UNIT 18

 Assessment types and tasks

    In this unit I learnt that assessment is used for judging students’ ability to use the language and to check their progress. To assess students, teachers need to find different methods and assign different tasks such as: oral presentations, multiple choice questions, gap filling, etc. I also learnt that we can assess leaners informally or formally depending on the reasons we have to assess them.

   I could realize that there are lots of reasons why we may want to assess to our students formally. For example, at the beginning of the course we may want to know our students previous knowledge so we may apply diagnostic test in order to decide what to teach and what parts of the language they need to be reinforced in. When students go to a certain language classes or course teachers can have the necessity to place students according to their level of English. So they will apply the placement test in order to decide what level of class the learners should go into.  During the course teachers may want to know if the activities and lessons they have been teaching are accurate or not so they will apply a progress test to check students’ progress and their improvements.  Based on the results the teacher can make some changes on their teaching process and will be also able to give learners feedback on their strengths and difficulties in certain areas.  At the end of the course teachers also may want to know how successful the course has been so they will apply the summative test. It will give the teacher an idea of how much the learners have learnt and progress during the course. Sometimes students take a test to see how good they are at language and this type of test is called proficiency test. Consequently, there are some tasks that formal assessment uses to check students’ knowledge and they are:  listening, writing and speaking.  It is also important to mention that for these types of tests students always receive a score or mark. On the other hand, informal assessment is usually used with young leaners and this type of test rarely gives the learner a grade. When teacher assess students informally, they often use assessment criteria to help students with the assessment. So they can use a subjective test where students can complete tasks using their own thoughts or ideas. Teachers can also use objective tests where students will not have the opportunity to express their ideas since the questions are closed so they will have to choose a word to complete the question and they can be wrong or right. The tasks that this type of test includes are: gap filling, multiple choices, odd-one-out, etc. Besides, in this type of tests students always receive a feedback on their weaknesses and strengths.

   Therefore, when teaching to my students I will use both type of assessments formal and informal. It will depend on the purpose or reasons I have for assessing them. I will always bear in mind that assessing students do not always required a score, I can assess students by observing them, by eliciting questions or by letting students to assess their classmates' work and their own work. What is more important, I will always be fair by testing only what I have taught in class.

Click on these links to find extra information about the topic:

Francis A. (2013) Understanding Assessments

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrjWzxv6Qx0

Spiller D. (2011) Teaching Development, Assessment Tasks to Promote Learning

         http://www.waikato.ac.nz/tdu/pdf/booklets/10_AssessmentTasks.pdf

Mueller J. (2014) Authentic Assessment, Authentic Tasks

         http://jfmueller.faculty.noctrl.edu/toolbox/tasks.htm