Personal reaction to the workshop on " Assessin g English Language Learners"

My Thoughts;

Great teacher, great classes along with all the colleagues and stuff, lern a lot in my own way.

Posting my reading reactions weren't that easy for me, but there is always this little feeling inside to ask someone who knows more, or even trying myself until I get through or get out ( this is supposed to be funny) , the thing is, I discovered that life is a continuos learning process for kids from 1 to 92, whether in a classroom or out there in the real, and that is great, cause there is where I know for sure, that I don't know it all and that we must be open to newness and surprises even when they bring a touch of bitterness with them sometimes.

I thank God for people like my teacher Dr.Gilberto Hernández whom I learned a lot from, and his special way to deal with us learners, so understanding, full of joy when together, made us all felt like one set, never different.

My best regards to him and wihes of lots of blessings to his family. Love you teach...., be blessed where ever life may take you....!

Chapter # 1


The Process of Developing Assessment

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During the process of observation that frequently teachers go through every day, assessment has an important role, in other words, it covers a range of activities that takes into consideration student’s performance in class to large-scale standardized exams.

Assessments include the phases of planning, development, administration, analysis, feedback and reflection. Teachers at times can be working in several different phases.

Assessment dills with series of process that will enhance the learning of both teachers and students who are engage in the second language acquisition. The following processes are:


 Planning: here you need to decide on the purpose of assessment taking into considerations the abilities, resources and target language use.


 Specifications: they provide a common set of criteria for development and evaluation.



 Constructing the Assessment: write your tests in a way that anybody can understand it, permit that your colleagues carefully examined items you wrote as you have scrutinized theirs.


 Preparing students: students need accurate information about assessment, developing good test-taking skills, also, what they will cover in terms of skills and materials, how much the assessment are worth, and when students can reasonably get their results.

 Assessment in the Larger Cycle: here it is important to schedule time for analysis, feedback, and reflection.

Chapter # 2


Techniques for Testing

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Design tests and assessment tasks based on blueprints or tests specifications.

It is easier to create parallel items/if test developers follow a blueprint or test specification. If you don’t have a test specification but do have an assessment

Task that works, analyze what the task entails and write a specification to fit it.

Ensure the format remains the same within one section of the exam.

It is confusing to mix formats within the same section of a test.


Make sure the item format is correctly matched to the test purpose and course content.

Test items should relate to curricular objectives. Teachers should think about what they are trying to test and match their purpose with the item format that most closely resembles it.

When the items in the test does not corresponds, students are first to notice that some things in it were not studied or practiced in class.


Include items of varying levels of difficulty.

Present items of different levels of difficulty throughout the test from easy to difficult.

Chapter # 3

Assessing Reading

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Make sure your assessment matches your reading program.

Test the skills you teach , and consider the target situation of your learners when developing reading assessment.


Choose a range of text types appropriate to your program.

Consider students’ background knowledge and interests in selecting texts. Some familiarity with the topic or vocabulary aids comprehension. However, students should actually have to read the text and not simply rely on prior knowledge in responding to questions. ( Never use texts that students have already read)


Use authentic or adapted texts whenever possible.

Check the texts for readability levels and vocabulary. Be certain that copied authentic materials are legible…., credit your sources !


Exploit the entire text.

Vary whole-text questions with those that focus on specific sections. Questions should cover all sections of a text.

Assess inferencing and critical thinking.

It is easy to ask questions about specific, stated details, but much more challenging to create items that require students to think beyond the printed text. Include questions that require students to think beyond what they see in print.

Chapter # 4


Assessing Writing
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Give students multiple writing assessment opportunities.

Provide plenty of opportunities for students of all levels to practice the type of writing that you expect them to do on the writing test. Often teachers avoid writing until exam time because it is a lot of work to individually mark several drafts of the same essay.


Develop prompts that are appropriate for the students.

The prompts you select or develop should invite the desired type of writing. They should be realistic and sensitive to the cultural background of the student. Choose subjects within the realm of your students’ experience.

