Assessing Young Learners.                            Let's have fun while doing so!

Learning a foreign language must be a process that students enjoy, so they will find themselves learning in an enchanting environment full of new interesting things to be discovered. However, it is also important to take into consideration that every process of learning includes a process of assessment. I say this because I consider that is really important to have evidence of stuent learning during class as well as through assignments and exams. I also believe that teachers should find the way to set activities that engage students and at the same time provide the evidence we need. 

It is true that most of the times the word "assessment" implies stress and therefore no fun while learning. We, as teachers, have the task of changing this statement. I personally believe that fun is a vital aspect while teaching children. While surfing on the internet, I found this interesting rubric to assess our students' attitude towards learning. Let's try to use it!

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         TYPES OF READING ANALYSED BY THE PRINCIPLES OF ASSESSMENT

Mayra Peña
Yuly Andrea Gamboa
Silvia Galán
Jorge Torres

1. SELECTIVE READING:  Tasks are similar to the ones in perceptive reading, but here language is more complex.It is commonly used to test vocabulary and grammar.

Some activities: Multiple choice, matching, editing, picture cued and gap-filling tasks.

PRACTICABILITY: Tasks like multiple choice, matching and picture- cued tasks are easy to score and administer. More open tasks like sentence completion, which do not provide any options,become harder to grade due to the variety of creative responses.

VALIDITY: Tasks are often familiar for the test-takers. Instructions and items are clear. There’s low validity in isolating reading performance since writing can be required in tasks like gap-filling.

AUTHENTICITY: These tasks (multiple choice, picture-cued tasks) often have a story line (short dialogue or sentence) which provideslittle context within each item. Most of the time the topics are not of students’ interest, thus, they are not quite meaningful for them.Tasks like editingsentences are based on real world skills like proof-reading.

RELIABILITY: Most of the tasks do not give way to subjectivity from the teacher, due to the limited range of possible answers. If tasks are more open like grammatically editing sentences, scoring tends to be more subjective(rater reliability).Test-administration reliability is optimum.

WASHBACK:Washback can be given mainly from the teachet, and go further than simply providing scores. Washback becomes necessary with more open tasks like editing and gap-filling, so students can have the chance to know the reasons for their scores. Feedback in this skill can be written.

2. PERCEPTIVE READING

PRACTICABILITY: Tests are practical because they stay within appropriate time constraints

It is relatively easy to administer, for instance tests of multiple choice (minimal pair distinction)

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a  AUTHENTICIY: The tests are isolated rather than contextualized, for example in READING ALOUD- the test taker sees separate letters, wordsand/or short sentences and reads them aloud, one by one, in the presence of an administrator.- any recognizable oral approximation of the target response is considered correct. However topics are not meaningful. There is strong focus on the form rather than the meaning. Bottom-up processing is implied.

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v  VALIDITY: Perception is often referred to as literacy tasks, the tests are valid because the objectives taught are the objectives tested. In these kinds of tests teachers are trying to evaluate recognition of alphabetic symbols, punctuation, word, etc.

      

      RELIABILITY:  In the test administration instructions are clear.

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      WASHBACK:  At the beginning level of reading a secondlanguage lays a set of tasks that are fundamentaland basic: recognition of alphabetic symbols,capitalized and lowercase letters, punctuation,words and grapheme-phoneme correspondences. There are literacy tasks: implying that learner isin the early stages of becoming “literate”. Then here we have a positive washback because teacher is measuring what he/she has to.

3. INTERACTIVE READING:  is a combination of form-focused and meaning focused where there is more emphasis on meaning and top-down processing is used.

·         Cloze procedures: are integrative measure of reading and other language abilities; imply the ability to fill in the gaps an incomplete image (visual, auditory or cognitive) and supply (from background schemata) the omitted details. They offer validity, practicality and reliability.

·         Impromptu reading plus comprehension questions: the questions used in these tasks derive from research on a variety of abilities good readers have. They can offer practicality, validity, authenticity.

