Assessment

To assess students is to evaluate their communicative performance. Pen and paper testing, also known as summative assessment, is a traditional way to assess students’ progress. Summative assessments can induce student anxiety and may not necessarily illustrate their linguistic abilities. There are alternative approaches for evaluating students’ development such as group discussions, asking information- and concept-checking questions, monitoring class activities, and exit tickets. These forms of assessment are known as formative assessment.

Formative Assessment

I try to use a variety of formative assessments in my classroom. They provide a more in-depth understanding of students’ day-to-day linguistic abilities. These include avoiding the question Do you understand? by asking concept-checking questions (CCQ) and information-checking questions (ICQ), circulating around the classroom during activities, and using exit tickets.

I learned to ask CCQs and ICQs for assessment during my CELTA course in 2011. Prior to the course, I was most comfortable with using “yes/no” questions to assess students’ communicative comprehension. I have since experimented with less controlled methods, such as asking students to explain tasks rather than answer”yes/no” questions. This has been a challenge for me while working at the Pacific Grove Adult School as a practicum student teacher. It was easier for my students to answer “yes/no” questions than to restate directions or explain concepts. I additionally found that more advanced students would volunteer to explain directions and concepts, which did not help the lower level students gain understanding.

Monitoring during individual, pair and group activities, and using exit-tickets are other approaches I use to gauge student comprehension. When I taught a lesson on California State and National Parks, I circulated around the classroom as students discussed exciting things to do and see at their park. It helped me understand whether students understood their tasks and could use the grammar I taught. In addition, I used an exit ticket in the final activity to evaluate students’ ability to accurately use the lesson’s grammar and vocabulary.

Summative Assessment

Summative assessment is also an important component in language teaching. To familiarize myself with commercial tests in the TESOL field, I reviewed the TOEFL iBT. This deepened my understanding of issues related to test validity and reliability. In addition, I designed a placement test for the Monterey YMCA. To ensure test validity and reliability, I piloted the test and measured item facility, item discrimination, response frequency distribution, internal consistency, inter-rater reliability, and inter-subtest correlations.

Since both summative and formative assessments are integral parts in language teaching, I created an assessment portfolio. It includes information on commercial tests, alternative assessments, assessing skills, and test items. It is resource I can draw upon in the future to guide me with innovative, yet valid and reliable, ideas for assessing students’ performance.