Introduction chapter types of assessment

Tips for assessing proficiency in English

We now move on to offer you some top assessment tips for practitioners:

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  Assess English language proficiency using an EAL framework. This enables accurate and purposeful assessments of what a learner can do in English, as well as providing a road map for progression to support the teaching and learning of EAL learners.
  
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  Build a pupil profile to gain a broader picture of your EAL learner. Seek out, record and share the following:
  
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    English language background: Has the learner had any prior English language input? Does the learner have any qualifications in English language from their home country?
    
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    Previous education: How much previous education has the EAL learner had? Have there been any gaps or interruptions in their education? What are typical teaching styles and expectations in the home country? What expectations were there with regard to parental involvement? What was the learner’s attainment at their previous school?
    
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    Language and literacy practices: What languages are spoken at home? Are these languages spoken by the EAL learner? Who speaks which language to whom? Are there other families nearby that share the EAL learner’s language?
    
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  Carry out assessments in an environment that is familiar to the EAL learner in order to avoid undue stress. It is good practice to give the newly arrived EAL learner a period of time to settle in before carrying out an assessment. Informal assessment and observations can be carried out from day one, but any formal testing of the pupil’s English should be postponed for two to three weeks.
  
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  Assess English language proficiency across the four language strands (listening, speaking, reading and viewing, and writing). Pupils are likely to have different abilities in each strand, so it is important to gain an understanding of what he/she can/cannot do in each area to target appropriate support.
  
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  English language use and development takes place in different contexts. This means that there may be aspects of the curriculum which the pupils cannot access because they have no experience of learning it before. Consider the following contexts when assessing what a learner can/cannot do in English:
  
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    Acquiring academic content.
    
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    Demonstrating learning.
    
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    Following instructions and understanding teacher feedback.
    
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    Using age-appropriate language.
    
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    Using social language in and outside the classroom.
    
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  If possible, carry out an assessment in the learner’s home language. This can provide crucial information that will enhance the assessment of a learner with EAL when triangulated against other in-school evidence, such as classroom observations and background information gathered.
  
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  Use on-going assessment throughout the academic year to identify progress and set language targets which are appropriate for the EAL learner’s needs. Use information gained from on-going assessment to feed into planning, teaching and learning.
  
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  Develop tailored support strategies that allow EAL learners to fully access the curriculum and achieve their potential. The Bell Foundation has developed a set of classroom support strategies (which are free to download) intended to work alongside the EAL Assessment Framework for Schools. These strategies are designed to be used by teachers, teaching assistants and other practitioners to help EAL learners develop the levels of English proficiency needed and successfully access the curriculum.
  

