As we read assesment can also be applied to teachers and parents, in the first case to check if they are applying the syllabus entirely and if they are using the correct techniques so that the students can learn properly, and in the second case to know if the parents have an idea of their kids development and the schools study plan.

ADVANTAGES

Self assessment can provide us useful information about students’ expectations and needs, their problems and worries, how they feel about their own progress, their reactions to the materials and methods being used, what they think  about the course in general.

The most important benefits about self-assessment are related to its impacts on learning. Self assessment is an integral part of learning. To learn anything we need to assess what we know already and how we can improve.

Self assessment helps learners to think about their own progress and problems and then to find ways of changing, adapting and improving.

Classroom survey: past learning experiences

Even if students come from similar learning backgrounds it can be useful to get them to recall previous learning experiences. As well as reminding students of their past learning experiences the feedback from students can give us useful information to help our own planning.

DISADVANTAGES

I think that some of the disadvantages in self-assessing are that sometimes the students don’t really answer what they think, feel or have learnt during the course, because they might feel embarrassed in front of the teacher or may believe that the teacher is going to judge them or evaluate them differently.

Or on the other hand students don’t really care on what they answer in their self-assessment, they just answer anything   just to finish with the assessment.

That maybe they have the abilities but is some cases they don’t grade very well in certain activities so they start to doubt in their learning process.

DENISE VILLALOBOS HERNÁNDEZ

This type of questions promote the learners to assess their own knowledge on the second language and give intrinsic motivation with key elements to fell confidence and desire keep learning on the target language.

• In the following questionnaire going to response for your own the ability to use the target language in any life situation.

Marks with a (X) the things you feel able to do.

A) You can recognize familiar words and basic phrases with some else is speaking very fluently.

Able to do it (   )               Not able (   )               Have little difficulty (   )

B) You can understand the main points of a regular speech.

Able to do it (   )               Not able (   )               Have little difficulty (   )

C) I have no difficulty in understanding any kind of spoken language, whether live or broadcast, even when delivered at fast native speed, provided. I have some time to get familiar with the accent.

Able to do it (   )               Not able (   )               Have little difficulty (   )

D)  You can understand the description of events, feelings and wishes in personal letters.

Able to do it (   )               Not able (   )               Have little difficulty (   )

E)  You can  read articles and reports concerned with contemporary problems in which the writers adopt particular attitudes or viewpoints.

Able to do it (   )               Not able (   )               Have little difficulty (   )

F)  You can interact in a simple way provided the other person is prepared to repeat or rephrase things at a slower rate of speech and help me formulate what I’m trying to say.

Able to do it (   )               Not able (   )               Have little difficulty (   )

G) You can communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar topics and activities.

Able to do it (   )               Not able (   )               Have little difficulty (   )

H) You can handle very short social exchanges, even though I can’t usually understand enough to keep the conversation going myself.

Able to do it (   )               Not able (   )               Have little difficulty (   )

I) You can use simple phrases and sentences to describe where I live and people I know.

Able to do it (   )               Not able (   )               Have little difficulty (   )

J) You can write a short, simple postcard, for example sending holiday greetings. I can fill in forms with personal details, for example entering my name, nationality and address on a hotel registration form.

Able to do it (   )               Not able (   )               Have little difficulty

Gabriela Sanchez

Denisse Villalobos

Unit No. 5

In this unit we learnt how to design a test by considering many basic elements such as: the topics, the points to be covered, the type of evaluation and assessment, the type of activities and specifications.

Also in which degree to grade our students, creating the scale on how to evaluate them that can be a multiple choice evaluation, yes and no questions, gap filling, etc. So, that by this way their answering chances would be increased and will have the opportunity to grade better during the test.

Denise Villalobos Hernández

Contents

1. Listening Assessment

ü Directions and material

ü Listening performance Chart

2. Speaking Assessment

ü Directions and material

ü Speaking Proficiency Chart

3. Reading Assessment

ü Directions and material

ü Reading Comprehension and Phonics Test

4. Writing Assessment:

ü Directions and material

ü Writing Web Model

Level: Intermédiate

Material Needed:

Listening and Speaking Assessment:

§ Student Book Level F, Families

(Photocopy pages 5 and 21)

§ Listening and speaking Cards, pages 2-3.