Evaluate all answers to one question before going on to the next.

This practice prevents a shifting of standards from one question to the next and helps the rater mark more consistently.


Mark only what the student has written.

Don’t be influenced by other factors in addition to the quality of the work, such as the quality or legibility of the handwriting.


Get students involved.

Get students involved in developing and marking their writing tests. Have them suggest prompts they’d like to write on and get them involved in peer assessment. Share whatever scoring criteria and rubrics you use with students. Transparency can help students internalize the rubric so that it becomes a natural part of their editing process.

Chapter # 5


Assessing Listening
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“ Valid and reliable testing of listening comprehension is a complex process”.
Assess listening comprehension even though it is difficult to assess .

One reason for the neglect of listening assessment materials is the unavailability of culturally appropriate listening materials suitable for ESL/EFL contexts. The biggest challenges for teaching and assessing listening comprehension concern the production of listening materials Indeed, listening comprehension assessment is often avoided because of the time, effort, and expense required to develop, rehearse, and record, and produce high-quality audiotapes or CDs.

Reading texts most be converted to listening texts.

A written text lacks oral features. The closer a text is to oral language, the more appropriate it will be to assess students’ listening comprehension.

Give credit for what students know.
Don’t deduct for spelling or grammar mistakes when your focus is on listening comprehension.

Don’t just test what is easy to test.

Many teachers focus their tests items on local information ( e.g., numbers, dates, places) because these detail-focused items are easier to write than items that focus on meaning. Make sure your major is on meaning. Include higher-order thinking skills as well.

Give students a reason for listening.

The purpose of the listening activity should resemble those in real-life situations. Input should have a communicative purpose. In other words, the listener must have a reason for listening.

Chapter # 6


Assessing Speaking

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Choose tasks that generate positive washback for the teaching and learning.



Select speaking assessment tasks that have a positive effect on the teaching and learning process. These tasks should be as authentic as possible.

Allow time for a warm-up.

A warm-up will probably improve results. Speaking tests can be traumatic for second language learners. Use a warm-up activity to put students at ease.

Keep skill contamination in mind.

Don’t give students lengthy written instructions that must be read and understood before speaking.

Try to personalize the tests by using the students’ names.

Address students by their name to personalize the test. If you make personal comments, do not monopolize the exam by talking too much.

Never mark the test in front of the students.

It is distracting for students to see teachers marking in front of them. The best solution is to have two teachers administer the oral assessment, one functioning as interlocutor and the other as assessor in the background. If you administer a speaking test alone, wait until students have left the room before you record their marks. If you must take notes during the exam, make sure you tell students before-hand that you’ll be doing this.

The Advantages of Rubrics

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A rubric is a scoring guide that seeks to evaluate a student’s performance based on the sum of a full range of criteria rather than a single numerical score.



A rubric is an authentic assessment tool used to measure students’ work.



Authentic assessment is used to evaluate students’ work by measuring the product according to real-life criteria. The same criteria used to judge a published author would be used to evaluate students’ writing.



A rubric is a working guide for students and teachers, usually handled out before the assignment begins in order to get students to think about the criteria on which their work will be judged.



A rubric enhances the quality of direct instruction.



Once developed, they can be modified easily for various grade levels.





Why use rubrics ?



It’s believed by many experts that rubrics improve students’ end products and therefore increase learning. When papers or projects are evaluated by teachers, they know implicitly what makes a good final product and why. When students receive rubrics beforehand, they understand how they will be evaluated and can prepare accordingly. Developing a grid and making it available as a tool for students’ use will provide the scaffolding necessary to improve the quality of their work and increase their knowledge.



There are many advantages to using rubrics:



-Teachers can increase the quality of their direct instruction by providing focus, emphasis, and attention to particular details as a model for students.

-Students have specific guidelines regarding teacher expectations.

-Students can use rubrics as a tool to develop their abilities.

