Topic: Assessment and Evaluation General objectives: Trainees will be able to evaluate methodology teacher’s ways of assessing trainees.

Lesson One Evaluating Methodology Teacher’s Assessment Pre-task activities Step One: assessing trainees achievements by questionary. Step Two: assessing trainees achievements by interview. Step Three: assessing trainees achievements by discussion. Step Four: definition ,directions, purposes, methods, criteria of language assessment. Step Five: making comparison between the standardized testing and the communicative assessment While-task activities Step Six: evaluating the trainer’s assessments by debate. Post-task activities Step Seven: evaluate the loop input: mapping content with process.

A definition of assessment Directions in assessment in languages Purposes of assessment Methods of assessment Criteria of assessment Comparison of standardized testing and communicative assessment

A definition of assessment Assessment involves making considered judgments about learners’ performance. It is a dynamic process and is concerned with determining how satisfactorily learners have achieved the objectives of a particular course or unit of work. Assessment has the educational function of describing the performance and promoting the development of the learner, while, at the same time, meeting the needs of the school, the educational system, and society at large to know the outcomes of a particular learning program.

Directions in assessment in languages Changes in assessment in languages have taken place together with changes in our understanding of what language and how it is learned, and change in approaches to language teaching. With the grammar/translation approach to language teaching and learning, for example, assessment mostly involved tests of discrete items of grammatical knowledge and translation. The same assessment procedures prevailed when audiovisual and audiolingual approaches were adopted. Because it was believed that learners learned patterns through stimulus-response habit formation, testing focused on discrete linguistic patterns. The communicative approach, with its emphasis on purposeful language use, has resulted in a move towards communicative assessment. Communicative assessment involves the assessment of learners’ language on the basis of how well they carry out activities. It represents a holistic approach to language testing, and focuses on language as it is used in communication, rather than on the discrete components of language.

Purposes of communicative assessment The purposes of assessment are closely related to both the goals towards which learners are aiming and the teaching and learning process. They can be described as follows: l      To motivate learners and teachers l   To inform the teaching and learning process, and to guide future curriculum planning l   To inform other relevant people l   To encourage cooperative styles of work l    To encourage responsibility and involvement

Methods of assessment Summative assessment--- End of stage tests Formative assessment. The following are useful methods of formative assessment: 1. Oral interview(of learners by the teacher) 2. story or text retelling (with listening or reading inputs) 3. writing samples (with a variety of topics and registers) 4. projects and exhibitions (presenting collaborative effort) 5. experiments and demonstrations (with oral or written reports) 6. constructed-response items (to open-ended questions) 7. teacher observation (of learners’ work in class, making notes) 8. portfolios ( focused collections of learner’s work to show progress)

Assessment criteria Criterion-referenced assessment Norm-referenced assessment Individual referenced assessment

Ads. And disads of differently-referenced assessments advantages disadvantages Criterion-referenced Objective standard of ability level; Difficult to design, especially for classroom teachers Norm-referenced Maximize the distinction among individuals in a given group; Difficult to decide the “norms”; Individual referenced Make students aware of their progress, Encourage students; Lack of comparison among students.

Comparison of standardized testing and communicative assessment 1. Testing &instruction regarded as separate activities 2. Ss treated in a uniform way 3. Decisions based on single sets of data (test scores) COMMUNICATIVE ASSESSMENT 1. Assessment as an integral part of instruction 2. Each learner is a unique person 3. Provides multiple sources of data, a more informative view

4. Emphasis on weakness/ failures: what Ss cannot do 5. One-shot exams 6. Cultural/socio-economic status bias 7. Focus on one “right answer” 8. Judgment without suggestions for improvement 4. Emphasis on strengths/ progress: what learners can do 5. Ongoing assessment 6. More culture-fair 7. Possibility of several perspectives 8. Useful information for improving/guiding learning

9. Pressures teachers to narrow teaching to what is tested 10. Focus on lower-order knowledge and skills 11. Forbids Ss to interact; promotes comparisons btn Ss(norm-ref) 12. Extrinsic learning for a grade 9. Allows teachers to develop meaningful curricula 10.Emphasis on higher-order learning outcomes & thinking skills 11. Encourages collaborative learning; (criterion-ref) 12. Intrinsic learning for its own sake