Reconceptualizing language teaching: an in-service teacher education course in uzbekistan

Assessment criteria. Marking criteria or rubric is central to making 
sure that subjectively-scored assessments are valid and fair for subjectively 
scored assessments. We believe a teacher cannot and should not assess 
a student unless there are clear criteria from which he or she is to be as-
sessed. A piece of work (i.e., essay) or oral response (i.e., interview) by a stu-
dent that is assessed without using any criteria is regarded unacceptable. 
A common issue in Uzbekistan is that criteria for one assessment is used 
for multiple situations and does not address the appropriate content to be 
measured. (Thus, many subjectively-scored tests are not valid.) It should be 
noted that adapting criteria should be approached with specific attention, 

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CHAPTER THREE: LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT/TESTING
as the quality and clearness of scale descriptors can affect scoring and its 
validity. Another common issue is interpreting scale descriptors for assess-
ment. Therefore, creators of criteria must make sure that there is no am-
biguity in descriptors and teacher, in their turn, need to notify the issues 
observed. Responsibility of fair assessment lies on teachers. The proper use 
of rating criteria is also crucial, which means that teachers need to be atten-
tive in making their decisions. 
Holistic and Analytic Scoring. There are two main types of scoring: 
holistic and analytic. Holistic scoring looks at the whole picture of the stu-
dent’s work. Thus, you will need to provide one general score. Analytic 
scoring, however, is concerned with separate constituents when assessing. 
Your task is to look at various aspects or scoring facets to generate a score. 
Here is an example of holistic criteria that was used by Pat Blogger (as cited 
in Bailey, 1999) for his test, which was an attempt to measure English lan-
guage ability with respect to understanding written passages first and then 
to work with that information in order to construct arguments: