UNIT 18 ASSESSMENT TYPES AND TASKS

ASSESSMENT TYPES AND TASKS

Assessing students is kind of difficult because teachers need to judge or grade learners performance in a qualitative or quantitative way. Moreover, for evaluating students there are two types of assessing formal and informal. Formal assessing is when students are evaluated through exams or when teachers give them a quantitative grade. In addition, there are plenty exams to take into consideration for assessing such as Diagnostic test (taken at the beginning of a course to identify what learners know or do not know about the language), Placement test (taken to students to identify the level learners should go in), Progress test (taken at the end of a unit to check how well pupils have learned the content.). Achievement test (taken at the end of a course to check if they have learned the contents of the whole course).All these types of assessing include different questions which can be objective and subjective. What´s more, there are other formal assessments that are not exams like Portfolios which is a collection of all the written work, projects, recordings, videos, etc. developed during the whole course. This type of assessing is done with the idea of reflecting what students did right; wrong and how will they improve their work next time.

In the language teaching classroom assessing is not as easy as other may think that is why some teachers who have a big number of students just use formal assessment; testing learners with objective questions;  it is easy to grade, but sometimes it does not show critical thinking on students answers. Meanwhile, it is not the only way to evaluate leaners subjectively. Nowadays teachers are using portfolios to assess students because it is suitable to show evidences of learners’ summative work in which they can reflect on the content of their portfolio. To sum up, teachers may use tests with objective questions in order to grade fast and portfolios to have a critical analysis of their own work. 

For more information check on the following sources:

• App.griffith.edu.au,. (2014). Assessment Matters. Retrieved 6 December 2014, from http://app.griffith.edu.au/assessment-matters/docs/assessment-methods/tasks
• Rand.org,. (2014). Retrieved 6 December 2014, from http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monog
• Uts.edu.au,. (2014). Types of assessment | University of Technology, Sydney. Retrieved 6 December 2014, from http://www.uts.edu.au/research-and-teaching/teaching-and-learning/assessment/types-assessment
• Brown, J., & Hudson, T. (1998). The Alternatives in Language Assessment. TESOL Quarterly, 32(4), 653. doi:10.2307/3587999
• Education.qld.gov.au,. (2014). Assessment. Retrieved 6 December 2014, from http://education.qld.gov.au/staff/learning/diversit
• Faculty.mu.edu.sa,. (2014). Retrieved 6 December 2014, from http://faculty.mu.edu.sa/public/uploads/1384813388.793471132662-Language-Testing-amp-Assessment.pdf