Page 179 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

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Basic Principles of Assessment

Chapter Objectives
• Understanding the difference between assessment, evaluation
and testing
• Recognizing the characteristics of different types of assessment
• Understanding the principles of effective assessment

Assessment is not only an ongoing and indispensable part of teaching but
also an essential dimension of our everyday lives. We may not be aware of it
but in our day-to-day activities (watching TV, reading a newspaper article, or
having a conversation with a friend), we tend to gather information on what
is good and not so good, what needs to be changed and/or improved, what
makes sense, whether the activity has a relevant purpose for us or not, etc.
We may refer to these activities as unstructured assessment which is carried
out all the time and is not usually associated with negative feelings or expe-
riences. With assessment in school, however, students, but also teachers and
parentsoften developnegativefeelingsandattitudes.Thismaybedueto dif-
ferent reasons, such as one’s bad experiences, unfair judgment of our work,
a tense atmosphere when being assessed or not understanding the purpose
of the test tasks. While YLs have not yet had the time to develop negative
attitudes or experiences of assessment, they are extremely sensitive to their
teachers’ and parents’ beliefs, attitudes, and assumptions. Therefore, what,
and how we assess matters a great deal.
Assessment for teaching purposes is generally defined as the process of
systematically gathering information from multiple and diverse sources and
making inferences about the students to develop a deep understanding of
what students know, understand, and can do (Huba & Freed, 2000). In other
words, assessment is the systematic basis for making inferences about the
learning and development of students.
AsYLsdifferfromadult learnersorteenagersin avarietyofways,theyneed
to be presented with carefully designed assessment tasks that they can per-
form either individually or in pairs/groups (Shin & Crandall, 2014, p. 245). Be-
fore assessment can take place, we first need to consider the learners’ age,
together with their cognitive, motor, linguistic, emotional, and social devel-
opment. They are still in the process of developing literacy, knowledge, and
skills in their L1 and may, especially in the early stages, still struggle with un-
derstandinghowreadingandwritingwork (McKay,2006).TheYLs’classroom

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