The Significance of Language Assessment in Language Teaching and Alternatives in Assessments

Language Assessment Definition and Purpose

               Assessment is one of the elements in language teaching. It shows relation among what teachers teach, what students learn, and the objectives of language teaching. Teachers perform assessment to find how far the learners comprehend what they have learned. Assessment enables teachers to decide what learners should improve, make up, or perhaps do remedial learning. McNamara in Bachman and Palmer (1996) argues that language assessment can make inferences about individual’s capability to perform future tasks or jobs that require language use, and inferences about ability to use language in the future tasks or job. Bachman and Palmer assert that assessment helps to make decisions about test takers, teachers, and programs. It can provide evidence of the results of learning and instructions, and feedback on the effectiveness of teaching program.

            Assessment is sometimes assumed the same as the the “test” term. Assessment is actually broader than test. Test is a part of assessment in teaching. Teachers use test as one of procedures to assess learners (Brown, 2004). The aim of language assessment is to gather information about student’s ability; make decisions and lead to advantageous consequences for stakeholders (Bachman and Damböck, 2018).

Classroom Assessment Purposes

            Assessment is carried out for a number of purposes. Such purposes depend on the requirements of the class, students, teaching objectives, and time of assessment.

            Teachers run formative assessment to check the progress of their students, to see how far they have mastered what they should have learned. After that, teachers modify their future learning plans by using the information from the assessment (Hughes, 2003). In formative assessment, the teachers aim to evaluate students in the process of ‘forming’ their competencies and skills to help them to continue the growth process (Brown, 2004).

            Summative assessment is used to measure what teaching objectives students have accomplished . Summative assessment is run at the end of course or unit of instruction or semester or year (Hughes, 2003: Brown, 2004).

            Both formative and summative assessments are important for teachers to implement in language classroom. Formative assessment which is undertaken as ongoing process of classroom teaching probably would be an informal situation such as students giving oral answer to teacher’s questions. The teacher then responds by saying e.g. “good job”, “can you add more to your answer” etc. Teachers ‘s comment on student’s answer is beneficial as feedback for student’s progress in learning process. For the teachers, student’s answer represents their understanding of teaching process. Both formative and summative assessments help  the teachers to measure which part of teaching objectives have been achieved and which ones that haven’t.

Alternatives in Assessments

            In this part we are going to present positive characteristics for alternatives in assessment and  categories of alternatives in assessments as proposed by Brown and Hudson (1998). The first part is positive characteristics of alternatives in assessments, next, categories of alternatives in assessments. Brown and Hudson use the term “alternatives in assessments” rather than alternative assessments because alternative assessments refer to something different and new. Here are the positive characteristics of the alternatives in assessment:

1. require students to perform, create, produce, or do something;

2. use real world contexts or simulations;

3. are non-intrusive in that they extend the day-to-day classroom activities;

4. allow students to be assessed on what they normally do in classroom activities;

5. use task that represent meaningful instructions activities;

6. focus on processes as well as products;

7. tap into higher-level thinking and problem-solving activities;

8. provide information about both the strengths and weakness of students;

9. are multiculturally sensitive when properly administered;

10. ensure that people, not machines, do the scoring, using human judgment;

11. encourage open disclosure of standards and rating criteria; and

12. call upon teachers to perform new instructional and assessments roles.

Categories of Alternatives in Assessments

            Alternatives in assessments is classified into three categories: selected-response assessments, constructed-response assessments, and personal-response assessments. Each type has advantages and disadvantages.

Selected-Response Assessments

            Selected-response assessments require students to choose a correct answer from some options. Selected-response assessments is quick, easy, and relatively objective. In this assessments students do not produce any language. Listening and reading skills are appropiate to assess by these assessments. This kind of assessments are true-false, matching, and multiple-choice.

Constructed-Response Assessments

            In constructed-response assessments students produce language through writing, speaking, or taking another action. These assessments are suitable to measure productive skills such as speaking and writing. The positive side of these assessments is relatively objective. The drawback of of these assessments is the guessing factor. Types of constructed-response are fill-in, short answer, and performance assessments.

Personal-Response Assessments 

            Students need to produce language and communicate what they want to communicate in personal-response assessments. Personal-response assessments have their advantages such as they are individualized assessment, can be directly related to and integrated to into the curriculum, and can assess learning processes in an ongoing manner throughout the term of insruction. The disadvantages are the difficulty of producing them and the existence of subjective scoring. Types of personal-response assessments are conference, portofolio, and, self and peer assessments.

            Teachers are required to select which types of assessments are appropriate with class development and weigh their advantages and disadvantages. Teachers should always remember to make multiple observations while running the assessments. When making writing assessment, for example to make the asssessments are more reliable, the teachers can assess students using essays and journals rather than by short answer and fill-in only responses. For speaking, teachers can work in team as oral examiners assessing students ability, such as scoring a video portfolio. In the speaking assessment,  scoring made by two or more examiners is more reliable than by a single examiner.

Alternatives in assessments open the opportunity for teachers not only using one kind of assessment. The alternatives in assessments widen knowledge and  practice of teachers in assessment to measure students’ language ability and to achieve teaching objectives.

References

Bachman, L., & Palmer, A. (1998). Language Testing in Practice: Designing and Developing Useful Language Tests. Oxford University Press.

Baylis, W., (2020). Practical Tools for Online Assessment. The 3rd National Symposium on English Language Assessment. 22 October, 2020. Online Symposium.

Brown, J. D. & Hudson, T. (1998). The alternatives in language assessment. TESOL Quarterly, 32(4): 653–675.

Arthur Hughes.(2003). Testing for Language Teachers, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

Bachman, L., &  Damböck, B. (2018). Language Assessment for Language Teachers. Oxford University Press.

East, M. 2021. Foundational Principles of Task-Based Language Teaching. Routledge. Taylor & Francis. New York & London.