Assessment is any systematic way
of finding out about people’s levels of
knowledge or skills, in our case the people are Young
Language Learners.
1. Purposes for Assessment
Assessment can take place for
different purposes:
a. Formative purposes - directed towards
helping teachers to adjust their teaching in order to
support the learners better, or
towards advising learners how to adjust their own approaches -
and this would take place throughout a
course of teaching.
and/or
b. Summative purposes - to see how well
learners have done at the end of a period of
teaching. The results of summative
assessment are often used to affect learners’ chances
(e.g. selection or rejection for the
next stage of learning, deciding who wins the prize, who
gets the scholarship money).
Both formative and summative
assessment can have an impact on children’s motivation, but
in different ways. Formative
assessment is more likely to be associated with positive feelings
by learners towards the subject studied, while summative
assessment need not be associated with too many negative feelings if it is felt
to be ‘fair’ in some of the ways discussed below.
2. Assessment processes
Assessment can involve a variety of
different processes. These may include conventional
testing but assessment processes are
by no means limited to this.
Assessment processes can include the
following:
• observation and
systematic record-keeping of learners during everyday normal
• learning activities
• careful scrutiny of
children’s course work, including homework
• possible special
events such as pencil and paper tests or oral interviews.
• compilation by the
children of a portfolio of work that they have chosen to represent
their achievements over a period [a
term, a year]
• self-assessment by
the learners themselves as part of the information collected
• discussion between
the teacher and learners about work produced or chosen, for
example, for a portfolio and the
learners’ reasons for choosing the samples of their
work.
Different assessment
cultures
Different societies have different
practices and different attitudes towards basic matters such
as who receives the results of different types of
assessment and how they are reported.
Technical
details of assessment procedures
Many EYL teachers especially ‘new’
ones are very unclear about the technical side of
assessment. During the session we
looked at several simply remedied ‘bad’ testing
items. For example, the very
popular matching task [pictures to words, first halves of
sentences to their completions]
can be answered by elimination once the child is sure
of one or two answers. It also ‘forces’
results which are either mostly right or
disastrously wrong since a
mistake, once made will be compounded as future choices
are limited by it.
Assessment and
Evaluation
Administrators who want to
evaluate a Young Learner’s programme are often looking
for ‘objective’ proofs of the
benefits of the enterprise. There is a tendency to see
assessment results as the ‘best’
kind of evidence, and to pay less attention to other
instruments such as observation
or interview data with children and teachers. Tests
linked with Evaluation programmes
can come with the danger of the ‘glass ceiling’
effect. Some that I have seen are
so unchallenging that most pupils are scoring high.
This may seem good news in a
climate of anxiety to demonstrate success, but if such
tests do not allow the full range
of achievement to show itself precious information is
being lost.
Specially recommended
single papers and chapters
Cameron, L. (2001) Assessment and
Language Learning in Cameron, L. Teaching
Languages to Young Learners,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Deci, E. L., and Ryan R. M. (1985)
Instrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human
Behaviour NY: Plenum Press.
Dossena, M, (1997) Testing oral
production at primary level: what means for what ends?
in A.C. McLean [ed] SIG Selections
1997, Special Interests in ELT, Whitstable, IATEFL:
pp 110-114
Hasselgren, A. (2000) The
Assessment of the English Ability of Young Learners in
Norwegian Schools: an
innovative approach in
Rea-Dickins (ed.) (2000).
Johnstone, R. (2000) Context-sensitive
Assessment of Foreign Language in Primary
(Elementary) and
early Secondary Education: Scotland and the European Experience in
Rea-Dickins (ed.) (2000).
Rea-Dickins, P and Rixon, S, 1997, The
Assessment of Young Learners of English as a
Foreign Language in Clapham, C and
Corson, D (eds.) pp. 151-161.
Rea-Dickins, P. and Gardner, S. (2000)
Snares and Silver Bullets: Disentangling the
Construct of
Formative Assessment in
Rea-Dickins (ed.) (2000).
Smith, K. (1995) Assessing and
Testing Young Learners: Can we? Should we? in
Allen, D. (ed.) pp. 1-10.
Smith, K. (2002) Learner Portfolios English
Teaching Professional, Issue 22, January
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