TESTING, ASSESSING, AND TEACHING Lecture 2 TESTING, ASSESSING, AND TEACHING - Assessment and Teaching - Approaches to language Testing - Current Issues in Classroom Testing Brown, 2004 p. 5-17

*In this lecture we are expected to discuss some common assessment terms such as: - Informal and formal assessment - Formative and summative assessment - Traditional and alternative assessment - Norm-referenced and criterion- referenced tests - Approaches and current issues in classroom testing

Assessment Types: Informal assessment: is embedded in classroom tasks designed to elicit performance without recording results and making fixed judgment about students’ performance Examples: Responding to a draft of an essay, advice about how better pronounce a word and showing how to modify a student’s note taking to better remember the content of a lecture.

Informal assessment involves: • systematically observing and monitoring students during the class. • interacting with students to gain a deeper knowledge of what they know, understand and can do. • circulating the classroom and posing questions, guiding investigations, motivating and quizzing students. • providing opportunities for students to present or report upon their learning and teaching experiences.

2) Formal assessment: are exercises or procedures specifically designed to tap into a storehouse of skills and knowledge. They are systematic, planned sampling techniques constructed to give teacher and student an appraisal of student achievement. Formal assessment involves: • the use of specific assessment strategies to determine the degree to which students have achieved the learning outcomes. • individual and/or collaborative tasks that usually attract a mark

Is formal assessment the same as a test? We can say that all tests are formal assessment, but not all formal assessment is testing. Can you elaborate more? (p.6)

3) Formative assessment: evaluating students in the process of forming their competencies and skills with the goal of helping them to continue that growth. The key factors to such formation are: - The delivery (by the teacher). - Internalization (by the students) of appropriate feedback on performance. - An eye toward the future continuation (or formation) of learning. Do you agree that: *All kinds of informal assessment are (or should be formative) ? (p.6)

Formative assessment: • is the practice of building a cumulative record of student achievement. • usually takes place during day to day learning experiences and involves ongoing, informal observations throughout the term, course, semester or unit of study. • is used to monitor students’ ongoing progress and to provide immediate and meaningful feedback. • assists teachers in modifying or extending their programmes or adapting their learning and teaching methods. • is very applicable and helpful during early group work processes.

4) Summative assessment: aims to measure, or summarize, what a student has grasped, and typically occur at the end of a course or unit of instruction. Example: Final exams in a course and general proficiency exams.

Summative assessment: • assists you to make judgements about student achievement at certain relevant points in the learning process or unit of study (e.g. end of course, project, semester, unit, year). • can be used formally to measure the level of achievement of learning outcomes. • can also be used to judge programme, teaching and/or unit of study effectiveness (that is as a form of evaluation).

5) Norm-Referenced Tests: the purpose in such tests is to place test-takers along a mathematical continuum in rank order. Examples: -Standardized test (SAT) - English as a Foreign Language (TOFEL) *Such tests must have fixed, predetermined responses in a format that can be scored quickly at minimum expense. Money and efficiency are primary concerns in these tests.

6) Criterion-Referenced Tests : are designed to give test-takers feedback, usually in the form of grades, on specific course or lesson objectives. Example: Classroom tests involving students in one class only and connected to a curriculum. *In these tests much time and effort are required from the teacher in order to deliver useful and appropriate feedback (instructional value).

Compare between Norm-Referenced and Criterion-Referenced tests.

Traditional and Alternative Assessment Table 1 Traditional and Alternative Assessment Table 1.1 highlights the differences between the two approaches Alternative to what? Paper & pencil exams Alternatives: lab work / research projects portfolios presentations research papers essays self-assessment / peer assessment lab practical classroom “clickers” or responder pads

Table 1. Traditional vs. Authentic Assessment Methods Traditional Assessment Authentic Assessment Generally relies on forced-choice, written measures 1) Promotes integration of various written and performance measures Relies on proxy measures of student learning to represent target skills 2) Relies on direct measures of target skills Encourages memorization of correct answers 3) Encourages divergent thinking in generating possible answers Goal is to measure acquisition of knowledge 4) Goal is to enhance development of meaningful skills Curriculum directs assessment 5) Assessment directs curriculum

Emphasis on developing a body of knowledge 6) Emphasis on ensuring proficiency at real-world tasks Promotes “what” knowledge 7) Promotes “how” knowledge Priority on summative outcomes or product 8) Priority on the learning sequence or process Emphasizes competition 9) Emphasizes cooperation Targets simplistic skills or tasks in a concrete, singular fashion 10) Prepares students for ambiguities and exceptions that are found in realistic problem settings Provides a one-time snapshot of student understanding 11) Provides an examination of learning over time

Examples of each Assessment Type Summative - for performance assessment Informal - active questioning during and at the end of class Alternative-presentations, book reviews, peers and self assessment. Formative - for performance enhancement Formal - quizzes, tests, essays, lab reports, etc. Traditional - tests, quizzes, homework , lab reports.