(Photocopy pages 7-21).

Reading and Writing Assessment:

§ Students Book:

§ Fiction 4-11

§ Nonfiction-Social Studies pages 12-15

§ Reading Comprehension and phonics Test

§ Student Web and Writing Model pages 20-21

§ Writing Choices

Listening Assessment

Procedure

The teacher shows to the studest the picture of the family togueter at home and invites students to examine the picture. Them the teacher asks to class describe each person on the picture and tell specific details. Now the teacher asks to the class to listen very carefully because they going to put some of the cards on the picture. After they do the task check points, using the listening Profiency Chart to determine the student’s stage of Listening Profiency.

Listening Performance Chart

Speaking Assessment

Procedure

Give to the students the listening cards and they going to look at the cards and noted the different people in a family on the picture. The task is put the cards into groups and make sense, after grouping the cards the teacher ask to the students about the groups of cards, Put together in a group and tell me why you put theses cards in a group. Teacher write observations in the chart then use the student’s speaking score to determine the overall stage.

Reading Assessment

Procedure

The students going to read the story Berto’s Family Trees, on pages 4-11, and read focuses on find out where Berto belongs on his own family trees. After they analyzed the record error in the Fiction column of the reading on page 9. Discuss in group the errors on the reading, and give a feedback correcting the reading. After the activity give a Reading Comprehension and Phonic Test, using the following Directions the teacher indicates.

a) Listen to The following sentence ans the student fill in the bubble, the best answer.

b) I heard Grandmother talking about family trees. Which word has the same beginning sound grandmother: father, glasses, grows?

c) David is Berto’s Brother. Which has the same beginning sound br-as brother: boot, brown, ever?

d) I got my brown eyes from my father. Which words has the same beginning souns br-as brown: black, new, broke?

Name:__________________________Date:__________

READING COMPREHENSION AND PHONICS TEST

Instructions: Read the questions and answer choice. Fill in the bubble next to the best answer.

1.-Which word has the same beginning sound grandmother: father, glasses, grows?

a) Father

b) Glasses

c) Grow

2.-Which has the same beginning sound br-as brother: boot, brown, ever?

a) Boot

b) Brown

c) Ever

3.-Which words has the same beginning sounds br-as brown: black, new, and broke?

a) Black

b) New

c) Broke

PHONICS PROFIENCY

Use these chart to score your student’s to the phonics questions on the test. Add up the points determine the student’s phonics score.

Writing Assessment

Procedure

With a writing model students going to write a plan, about things they do with his family. Using the examples pictures from the student book pages 20-21, they going to choose another family member or a friend to write about. The teacher give to each student a photocopy of the web from page 17 to help them write the plan, using the middle box, write the topic and draw a picture of the person you will write about the things you do with a family member or friend.

Name:___________________________Date:_________

Families

Rocio_Dominguez

Listening

Listening can really be developed or improved if practiced , this is a very useful skill that can also be fun or appealing if applied correctly, because students can improve their listening skills by listening to several audio activities, songs, videos and so on.

Writing

They first can start writing small paragraphs, that would help them organize their ideas, and then they can be able to write essays that will absolutely demonstrate their writing abilities.

Students can be free to write in most of the cases about something that they really like, so that by this way they can enrich their participation in class.

Reading

By reading the students would be able to improve their vocabulary, and also their reading pace and moreover they can learn new things. That can show later in other skills such as writing and speaking.

Speaking

For me this is the best way in which the students can learn the language, by being exposed to it, it can be in many different ways such as: conversation groups, working in an area where they are directly exposed to the language such as (call centers), speaking with their peers, etc. This skill can really be developed or improved if practiced regularly or often.

In this way the teacher can correct their pronunciation and know or notice their development in fluency.

Proficency tests

Are designed to measure people’s ability in a language. It is  based on a specification of what candidates have to be able to do in the language in order to be considered proficient.

For example: The different tests of English that we had to take to get into the bachelor’s. Such as reading and comprehension tests, speaking, fluency and writing.

Achievement tests

In contrast to proficiency tests, achievement tests are indirectly related to language courses, their purpose being to establish how successful individual students, groups of students, or the courses themselves have been in achieving objectives. They are of two kinds: final achievement tests and progress achievement tests.