Being recorded as having EAL does not predict likely attainment. However, a learner’s proficiency in English does. By using valid and reliable assessment to establish the EAL learner’s current proficiency in English language, alongside other background information, schools can provide individually tailored targets and support strategies for teaching and learning, ultimately allowing learners to develop their language skills and fully access the curriculum as well as achieve an inclusive school.
Katherine Solomon is training manager at The Bell Foundation which is a charity working to overcome exclusion through language education by working with partners on innovation, research, training and practical interventions. Through generating and applying evidence, the Foundation aims to change practice, policy and systems for children, adults and communities in the UK with English as an Additional Language.
Teachers should use a range of assessment data and strategies to inform their judgements regarding EAL students’ English language proficiency, learning needs and progress towards the Victorian Curriculum F-10 EAL achievement standards. The achievement standards of the curriculum describe what students are able to understand and do at the end of each level of learning.
Assessing EAL learners’ English language proficiency is an ongoing process that involves a variety of assessment activities across the three language modes Speaking and Listening, Reading and Viewing and Writing. 
Preliminary activities can include developing a sociolinguistic profile after conducting a language and learning interview, and diagnostic activities. Teachers start with diagnostic assessment tasks to identify students’ high level skills in speaking, listening, reading and writing and their strengths and weaknesses. Teachers use this information to guide curriculum planning decisions and develop formative and summative assessment activities. 
Induvidual learner portfolios built up over a period of time are also very useful for ongoing assessment of EAL learners. As well as copies of student work, portfolios can include feedback that provides meaningful information to students about what they have done well and areas for improvement. Teachers should encourage students to review their portfolios regularly and, depending on their age and language proficiency, develop individual learning goals. These goals might be as simple as using capitals or forming letters correctly or involve more complex challenges, such as writing topic sentences using key words from an essay prompt.
The TEAL online assessment resource centre provides a strong evidence-based approach for an ‘Assessment for Learning’ (AfL) pedagogy that emphasises the importance of formative assessment. Each assessment activity should actively involve students and be used to improve teaching and learning. Students should understand what is being assessed and what they need to do in order to successfully complete an assessment activity. 
Actively involving EAL learners in assessment ensures that they understand the process and how to successfully complete a task. Teachers are not expected to assess everything in every task but keep a clear focus on one or two key learning areas or skills. The information gathered by the teacher can be used to modify or extend teaching and learning activities to meet the needs of EAL learners and inform future planning.
Teachers who are new to EAL assessment can use the TEAL site to build their capacity and confidence and refer to the examples of student work to support their own assessment decisions.
One of the most common reasons why teachers shouldn’t only use tests is because students may have test anxiety. What tends to happen is that students are so nervous when presented with a test that they don’t do as well. You then aren’t able to see what the student is really capable of. For ELL students, they can be extra nervous because not only do they have to recall information they’ve learned, but they may have to decipher what the test question is asking in the first place.
Also, tests really only measure what students can memorize or 1recall, not necessarily what work they can produce. For example, if you give a multiple choice test about vocabulary they learned, it really only tests if they understand one meaning of the word, and not necessarily whether they understand how to apply the same word in different contexts.
Another example would be oral skills. If students understand certain phrases you’ve taught them, they may not understand if another person outside the classroom says it, especially if that person has an accent.
If an ELL student is a little slower to read or decipher material (especially if they’ve had lots of support in their class), a time constraint on a test won’t give them sufficient time to complete the test. Just because a student didn’t finish a test, doesn’t mean they don’t understand the material. You then are left guessing as to whether or not your student actually understood what you were testing them on.
So what are some ways to assessing English language learners then, if tests are not the full answer?
Portfolios are powerful assessments and are used to gather various samples of student work to track their development over a period of time. In order to maximize the potential of using a portfolio as an assessment tool, you should regularly curate student work to include in them, and have scheduled conferences with students about their work.
You should also have a checklist of qualities that are important to showcase student achievement. Not only do you critique and assess the work, but so should the students. That way, they’re responsible for their learning and take more ownership of making sure they improve.
Material you can include in a portfolio can include the following:

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  performance criteria or rubrics
  
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  recording of oral presentations
  
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  tests
  
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  writing samples, drafts and final copies
  
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  book reports
  
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  interview checklists
  

In order to best assess a student, you should include more than one kind of student work in the portfolio. The work does not have to be the best work they’ve done, rather a wide variety is best. Based on your judgment, you can even ask students for their opinion as to what types of work they should include.
In a portfolio, you are looking for any type of improvement in their work. For example, if you keep a couple of a student’s writing pieces, look to see if their sentence or paragraph structure gets better. When looking at tests, see if their spelling tests, for example, have gotten higher scores over time. If you notice that they continually lack in certain skills, this would be the time to address it. You can either give the student extra support in class or find ways for them to practice with extra work at home.
Tests aren’t bad, but they’re not the only way to assess student achievement. If you use a wide variety of assessments, you’ll be able to portray an accurate picture of your student’s English abilities. In turn, you, your students and their parents will be able to see their progress, which can greatly motivate students!
To be effective, assessment must recognize the diversity of learners and allow for differences in styles and rates of learning. To accurately assess English language learners, variations in students’ English language skills, along with the other growth and development variations based on their age, must be considered.
Consider the background information gathered during the initial intake and other important factors that may impact student learning and knowledge; e.g.,

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  proficiency and student achievement in first language
  
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  prior schooling experience
  
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  trauma due to war or other factors
  
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  health, physical and other characteristics that may impact learning
  
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  involvement of parents and guardians
  
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  family and cultural values.
  

