What is ASSESSMENT?

It

is an estimation. It is how we measure the students performance. It measures progress Diagnoses problems for useful feedback. It is the most useful data on what is happening in a learning environment.

What is Evaluation?
It involves all the factors that influence the learning process. Aims of the syllabus The Course design. Materials. Methodology. Teachers performance and assessment.

Problems and Prejudices

Assessment
Teachers to students. Obligatory. Separation learning and teaching and assessment. Because of lack of effective feedback.

Type of feedback. Real help is not given. What is tested. Importance to only one skill. Exams are given at the end. Doesnt encourage what has been learnt rather than what hasnt. Students are not taken into consideration.

TYPES OF ASSESSMENTS
Formal Assessment (Official Exams) Informal assessment. Self assessment.

When should we assess?

Needs to be continuously. Informal assessment shlould be done every lesson. More in-depth assessment (Formal) should be periodically. Self-assessment needs to be done at regural intervals, so the Ss know what are their strength and weaknesses.

Who should assess?

Traditionally, the teachers job. Formal assessment should only be done by the teacher. Ask the Ss to participate in the process. Self assessments help the Ss think for themselves and doesnt diminishes the role of the teacher.

How should we assess?

Must be done constructively. Should demostrate what they know. Must be reliable. Under the same conditions and the same performance the Ss should give a similar result. Establish criteria and clear procedures. It would be bias for some Ss. Ensure what you are assessing. Economical Accountable: be able to report.

INFORMAL ASSESSMENT
It is a way of collecting information about our students performance in normal classroom conditions. THE HOW We need to work out what we are going to assess. We must establish clear criteria for assessing Ss. Dont rely on impressions. Link the assessments.

Informal assessment is not:

Replacement. A way to avoid tests. A form of evaluation without criteria. A single system Isolated

When and What to assess?

Traditionally, we tend to think of this type of assessment as consisting solely of MARKING AN ESSAY done for homework or the teacher walking around the during an activity to get a vague idea of whether they are doing alright or not. In the classroom is where we can get the most data and we can monitor the four skills.

When and What to assess?

STEPS How much we are going to assess? Time is limited Weighting (Which areas are the most important) Establish clear weighting How much informal assessment compared to Formal assessment?

Informal assessment of linguistic factors?

Normally written assignments. Problems We omit other skills and areas. We mark through impression Not a clear idea of what is being assess. At the end we tend to make judgements in terms of impression. It Is very important to make an effort to assess oral skills.

Informal assessment of linguistic factors

Assessment criteria can be described in terms of what we expect our students to be able to do. An alternative is to create a band (e.g. 0 to 5) The more bands we have the more delicate and descriptive the system will be.

SPEAKING
Informal assessment is particulary important for speaking as many teachers have practical difficulties in organizing oral tests. Informal assessment of speaking can have an important effect on learners. Informal assessment of speaking is done by observing students oral performance in class, by monitoring speaking activities as they happen.

SPEAKING
With time and effort you will become a whole working unit. Give students points based on predifined criteria. (systemize) Unreliability and inaccuracy should be considered. Distorted idea do to large classes. Monitored students (harder or worse)

SPEAKING
Possible solutions for unreliability and inaccuracy Produce a system that is objective and reliable. Create a band (reliable) Establish our own criteria. Work with collegues on a standard criteria.

SPEAKING
ORAL ASSESSMENT CRITERIA 5 Speaks fluently-almost no errors 4 Speaks quite fluently-some errors 3 Some difficulty speaking-many errors. 2 Difficulty with speaking-almost incomprehensible. 1 Unable to use languageincomprehensible

SPEAKING
Fluency Message Accuracy Pronunciation

SPEAKING
HOW TO ASSESS SPEAKING Assess Ss at a particular time. Assess over a few lessons. Prepare a series of speaking tasks. Divide the Ss. Type of tasks: Pair work, interviews, group surveys, roleplays, information gap activities, expositions

SPEAKING

When should informal assessment of speaking be carried out?

Depends on time Frequency of reports

SPEAKING
THE ENVIOUS NEIGHBOR Divide in groups of four. Each group has a set of pictures. The pictures make up a story, organize the picture in the order you think is correct.

REMEMBER YOU ARE BEING ASSESSED.

SPEAKING

THE ENVIOUS NEIGHBOR

Once upon a time, there was a man that was walking in the mountains at dusk. As it got dark, he was force to take shelterin a hollow tree. In the middle of the night, a group of elves gathered at the tree, and the man was terrified. After some time, the elves began to feast and drink, sing and dance. Forgetting his fear, the man came out of his hiding place to join the party. The next they the elves told the man that they liked him very much and wanted him to return. To ensure he would return, they took a wart that had grown on his forehead as a garantee. The man was very happy because he had had a wonderful night and got rid of his wart. He told his friends about his good luck, and they congratulated him. However, one of his neighbors also had a wart he wanted to get rid of and, rather than being happy, was envious of his friend. That night, he went to find the hollow tree and the elves. At midnight, the elves came and started singing and dancing as before. When they saw the neighbor, they thought that it was the man from the night before, and were happy to see him. To thank him for returning, they took the wart they had kept as garantee, and stuck it on the neighbors forehead next to the other one. The envious neighbor was very unhappy, and went home crying, with two warts instead of one.

WRITING

Assessing our students written work can be very time consuming and unless you are careful you can find yourself with many hours of marking. We need to decide how many and what sort of compositions we are going to assess. The importance should be reflected on your syllabus plan. How the writing will be done. Feedback Link between writing and self-assessment is vital.

