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Table 14. The distinctions between assessment items 
 
Achievement assessment is the assessment of the 
achievement of specific objectives – assessment of what has been 
taught. It therefore relates to the week’s/term’s work, the course 
book, the syllabus. It is oriented to the course and represents an 
internal perspective. 
Proficiency assessment is assessment of what someone can 
do/knows in relation to the application of the subject in the real 
world. It represents an external perspective. 
Norm-referencing is the placement of learners in rank order, 
their assessment and ranking in relation to their peers. 

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Criterion-referencing is a reaction against norm-referencing 
in which a learner is assessed purely in terms of his/her ability in 
the subject, irrespective of the ability of his/her peers. 
The mastery criterion-referencing approach is one in which a 
single ‘minimum competence standard’ or ‘cut-off point’ is set to 
divide learners into ‘masters’ and ‘non-masters’, with no degrees 
of quality in the achievement of the objective being recognized. 
The continuum criterion-referencing approach is an approach 
in which an individual ability is referenced to a defined 
continuum of all relevant degrees of ability in the area in 
question. 
Continuous assessment is assessment by a teacher and 
possibly by a learner of class performances, pieces of work and 
projects throughout the course. The final grade thus reflects the 
whole course/year/semester. 
Fixed point assessment is when grades are awarded and 
decisions made on the basis of an examination or other 
assessment which takes place on a particular day, usually the end 
of the course or before the beginning of a course. What has 
happened beforehand is irrelevant; it is what the person can do 
now that is decisive. 
Formative assessment is an ongoing process of gathering 
information on the extent of learning, on strengths and 
weaknesses, which a teacher can feed back into their course 
planning and the actual feedback they give learners. It is often 
used in a very broad sense so as to include non-quantifiable 
information from questionnaires and consultations. 
Summative assessment sums up attainment at the end of the 
course with a grade. It is not necessarily proficiency assessment. 
Indeed a lot of summative assessment is norm referenced, fixed -
point, achievement assessment. 
Performance assessment requires a learner to provide a 
sample of language in speech or writing in a direct test. 
Knowledge assessment requires learners to answer questions 
which can be of a range of different item types in order to provide 
evidence of the extent of their linguistic knowledge and control. 

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Subjective assessment is a judgment by a teacher. What is 
normally meant by this is the judgment of the quality of a 
performance. 
Objective assessment is assessment in which subjectivity is 
removed. What is normally meant by this is an indirect test in 
which the items have only one right answer, e.g. a multiple 
choice. 
Rating on a scale: judging that a person is at a particular level 
or band on a scale made up of a number of such levels or bands. 
Rating on a checklist: judging a person in relation to a list of 
points deemed to be relevant for a particular level or module. 
Impression: fully subjective judgment made on the basis of 
experience of a learner’s performance in class, without reference 
to specific criteria in relation to a specific assessment. 
Guided judgment: judgment in which a teacher’s subjectivity 
is reduced by complementing impression with conscious 
assessment in relation to specific criteria. 
Holistic assessment is making a global synthetic judgment. 
Different aspects are weighted intuitively by a teacher. 
Analytic assessment is looking at different aspects separately. 
There are two ways in which this distinction can be made: (a) 
in terms of what is looked for; (b) in terms of how a band, grade 
or score is arrived at. Systems sometimes combine an analytic 
approach at one level with a holistic approach at another. 
Self-assessment is judgments about his/her proficiency, i.e. 
learners themselves evaluate their own performance, using clear 
criteria and weighting system agreed on beforehand 
Portfolio – learners gather a collection of assignments and 
projects done over a long period into a file; and this portfolio 
provides the basis for evaluation. 
 
As assessment grades a teacher can use: 
1) letters, words or phrases: ‘A’ or ‘B’; ‘good’ or ‘excellent’; 
2) scores from 1 to 5, or in our rating system ’86% –100 %’ – 
excellent.

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3) profiles: a totally different kind of assessment, comprising a 
number of separate grades on different skills or sections of 
knowledge, so that there is a possibility of describing the 
performance of an individual learner in more detail, showing his/her 
various strengths and weaknesses.