2.2 Developmentally appropriate assessment calls for the use of a range of assessment strategies because English language learners need a variety of ways to demonstrate their understanding. The lower the language proficiency, the more important it is to use assessment techniques beyond pencil and paper tasks. Developmentally appropriate assessment provides opportunities for students to show what they know in an environment in which it is safe to take risks associated with learning.
Some English language learners who have had prior English instruction may not perform to their true potential on initial assessments for various reasons, such as a difference in dialect or rate of speech. Within one to six months, English language learners who have had prior English instruction may appear to accelerate in their language proficiency as they begin to access their prior English learning more readily. Students with prior English may have the appearance of initial rapid English uptake and then appear to slow down as their prior English reaches its ceiling and the student is learning English at a more gradual rate. Be prepared to reassess within the first few weeks if there appears to be a significant difference between initial assessment proficiency and current proficiency, especially if it impacts course selection or access to specific supports.
It is important to ensure that assessment materials are for the appropriate developmental age of the students. Some English language learners may be at a beginner level and require simplified texts; however, the images and content should be appropriate for the age of the student; e.g.,

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  high-interest, low-vocabulary books and nonfiction texts may be options for reading assessments
  
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  when using picture prompts for speaking and writing ensure images are age-appropriate
  
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  when using written prompts ensure topics and supporting images are age-appropriate.
  

Some English language learners may demonstrate discrepancies between their oral and literacy skills in English depending upon their educational and cultural background. Some students may also understand more English when they listen or read than when they speak or write or vice versa. When completing assessments, follow the procedures and scoring instructions. It may also be helpful to note the students’ actual responses in order to analyze their use of language and strategies. This additional information may be helpful for teachers when making decisions on instructional supports.
Literacy in any language is an asset to learning English, as students who can read and write in their home language have knowledge of words, concepts, grammatical structures and the understanding of how language can be documented, accessed and interpreted. Students who know how to read in one language typically transfer that knowledge of how certain formations of marks on a page can be read; they must then learn the graphophonemic (sound/symbol) system of English to be able to read. Students who understand a first language with an alphabet and phonemic system similar to English and left to right, top-down reading usually adjust readily to decoding in English. English language learners who read in another language can often decode at a higher level than they can comprehend in English; whereas students whose language experiences were with characters or a different system of reading have to learn an entirely different alphabet and system of reading. Therefore, decoding and comprehension require additional instruction and support. Students who have had limited formal education experiences often require support in understanding about reading as well as skill development in decoding and comprehension strategies.
During assessment it is important to be aware of these considerations when observing what the student can do and where the student requires support. English language learners with prior schooling in their first language have many skills, such as decoding, comprehension strategies, copying, writing, representing understanding through images, graphing, charting, and working in cooperative groups. These skills are transferable across languages and will assist students in acquiring language. It is important to be able to distinguish when a student has a skill and when the student has the English language as well as the skill; e.g., when the student is asked to read words in English, is the student able to understand them or does the student simply have the decoding skill?
When assessing English language learners note the type of language the student is using to get his or her message across. Many English language learners use familiar and high frequency vocabulary and long simple sentences to demonstrate social language competency. However, more academic and specialized vocabulary and more complex sentences may be required in the classroom setting. At times, a student may be assessed above his or her actual language level as the social language competency may mask the academic language competency.
Observing, documenting, and assessing each child’s development and learning are essential processes for educators and programs to plan, implement, and evaluate the effectiveness of the experiences they provide to children. Assessment includes both formal and informal measures as tools for monitoring children’s progress toward a program’s desired goals. Educators can be intentional about helping children to progress when they know where each child is with respect to learning goals. Formative assessment (measuring progress toward goals) and summative assessment (measuring achievement at the end of a defined period or experience) are important. Both need to be conducted in ways that are developmentally, culturally, and linguistically responsive to authentically assess children’s learning. This means that not only must the methods of assessment, both formal and informal, be developmentally, culturally, and linguistically sensitive, but also the assessor must be aware of and work against the possibility of implicit and explicit bias, for example through training, reflection, and regular reviews of collected data.
Effective assessment of young children is challenging. The complexity of children’s development and learning—including the uneven nature of development and the likelihood of children fully demonstrating their knowledge and skills in different contexts—makes accurate and comprehensive assessment difficult. For example, authentic assessment takes into consideration such factors as a child’s facility in each language they speak and uses assessors and settings that are familiar and comfortable for the child. When standardized assessments are used for screening or evaluative purposes, the measures should meet standards of reliability and validity based on the characteristics of the child being assessed. When these standards are not met, these limitations must be carefully considered before using the results. Using assessments in ways that do not support enhancing the child’s education is not developmentally appropriate practice. Yet, decisions regarding assessment practices are often outside of the control of individual. When educators are aware of inappropriate assessment practices, they have a professional ethical responsibility to make their concerns known, to advocate for more appropriate practices, and, within their learning environment, to minimize the adverse impact of inappropriate assessments on young children and on instructional practices.