Course paper theme: The different types of assessments and feedback in English language teaching classroom

1.2. Types of assessment in FLT
Words so terrifying they send chills down the spines of even the most accomplished students. That may be a bit dramatic, but here’s a fact: Practically no one likes tests. The good news is that over the past thirty years, testing has seen a massive transformation and an even bigger rebranding. We’ve moved beyond using exclusively standardized formats. Now there’s an array of more tailored and student-centric approaches to assessing an individual’s ability and progress. Having diverse assessment options in your teaching toolkit will help you keep your curriculum strategic and your students motivated. Let’s take a look at what the modern assessment landscape looks like so that you can tackle testing with confidence. Assessment is the process of documenting in measurable terms, knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs. The term assessment is generally used to refer to all activities of the learners. It can focus on the individual learner and also on the learning community (class, workshop or other organized group of learners). Assessment in education is an action to determine the importance, size, or value of gained knowledge and speech skills and subskills. The final purpose of assessment practiced in education depends on the theoretical framework of the practitioners and researchers, their assumptions and beliefs about the nature of human mind, the origin of knowledge and the process of learning. Assessment brings benefit to both the teachers and learners. By controlling the process of teaching, learners’ knowledge, skills and subskills a teacher is able to work out new, more effective ways, methods of teaching a foreign language. Assessment helps the teacher to prove his ideas, methods on organizing teaching to foreign languages. It is beneficial for learners too. Feeling their success in learning a foreign language motivates the learners and inspires them for new activities. It should be stressed that learners have different motivation. Some of them (we mean pupils) are eager to get good grades in all school subjects including a foreign language and the others learn foreign languages with the hope to find a good job in future. The characteristic feature of assessment in school education is that unlike the other school subjects in controlling teaching a foreign language the main attention is focused on assessing the degrees of oral speech skills and also reading and writing skills. In teaching a foreign language assessment includes the following types of controlling speech skills and subskills: Continuous assessment is everyday assessment. Teacher evaluates it at every lesson and it is one of the effective means of teaching and assessing. It positively influences on the learners and makes them to revise the learned material. Thematic assessment. This type of assessment aimed to control the gained knowledge, formed speech skills on the learned theme. It is carried out after completing the work on studying the theme. The time given to assessment depends on the size and complexity of the teaching material. Periodic assessment. Periodic assessment aimed to evaluate the learners’ knowledge, speech skills and subskills after some period of time. For example, after each quarter or a month within a school year. The materials for assessment are prepared by the teacher. Total assessment is carried out at the end of a school year in the form of an examination. It may have oral and written forms. This type of assessment is aimed to evaluate the learner’s knowledge, speech skills and subskills. Assessment is often divided for the sake of convenience into the following types: – Initial; – formative and summative; – Objective and subjective; Initial assessment refers to as pre — assessment or diagnostic assessment. It is conducted prior to instruction to establish a baseline from which individual learner’s progress can be measured. Formative assessment is carried out throughout a course or project. This type of assessment also refers to as “educative assessment” and is used to aid learning. It should be stressed that formative assessment would not necessary be used for grading purposes. Formative assessment can take the form of diagnostic, standardized tests. Formative assessment techniques monitor student learning during the learning process. Summative assessment is generally carried out at the end of course or project is typically used to assign a course grade of learners. It evaluates student learning. “The difference between the formative and summative assessment can be explained with the following analogy: When teacher prepares test tasks that’s formative. And when the learners have these tasks (or tests) that’s summative. A common form of formative assessment is diagnostic assessment, it measures a student’s current knowledge. And skill for the purpose of identifying a suitable program of learning”. [8,76]. Self — assessment is a form of diagnostic assessment. It involves the learners to assess themselves. Assessment is often categorized as either objective or subjective. Objective assessment is a form of questioning which has a single correct answer. And Subjective assessment is a form of questioning which may have more than one correct answer or more than one way of expressing the correct answer. Objective question types include true / false answers, multiple choice, multiple — response and matching questions. Subjective questions include extended — response questions and essays. Objective assessment is well suited online assessment format. Assessment can also be formal or informal. For the teacher it is important to be aware of the characteristic features of each types of assessment. Formal assessment usually implies a written document, such as a test, quiz or paper. An Informal assessment may include observation, inventories, checklists, rating skills, performance or portfolio assessments, participation, peer and self — evaluation and discussion. This type of assessment does not contribute to a student’s final grade. Assessment can also be divided into internal and external. Internal assessment is set by the teachers. Students get the mark and feedback regarding the assessment. External assessment is set by the governing body and is marked by non — based personal. For example entering tests for high school can be included into such tests i.e such assessment.