WRITING
Crucial factors: Must be reliable Avoid grading from your head Establish criteria

WRITING
Writing Criteria 5 Excellent writer 4 Good Writer 3 Modest Writer 2 Marginal writer 1 Poor writer Comprehensibility, Accuracy, Spelling, Organization

WRITING

HOLISTIC SCALES General Overall Descriptions

ANALYTIC SCALES Separated aspects of abilities

WRITING
MARKING Analytic or Holistic Scales Focus on a couple of aspects Clear criteria for self assessment. De-motivation Correction code Complement with formal assessment.

WRITING
CORRECTION CODE S-spelling P-pronunciation WO-word order V-vocabulary

Involve the Ss.

WRITING
Types of writing assessments: Journals Blogs Book Reports Comics Group Stories The news

LISTENING
We normally develop listening skils in the classroom in lockstep fashion. On text at the same time. Fill in information Ordering True or false

LISTENING
We can monitor and assess students listening proficiency while monitoring activities such as pair work activities or reactions from instructions from you. Extralinguistic clues can often be a basis on which to assess a students listening proficiency.

LISTENING
MARKING Body Language (usually unreliable) Answers one by one (least threating) Recycle what they have heard Summerizing Recorded texts as basis for a speaking activity Monitoring speaking tasks

READING
HOW DO WE ASSESS READING? Skimming Scanning Reading for gist Answering comprehensive questions Answering multiple choice questions

READING
How can we assess reading? Monitoring Asking opinions about the topic Being neutral Discussion of the reading Translation (Low levels/High levels) Students own tasks Drawing Cloze text

READING
Something to take into consideration Subject knowledge Reading Styles Reading Speed Interets Abilities

READING
In mixed abilities classes it can be interesting to assess individual reading. If available at a library A mini library Graded-readers One-to-one conversations Reading records

Reading
Reading record from page 18 Monitor Assess understanding Assess Opinion In some cases could be combined with written assessment

READING
Grading criteria should reflect what they have been reading. Bands Yes and No

GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY

Nomarlly assess by periodically progress tests. Other formal instruments Homework

GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY

How to assess grammar and vocabulary. Present the structure and assess understanding and ability to use it. * not immidiately CONTROL PRACTICE ACTIVITIES Extra activities when necessary Free writing and speaking activities Focus only on language

GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY

Informal Practices of speaking Prepare for formal tests Pop quizes Short language test throughout the term Weekly,Bi-weekly, etc..

THANK YOU VERY MUCH

FOR COMMENTS, COMPLEMENTS OR ANYTHING ELSE: JORGE LUIS TAVERAS UREA jluistu@gmail.com thewolf803@msn.com

TIPS ARE ALWAYS WELCOMED

NON-LINGUISTIC FACTORS
Overall educational development The ability to take responsibility for and organize their knowledge Not only language is important Clear criteria

NON-LINGUISTIC FACTORS
Attitude Group work Organization of work independence

RESULTS FROM INFORMAL ASSESSMENTS

Once we have implemented our informal assessment program we will have results in the form of information about our Ss. In order to use these results they will need to be recorded against each students name so it could be accessible to the students, the institution and the teacher. As one part of an overall assessment program, the results could be compared to the other types of assessments.

What to do
In any case, information about students should be looked at in each individual case and should at all times feedback into the teaching-learning process. As language teachers we are concerned with linguistic aspects of our Ss performance and competence not forgetting the non-linguistic factors

WHAT TO DO
Our job as teachers must be to assess and through our assessment maximize the learning potential of our Ss in all aspects of their learning experience. It should not be forgotten that we are not solely concerned with language but in education in the broadest sense of the word.

Types of Test
Placement tests Diagnostic tests Progress and achievement tests Proficiency tests

CHARACTERISTICS OF A GOOD TEST

Validity Reliability Efficiency Economy

TYPE OF TEST ITEMS

Whatever the purpose a test or exam has, a major factor in the success or failure as a good measuring instrument will be determined by the types of items it contains.

TYPE OF ITEMS
Direct and indirect items DIRECT: a test item that asks candidates to perform the communication skill which is being tested. It tries to be as much like reallife language use as possible.

TYPES OF TEST ITEMS

INDIRECT ITEMS: Measures the students knowledge and ability by getting at what lies beneath their receptive and productive skills, it tries to find out students knowledge through more controlled items, like Multiple Choice Questions or Grammar Transformation items.

DISCRETE POINT

To test one thing at a time. Example: Correct verb completion.

INTEGRATIVE TESTING

These test items expect students to use a variety of language at any one given time.

Example: Written compositions or oral exams.

INDIRECT ITEMS
MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTIONS A traditional vocabulary multiple choice questions look like this:

MCQs
Very popular Easy to mark

Problems Extremely difficult to write them effectively Distractors Best answer

CLOZE PROCEDURE
Deforestation used to be something that few people apart from environmentalists talked about, but in the last twenty years or so, it has received increasing (1)___________ from governments and the media, and is now generally considered one of the worlds most serious environmental problems. There is (2)___________ about how much forest has been disappearing, but few people doubt there is much less forest now than there was, say, fifty years ago. Deforestation leads to the extinction of many (3)___________of forest animals and the erosion of soil after trees have been removed, but the (4)___________of deforestation that we hear most about is its contribution to global warming. Trees naturally absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) from the Earths atmosphere, so (5)___________ trees means higher levels of CO2, which contributes to the atmosphere becoming warmer. Many scientists estimate that about 20% of global warming is due to (6)___________.

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT

WHAT IS CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT?

It is giving the opportunity to the students to