Norm-referenced: rank order, money &effort, general skills. Brief comparison Norm-referenced: rank order, money &effort, general skills. Criterion-referenced: grades, feedback, content and specific skills. Informal: to check, no marks Formal: to test, marks Formative: ongoing progress, during Summative: at the end, judgment.

Approaches to language testing: A brief history: 1950s → an era of behaviorism and constructive analysis, testing focused on specific language elements such as the phonological, grammatical and lexical contrasts between two languages. 1970s & 1980s →communicative language theories brought a more integrative view of testing. 1983 tell → Today, test designers are challenged in their quest for more authentic, valid instruments that stimulate real world interaction.

Discrete-point tests: are constructed on the assumption that language can be broken down into its component parts and that those parts can be tested successfully. These components are the skills of listening, reading, writing, speaking and various units of language of phonology, morphology, lexicon, syntax and discourse. Such an approach demanded a decontexualization that often confused the test-taker.

2) Integrative tests: Two types of tests have been claimed to be examples of integrative tests: (P. 8 & 9) Cloze test: is a reading passage (150 to 300 words) in which roughly every sixth or seventh word has been deleted; the test-takers are required to supply words that fit into those blanks. Dictation: is a familiar language teaching technique that evolved into a testing technique. Learners listen to a passage of 100 to 150 words read aloud by the teacher and write what they hear, using correct spelling.

Unitary trait hypothesis: which suggested “indivisible” view of language proficiency: that vocabulary, grammar, phonology, the four skills and other discrete points of language could not be disentangled from each other in language performance.

3) Communicative language testing: Argue that integrative tests like cloze only tests learner’s linguistic competence, and they don’t tell us about the learner’s performance ability. Question for authenticity was launched, as test designers centered on communicative performance.

Strategic competence: the ability to employ communicative strategies to compensate for breakdowns as well as to enhance the effect of utterances in the process of communication. * Test constructors began to identify the kinds of real-world tasks that language learners were called upon to perform. They also cared about measuring language proficiency and authenticity of tasks.

Can you compare between paper and pencil tests and performance-based assessment…(p.11) 4) Performance-based assessment: involve learners in actually performing the behavior that we want to measure. In interactive tasks, test-takers are measured in the act of speaking, requesting, responding, or in combining listening and speaking, and in integrating reading and writing. Paper and pencil tests do not elicit such communicative performance. Example of interactive language assessment procedure is an oral interview.

Current issues in classroom testing *New ways in Intelligence: Intelligence: was once viewed as only the ability to perform linguistic and logical- mathematical problem solving. *Gardner (1983,1999) included five “frames of mind” in his theory of multiple intelligences. (p. 12) 1) logical-Mathematical 2) Linguistic 3) Visual-Spatial 4) bodily-kinesthetic 5) Interpersonal 6) Intrapersonal 7) Musical

Computer- Based Testing: in such tests the test-taker performs responses on a computer. Almost all computer- based test items have fixed, closed-ended responses like the test of English as a foreign language (TOEFL). Some computer-based tests (also known as “computer assisted” or “web-based” tests) are small scale “home-grown” tests available on websites. A specific type of computer-based test, a computer-adaptive test.

computer-adaptive tests (CAT): test taker receives a set of questions that meet the test specifications and that are appropriate for his or her performance level. The CAT starts with questions of moderate difficulty moving to questions of greater or equal difficulty. The answers are scored by the computer. The test-taker can only see one question each time, they cannot skip or go back to any other question.

** Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of Computer- Based Testing. (p.14-15) **The following websites provide further information and examples of computer-based and standardized tests: www.ets.org www.toefl.org www.toeic.com www.ielts.org www.eslcafe.com

Chapter two: Principles of language assessment Next week Brown, H. Douglas, 2004. Language Assessment: Principles and classroom practices. Pearson Education, Inc. Chapter two: Principles of language assessment (P, 19-41)

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