There are many ways to talk about methods of assessing language. In this module, the distinction between indirect and direct methods will be used. These methods are both common in language testing, often used for different skills or in different kinds of classes. Indirect methods may be more common in assessing reading, listening, vocabulary or grammar and in classes that are large. Direct assessment works well for productive skills such as writing or speaking and provides a better picture of what students can do with the language. Assessment of learning outcomes for student performance in foreign language study are traditionally related to the five skills of listening, speaking, reading, writing and culture. Two distinct forms of traditional tests are used as the basis for the assessment of foreign language student learning, "discrete point tests" and "integrative tests". Discrete point tests focus on a single skill area and evaluate the knowledge of details of a language (e.g., the breadth and accuracy of the student's command of linguistic elements such as pronunciation, vocabulary, and structures). In contrast, global or integrative tests are broader and examine some combination of skill areas and measure the student's ability to understand and use language in context. Recent developments by the American Council of Teachers of Foreign Languages have resulted in the development of a series of language tests. Language tests, have emerged as part of the "ACTFL Test Development Project," are intended to assess oral proficiency, listening, and reading skill of higher education students. They are used for periodic proficiency evaluation of students who might be pursuing teacher certification in foreign language or to assess applicants for various jobs requiring language proficiency (Byrnes & Cana le, 1987). Byrnes and Cana le also identify the 1986 "ACIFL Proficiency Guidelines" as the definitive statement about assessment in foreign languages. The focus on speaking ability or oral proficiency has been a stimulus in the area of assessment since the development in 1985 of the "Oral Proficiency Interview" by the
American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages and the Educational Testing Service. An interview format is used to access the speaking ability of an interviewee. Progressively more difficult questions are posed by an interviewer who is accompanied by a rater. The rater uses a rubric, with a scale of zero to five, based on specific characteristics of speaking ability. Acing, supervises the certification and training of interviewers and raters.
The Oral Proficiency Interview is an example of a performance-based assessment in Foreign Languages. The standardized assessment is conducted to determine the oral language proficiency of an individual and occurs in the context of a face-to-face interview as follows: the well-conducted interview does not proceed in a linear fashion through a prepared course of interrogation. Rather, the process is most easily depicted by an ever-broadening spiral through which the interview passes, probing higher and/or receding in response to the candidate's performance; dipping back to topic areas exposed by the candidate to broaden them, branching from them, and exploring task performance through them. [9,54].
The reading or listening assessment of an individual, based on the ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines, is also rated on a zero-to-five-point scale (p. 335). The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines give generic descriptions of writing skills in a target language. The development of AUK., Proficiency Guidelines has evoked considerable controversy and discussion about their appropriateness and usefulness in the foreign language classroom (Byrnes & Cana le, 1987; Hughes & Porter, 1933; Lowe & Stanfield, 1988; Mueller, 1980; Valdman, 1987; James, 1985; Higgs, 1982; Galloway, 1987; Halleck, 1992). The lack of national or statewide standards for foreign language education, at all grade levels, retards efforts to develop criteria for assessment of foreign language proficiency in classrooms (Lange, 1982; Joint National Committee for Languages, 1991). Gerard Ervin (1992), presidents of ACIEL, reported current issues in foreign language education and included proficiency guideline revision, student achievement goals, teacher education standards and the development of a written proficiency test as matters of concern [9,5].