-Teachers can reuse rubrics for various activities.





Analytic rubrics identify and assess components of a finished product.

Holistic rubrics assess student work as a whole.

Practical Assessments


Research and Evaluation


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Chapter # 8


Administering Assessment


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Accommodations Policy

Make sure you have an accommodations policy for students who have medical problems or are physically challenged.



Create a positive attitude toward testing.

Use tests to motivate your students by convincing them that their test results will be used to help them learn.



Be transparent.

Explain the test purpose to students and what the test results will be used for.



Prepare policies and procedures well in advance.

Make sure that everyone involved in test administration is aware of policies and procedures. Questions or concerns should be raised at a time apart from test.



Refrain from helping students who are having difficulty.

As teachers, it is only natural to want to help who are having difficulty time. However, this is unfair to those students who have prepared sufficiently. Resist the urge to help students and do not give hints.



Adopt a special needs assessment policy.

Make sure you have accommodation policy in place for students who have special needs.

A Special Case for Young Learner Language Assessment


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Young Language Learners are those who are learning a foreign or second language and who are doing so during the first six or seven years of formal schooling.

Bilingual learners are learners who learn two ( or more) languages to some level of proficiency ( Bialystok, 2001 )



Children are growing cognitively, socially, emotionally and physically. They are developing literacy knowledge, skills and understandings that may or may not be transferred from their first language; young children take some time to develop in this way and most are still doing so as they begin to learn the new language at school.





Assessment has the power to change children’s lives; the effect of assessment may be positive or negative. Effective assessment provides valuable information to educators, parents, administrators and students themselves. Young learners are particularly vulnerable in their formative years to assessment that sends messages of worth and status and that thus perpetuates power relationships in society. Teachers and assessors are obliged to examine the impact of their assessment on young learners and to work towards a positive impact for the present and future.

Tests for Young Learners

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Why we have to test young language learners?, not everyone does it ; in Norway, for example, where the learning of English appears to be highly successful, children up to the age of thirteen are not formally tested in the subject.

The answer might be that we want to be sure that the teaching programme is effective, that the children are really benefiting from the chance to learn a language at an early age.

Why is testing rather than assessment by other means necessary?

There is a need for a yardstick, which tests give, in order to make meaningful comparisons.

Such testing provides an opportunity to develop positive attitudes towards assessment, to help them recognize the value of assessment.

Three general recommendations are,



Special effort be made to make testing an integral part of assessment, and assessment an integral part of the teaching programme.

( All three should be consistent with each), other in terms of learning objectives and, as far as possible, the kinds of tasks which the children are expected to perform.

Feedback from tests ( and feedback from assessment generally) should be immediate and positive. By this, its value will be maximized. By telling children not only what their weaknesses are but also what they have done well, the potential demoralizing effect of test is lessened.

Self assessment by children be made a part of the teaching programme.This will help them to develop the habit of monitoring their own progress. It should also allow them to take pleasure in what they are achieving.

My glosary

My Glossary








During my learning process using the implements of Assessing English Language Learners guidelines from Coombe (2007), I have learned the following words which are forming part of my lexico and glossary.



1. Validity: this term refers to the extent to which a test measures what it says it measures.

2. Benchmark: a reference to evaluate or check by comparison.

3. Bolsters: encourage, or reinforce, tool that provide structural support.

4. Procrastination: it's postponed, do it later.



5. Whining: to utter a plaintive, high-pitched, protracted sound, as in pain, fear, supplication, or complaint.

6. Cue: it's a reminder.

Chapter # 1 The Process of Developing Assessment

Reaction paper

by Lcda. Sylvia Johnson Smith

During the process of observation that frequently teachers go through every day, assessment has an important role, in other words, it covers a range of activities that takes into consideration student’s performance in class to large-scale standardized exams.

Assessments include the phases of planning, development, administration, analysis, feedback and reflection.   Teachers at times can be working in several different phases.