Example: The test that is applied at the end of the semester for each of the languages that are being taught in Centro de Idiomas (For French, Japanese, English, German, etc.)

Diagnostic Tests

Diagnostic tests are used to identify learners´ strengths and weaknesses. They are intended primarily to ascertain what learning still needs to take place.

Example: making the students write a page about any subject, to know if they have mastered the verb conjugation.

Placement Tests

As their names suggests, are intended to provide information that will help to place students at the stage (or in the part) of the teaching programme most appropriate to their abilities. Typically they are used to assign students to classes at different levels.

For example:The test that the community in general have to take at Centro de Idiomas for English mainly to know in which level they could be put in.

Types of testing

Direct Testing

Testing is said to be direct when it requires the candidate to perform precisely the skill that we wish to measure. The tasks, and the tests that are used, should be as authentic as possible. The fact that candidates are aware that they are in a test situation means that the tasks cannot be really authentic.

Example: (Writing) making the students write an essay for homework, this way they cannot know that they are being evaluated in another way

Direct testing is easier to carry out when it is intended to measure the productive skills of speaking and writing. The very acts of speaking and writing provide us with information about the candidate´s ability.

Indirect Testing

Indirect testing attempts to measure the abilities that underlie the skills in which we are interested.

The main problem with indirect tests is that the relationship between performance on them and performance of the skills in which we usually are more interested tends to be rather weak in strength and uncertain in nature.

Discrete Point Testing

Discrete point testing, refers to the testing of one element at a time, item by item. This might, for example, take the form of a series of items, each testing a particular grammatical structure.

Integrative Testing

Integrative testing, by contrast requires the candidate to combine many language elements in the completion of a task.

Example: Conversation sessions in which different abilities are being evaluated such as: fluency, verb conjugation, sentence integration, etc.

Norm Referenced Testing

It relates the candidate´s performance to that of other candidates. We are told directly what the student is capable of doing in the language.

Example: The test that in general the whole community has to take in order to enter college. To determine who will stay in each of the Faculties they relate the candidate’s performance to that of other candidates.

Criterion Referenced Testing

The purpose of criterion- referenced tests is to classify people according to whether or not they are able to perform some task or set of tasks satisfactorily. The tasks are set, and the performances are evaluated. It does not matter in principle whether all the candidates are successful, or none of the candidates is successful.

Example: Everyday tests that we take during each semester in the bachelor’s this would determine if we are capable or not to stay in the bachelor’s

Objective Testing

The distinction here is between methods of scoring, and nothing else. If no judgement is required on the part of the scorer, then the scoring is objective.

Subjective Testing

A multiple choice test, with the correct responses unambiguously identified, would be a case in point. If judgement is called for, the scoring is said to be subjective.

Computer Adaptive Testing

Computer adaptive testing offers a potentially more efficient way of collecting information on people´s ability. All candidates are presented initially with an item of average difficulty. Those who respond correctly are presented with a more difficult item; those who respond incorrectly are presented with an easier item. The computer goes on this way to present individual candidates with items that are appropriate for their apparent level of ability, raising or lowering the level of ability is achieved.

Example: The TOEFL test

GABRIELA AIDEE SANCHEZ ZAMORANO

DENISE VILLALOBOS HERNÁNDEZ

What we have to do is construct, administer and score tests in such a way that the scores actually obtained on a test on a particular occasion are likely to be very similar to those which would have been obtained if it had been administered to the same students with the same ability, but at a different time. The more similar the scores would have been, the more reliable the test is said to be.

Reliability and Validity

To be valid a test must provide consistently accurate measurements. It must therefore be reliable. A reliable test, however, may not be valid at all. For example, as a writing test we could require candidates to write down the translation equivalents of 500 words in their own language.

Practicality

A test could be called practical, if the actual use or usage of the language is the same. By this I mean that it has to go with the pace of the actual language teaching methods , never to place tests with old information that do not match the learner’s real knowledge.

Backwash

Backwash is the effect that tests have on learning and teaching. Backwash is now seen as a part of the impact a test may have on learners and teachers, on educational systems in general, and on society at large.

By: Gabriela Sanchez

Denise Villalobos

Note: Teacher we are so sorry but i forget the dates of publications