is (2)___________ about how much forest has been disappearing,
but few people doubt there is much less forest now than there was, say,
fifty years ago.
Deforestation leads to the extinction of many (3)___________of forest
animals and the erosion of soil after trees have been removed, but the
(4)___________of deforestation that we hear most about is its contribution
to global warming. Trees naturally absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) from the
Earth’s atmosphere, so (5)___________ trees means higher levels of CO2,
which contributes to the atmosphere becoming warmer. Many scientists
estimate that about 20% of global warming is due to (6)___________.
CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT
 WHAT IS CLASSROOM
MANAGEMENT?
It is giving the opportunity to the students
to