Assessment dills with series of process that will enhance the learning of both teachers and students who are engage in the second language acquisition.  The following processes are:

v Planning:  here you need to decide on the purpose of assessment taking into considerations the abilities, resources and target language use.

v Specifications: they provide a common set of criteria for development and evaluation.

v Constructing the Assessment: write your tests in a way that anybody can understand it, permit that your colleagues carefully examined items you wrote as you have scrutinized theirs.

v Preparing students:  students need accurate information about assessment, developing good test-taking skills, also, what they will cover in terms of skills and materials, how much the assessment are worth, and when students can reasonably get their results.

v Assessment in the Larger Cycle:  here it is important to schedule time for analysis, feedback, and reflection.

 

THE CORNERSTONE OF TESTING

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USEFULNESS;

Bachman and Palmer (1996), thinks that the most important consideration in the design and devlopment of a language test, is the use for which it is intended. This " usefulness " to them is a very important quality or cornerstone of testing.

VALIDITY;

This term refers to the extent to which a test measures what it says it measures. For instance, test what you teach, and how you teach it. Types of the ( validity ), include content, construct, and face. For classroom teachers, this means that the test assesses the course content and outcomes using familiar formats that students are alredy aquainted with. The construction of it means to " fit " between the underlying theories and metodology of language learning and the type of assessment.
Examples of the matchings are:
Communicative language learning approach equals communicative language testing.
Face validity equals test measures what it is supposed to measure.
for both students and administrators, this is equaly important.

FUNDAMENTALS OF LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT;
It is important that we be clear about what we want to assess and be sure that we are assessing that and not something else. Making sure that clear assessment objectives are met is of primary importance in achieving test validity. The best way to ensure validity is to produce tests to specifications. Students for the most part are usally the best ones to judge when issues are not clear to them towards a test, they would simply send up a noise to have the teacher's attention according to test setting and it's content, if  non-familiar elements are discovered therein. 

RELIABILITY;
Reliability refers to the consistency of test scores. It simply means that a test would give similar results if it were given at another time. For example, if the same test were to be administered to the same group of students at two different times, in two different settings, it should not make any difference to the test taker whether he/she takes the test on one occasion and in one setting or the other. Similarly, if we develop two forms of a test that are intended to be used interchangeably, it should not make any difference to the test taker which form or version of the test he/she takes. The student should obtain about the same score on either form or version of the test.
Three important factors affect test reliability. Test factors such as the formats and content of the questions and the length of the exam must be consistent. For example, testing research shows that longer exams produce more reliable results than very brief quizzes. In general, the more items on a test, the more reliable it is considered to be. Administrative factors are also important for reliability. These include the classroom setting (lighting, seating arrangements, acoustics, lack of intrusive noise etc.) and how the teacher manages the exam administration. Affective factors in the response of individual students can also affect reliability. Test anxiety can be allayed by coaching students in good test-taking strategies

INTRODUCTION TO ISSUES IN LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT AND TERMINOLOGY

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In today's language classrooms, the term assessment usually evokes ( brings to mind ), images of an end-of-course paper- and-pencil test designed to tell both teachers and students how much material the student doen't know or hasn't yet mastered. However,assessment is much more than tests. Assessment includes a broad range of activities and tasks that teachers use to evaluate progress and growthon a daily basis.

ASSESSING ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

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In every way of life we need instructions; and English as a second language teaching assessment is not an exception.
Good assessment mirrors good teaching, they go hand in hand. Because there are such a great variety of English teaching settings, there are also a variety of techniques.
Regardless of the setting in which you teach, assessment should be a part of instruction from the very beginning of class planning.
One will go under the light of certain situations through the experiencies of some teachers in order to:

* understand the cornerstones of all good assessment
* learn useful techniques for testing and alternative assessment
* become aware of issues in assessing reading, writing, listening, and speaking
* discover ways to help your students develop good test-taking strategies
* become familiar with the processes and procedures of assessment