Нова українська школа: методика навчання англійської мови у 3-4 класах закладів загальної середньої освіти на засадах компетентнісного підходу - Крістіна Карпюк 2020

8. Assessment, Testing and Feedback

Assessment, which is also known as ’evaluation’, is a device used in education which provides teachers, students and their parents with feedback - information about pupils’ performance in different tasks and about their achievements in learning. Ur (2016) notes that evaluating students may not be the most pleasant part of teaching but it is essential, since we need to be aware of our students’ progress in order to know what do they need and where to go next. Thus, one of the main reasons why assessing our learners is so important is because it helps us to discover not only what they know, but what they do not know, as well. In general, the purposes of assessment are:

✵ to evaluate students’ overall level;

✵ to evaluate their progress;

✵ to evaluate how well they have studied the material they have passed;

✵ to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.

There are two main types of assessment:

Summative - the one teachers use to measure the product of their pupils’ learning in the end of a chapter/semester/year;

Formative - the one which is used to measure the pupils’ abilities as part of a process and it takes place during their studies.

In addition, there is informal evaluation that occurs every lesson in order to determine and assess students’ advancement on a constant basis.

Assessing young learners has its own peculiarities. Cameron (2017: 214) points out that «the nature of children’s foreign language learning might be expected to generate a range of assessment issues in need of attention». There are certain factors which make young learners’ evaluation different from the others:

Age - it is necessary to consider their motor, linguistic, social and conceptual development;

Content of language learning - concentration on their oral skills, lexis enhancement and language use in communication;

Methods of teaching - interactive use of appropriate activities such as games, songs, rhymes, stories, etc;

Aims - besides the language goals, programmes for children also involve social and cross-cultural intentions;

Learning theories - learning through social interaction, the zone of proximal development and so on.

Unfortunately, due to the fact that teachers usually must stick with the syllabus, some «individual children’s learning needs are downgraded» (Cameron, 2017: 216). Another problem is the stress which young learners experience before or during the assessment process. Therefore, there are certain practical tips which can be of great help not only in solving these two issues but any other that may occur:

✵ Define clear learning objectives.

✵ Create objective success criteria.

✵ Observe the children in familiar learning contexts.

✵ Evaluate different interaction patterns.

✵ Observe a few children every day.

✵ Use focused observation forms and checklists;

✵ Stimulate and use language portfolios.

✵ Promote self-assessment.

✵ Evaluate linguistic and non-linguistic skills (such as creativity, teamwork, social and thinking capacities, etc).

✵ Think carefully about summative written tasks;

✵ Prepare your students for the tests not only by reviewing the material, but also from the psychological perspective (calm them down and enhance their confidence).

✵ After your students have taken a test, analyse the results with them in order for the learners to understand their marks so that they would not repeat the same mistakes.

Now that we have mentioned tests, it is important to realise the reasons for using them, since they are the most popular way to assess students’ learning.

Firstly, very often it is the demand of the curriculum to evaluate students by testing them in the end of the semester/school year.

Secondly, it is rather comfortable to use tests because they usually do not take much time to check. Moreover, there are many already-made tests in the coursebooks we use and they, as a rule, come with answers.

Finally, tests may be seen as ’encouragement’ for students to be more hard-working and to review the material when preparing for them.

Therefore, there are certain types of tests:

✵ diagnostic tests;

✵ placement tests;

✵ progress tests;

✵ achievement tests;

✵ proficiency tests.

However, testing has its disadvantages, too.

To begin with, they are not always valid as well as reliable - some students may make mistakes not because they are unaware of the material, but because they can forget or be inattentive.

Second of all, as it was stated earlier, many pupils find tests quite stressful which is often the main reason why they forget or loose their attention when doing them.

Third of all, tests are usually made to check only certain distinct bits of material, which means they are ’limited’. Consequently, tests can be seen as ’one-off events’ that do not always provide a full and fair representation of the students’ overall knowledge and ability.

Therefore, testing is not the ONLY way to assess pupils. There are also:

✵ Portfolio assessment (records of the students’ hard work) which also develops the teacher’s and the students’ self-assessment.

✵ Assessment by observation in the end of which the teacher provides the pupils with some feedback and comments.

✵ Peer-assessment - once your students have learnt how to evaluate themselves, you can let them evaluate each other, which develops cooperation in class;

✵ Assessment through students’ creative work such as projects.

The result of pupils’ hard work usually ends with the teacher’s mark. However, there are some important things that need to be considered:

✵ Before giving any tasks and marks, think about the criteria - what standards should be used in your assessment and inform your students about it.

✵ It is a good idea to leave comments in the form of feedback besides the mark so that your students would understand what they have done right and wrong.

✵ Keep the marks and comments private so that no one feels embarrassed or becomes know-all.

Giving feedback about the students’ progress and then and keeping the records are not an easy job. The educator should remember and put into consideration the characteristics of each student and what was actually being assessed. In order to make this all less hard, the teacher can have:

✵ progress charts;

✵ observation charts;

✵ behaviour charts;

✵ teacher’s journal;

✵ term report;

✵ students’ skills report;

✵ child-centred reports.

In addition, the teacher can arrange:

✵ individual meetings and interviews;

✵ Parents’ Open Day;

✵ digital contact (many schools today have digital systems to help them follow their children’s progresses).

SUMMARY

Assessment is a difficult but also necessary part of any teacher’s job. Its importance consists in determining the students’ progress in their studies which is then followed by discovering what should be done next. Besides tests, there are many other methods to evaluate pupils’ hard work. In general, assessment should support learning and teaching as well as be:

1 fair and congruent with learning;

2 seen from a learning-centred perspective;

3 understandable for students and their parents.