What do teachers and students expect in assessing writing?

Talking about writing is difficult for me to think of a way of assessment different to correct grammatical structures, punctuation and connection between the ideas in a passage written by the student. Well, that was the first idea I had before I read the chapter. But, what is the goal of assessing writing? I would have to say that it depends on what you want to evaluate and this just can be known once the purposes and objectives of the assessment are established concretely.

Assessing writing is a production skill which requires all the knowledge we have of our foreign or even native language to perform correctly. It is noticeable that students don't like much writing and this reluctancy increases the problems to improve this skill. In my opinion, the importance of motivation and  the creation of dynamic activities to increase writing practice will give forceful results. Of course, we as teachers will have the task to achieve this change of perspective in our students.

Once the students are motivated they will expect to write correctly in order to express their ideas. Here, this chapter is really useful, because the aspiration of professors and students is to write perfectly. So, what the students expect is to receive detailed feedback in their compositions and learn specific strategies to improve their written style.

We need to be aware of the role we are playing in our students learning process. The importance of establishing precise goal in writing assessment will influence how significant and effective is our teaching and more important, the student's process.

Assessing Speaking

Assessing speaking requires to consider several elements of the process of learning. Not only pronunciation, but also grammar, vocabulary and of course listening are aspects that take part of the speaking performance of a student. The last mentioned (listening) is directly related to speaking, according to Brown, " No speaking task is capable of isolating the single skill of oral production. Concurrent involvement of the additional performance of aural comprehension, and possible reading, is usually necessary". This means that, oral performance is supported by aural performance. 

Another aspect that is necessary when we assess speaking is the specification of criteria. Once we design a task is important to consider that test-takers can provide an infinite number of options to a question. For this, the objectives of the assessment need to be clear and easy to guarantee dependable evaluations.

The last relevant aspect in assessment speaking is related to the effectiveness of the scoring the procedures, which should be reliable. In order to accomplish this, Brown states, " Because of the above two characteristics of oral production assessment, it is important to carefully specify scoring procedures for a response so that ultimately you achieve as high a reliability index as possible".

PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT

Some people think of testing as an easy and funny activity for professors, but contrast to this, testing is an important tool for assessment and it must be applied effectively. The big question for most of us is: when is a test effective? According to Brown, the only way to recognize this efficacy is "testing a test", which means to analyze the following principles: practicality, reliability, authenticity, validity, and washback.

Practicality conveys that a test has to be functional as for professors as for students. Long tests that require a lot of time to be evaluated are impractical for professors, who most time have to score more than one group of test-takers. It is similar, when a test can only be scored for a machine, what about if this machine got broken?A practical test must not be unreasonable expensive or take so much time, it must be easy to apply and score.

Reliability is another important principle for a test. As humans, we are not exempted from committing errors, so before an exam is applied, it is necessary to check twice and avoid the affections from external factors, to score all tests with the same criteria and well-judgement. On the other hand, validity implies to evaluate what has to be evaluated. For instance, present simple structures are taught in a class lesson, but the professor evaluates simple progressive; obviously, the student would get lost being tested about a topic that have not learnt. 

Two other principles are significantly mentioned by the author as part of a well-done test: authenticity and washback. The first one refers to the real-life contextualization that a test must have, meaning, the test must contain an everyday language, present real situations and be interesting for the student. The second one also called feedback is the ideal finish for each test. Once, the exams have been received, students need to know why they got a good or bad scored, providing this washback, students will have meaningful understanding of their mistakes and can solve final doubts.

All the previous elements need to be incorporated in our tests to diminish our constant waisting of time and provide fair exams to our students. 

Classroom-based evaluation in second language

Classroom-based evaluation in second language

Some English teachers think of evaluation as the simple action of grading academic performance of students in order to make them pass or fail the course. Once the book "Classroom-based evaluation in second language"(Genesee and Upshur) is read, the perspective and idea of what evaluation really is, changes. 

Genesee and Upshur take into account the many decisions that teachers have to make every single day in classrooms and the different roles that as teachers as parents and students play in the process of evaluation. The kind of information evaluated is also important. It is not only academic achievement, but other factors as behavior, attitude,goals and needs, work habits, learning styles and strategies have to be considered when a student is assessed. 

The book proposes different reasons for doing assessment: purpose of evaluating, collecting information, interpreting this information and decision making. Also, some reasons for classroom-based evaluation are considered, such as to make decisions about a successful instruction for an entire class, to ascertain the effectiveness of particular instructional units with the idea of improving them and to encourage student involvement in formulating personal learning objectives.

Finally, a strategy for conducting evaluation is given, starting with determining what information is useful, checking ways of collecting information, making sense of evaluating information and making appropriate decisions.

The first step is done... :)