·         Short-answer tasks:  they are very difficult to construct. They have no practicality, content validity or authenticity but they offer face validity and washback effects.

·         Editing: paragraphs presented with an error. They offer authenticity (contextualized topics and meaningful for learners), content validity (connected to specific curriculum) and validity (content and face).

·         Scanning: used by every learner to find relevant information in a text. Offers practicality and maybe authenticity.

·         Ordering tasks: little strips of paper with sentences on them, students have to assemble them. They offer authenticity and washback effects but no reliability or practicality since there may be more than one right answer.

·         Information transfer: ability that educated people must have, to convert nonverbal input into comprehensible intake requires understanding of graphics and verbal conventions of the medium as well as the linguistic ability to interpret the information to someone else, giving directions, ordering, and conveying understanding. It can provide washback effects since students might have to use previous knowledge or may learn from information presented in the graphics, also, authenticity (real,interesting).

4. EXTENSIVE READING:  Applies to texts more than one page. For example: Professional articles, Essays, Technical reports and short stories. The purposes of assessment here are to tap into a leaner's global understanding of a text and therefore we use top down processes. 

In terms of VALIDITY, we can say that texts are meaningful and reading is tested and not vision or previous knowledge of the subject or topic. In terms of PRACTICABILITY, we can face problems since texts here are not easy to score and activities are not really time efficient. Talking about RELIABILITY, we can say that the same test is given to all students in order to get the same results, and it is important to take into account students' mood and how they feel, as well as how focused they are in order to understand. Additionally, we can assume that AUTHENTICITY is presented here because items are contetualized rather than isolated. Finally, teacher can apply WASHBACK and this can be in groups or individual. 

Assessing speaking, is it that difficult?

Somehow it is quite interesting how students react while having either an oral exam or any other activity involving their speaking skills. However, it is relevant to take into consideration the different types of speaking in order to assess more accordingly our students. After having read the chapter “Assessing Speaking” from the book “Language Assessment, Principles and Classroom Practices” by Douglas, I realized that teachers must be also aware of the assessment principles and know at what extent they are applicable to the different types of speaking practices. Talking about the principles of assessment, I do consider that students must be always given feedback after any oral activity held in class. Besides, I think that giving feedback offers students the chance of improving their skills by avoiding making the same mistake once again.

 

 Finally, based on my short experience as an English teacher, I would say that teachers must try to develop tasks basically focused on topics that students can easily talk about; in that way, students will feel more comfortable and confident to talk and actively participate. 

Understanding what testing, assessing and teaching is.



We, as teachers, must actually be aware of the noteworthy distinction among testing, assessing and teaching.

First of all, it is a fact that most students feel somewhat panic-stricken when facing a test and this situation is most of the times a terrifying, distressing experience that makes students feel anguished. However, after reading Chapter one from the book "Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices" by H. Douglas Brown, two questions popped up in my mind:

1. Do my students really hate me when I test them?

2. What should I do to transform that despondency that students have towards tests?

Well, based on my experience as a teacher, I would claim that testing is a key aspect while learning any subject and I am strongly in agreement with the fact that testing should be an enjoyable process that teachers put into action in order to optimize, analyze and measure their students' performance and abilities. Furthermore, teachers should feel obliged to innovate and create strategies to make that happen.

On the other hand, do we usually tend to misunderstand the meaning of assessment? Have we forgotten that testing and assessment are not the same, then?

Actually, we can talk about tests as part of the assessment process; however we must understand that there are uncountable ways to assess our students' performance. In a learning environment, students must be given the chance to construct knowledge, to experiment alternatives and to take a whack at their own  theories. Consequently, assessment is the process of gathering information about knowledge, abilities, feelings and principles. What is more, while assessing students, teachers must take into consideration not only people's hypothesis and beliefs, but also the foundation of knowledge and the process of learning.

Finally, we can assume that teaching is the platform where assessment and testing take place.

* Images taken from Google Images.