Difficulties related to teaching spelling:

- letter combinations which produce one sound: sh, th, ck

- the same letter can represent different phonemes: e.g. the letter ‘s’ – the sounds [s, z] ; or one sound is represented with some grapheme; e.g. ir, er, ur .

- existence of ‘silent’ letters: e.g. line; + in letter combinations: e.g. wh-, -ght: whom, eight;

To eliminate these difficulties special exercises should be applied:

1. coping, adding

2. dictations

The teacher should not only teach spelling or handwriting but also teach his pupils how to generate ideas for producing a piece of writing: mind maps, planning, drafting, editing, checking and rewriting.

Assessment

Assessment is measuring our students’ performance and the progress they make, diagnosing the problems they have and providing learners useful feedback.

Evaluation is considering all the factors that influence the learning process such as syllabus objectives, course design, materials used, methodology, teacher performance and assessment. Assessment is one of the most valuable sources of information about what is happening in a learning environment. So evaluation is an umbrella term.

Is testing synonymous with evaluation? No, it is a way of formal assessment alongside with oral exams of traditional format. Assessment may also be informal, carried out by the teacher not under special test/exam conditions.

They often say that testing should take place only after learning. It’s true about tests at the end of the topic, term, or year. It’s summative assessment measuring students’ performance at the end of a certain period of study. But we should not forget about formative assessment which feeds back into learning, gives learners information of their progress throughout a course, helps them to become more efficient learners.

Is it just teachers’ responsibility to test their students? Primarily yes, but school or university administration also have a say, and local and national authorities are responsible in case of some regional tests (“srezy”) or national exams or the so called external independent testing (ZNO). Besides assessment of students’ progress may be carried out by the students themselves, it may be peer-assessment or self-assessment.

Features of assessment:

- it should be positive: Assessment should be aimed at giving students a chance to show what they have learnt rather than to reveal what they have not learnt. Unfortunately, it is not always like that. Tests try to catch students out and students feel alienated by the assessment because they have no other role in it but that of passive participants. For many learners in this situation, especially when task formats and criteria for grading the works are not informed beforehand, assessment may seem arbitrary and at times even unfair. Sometimes they get on with their teacher, sometimes they do not. Sometimes they are lucky and revise the right material for a test, sometimes they are unlucky.

- accountability: as professionals, teachers should be able to provide learners, parents, institutions and society in general, with clear indications of what progress has been made and if it has not, why that is so. We should be able to explain the rationale behind the way assessment takes place and how conclusions are drawn, rather than hiding behind a smoke screen of professional secrecy.

- consistent: a teacher should set clear assessment objectives, define clear criteria, work out clear procedures for assessing and try to keep to them as well as inform his pupils about them.

- activities for assessment purposes should be valid (assess what we really want them to assess) and practical (in terms of preparation and administration – time, money, human resources) as well as washback effect should be positive (have a positive influence on the teaching process)

We assess to see if our pupils have achieved the goal set according to the standards in line with the syllabus and how they are progressing so if they have problems we can give them the remedial help.

Pupils can be compared with each other and with the standards.

To assess our pupils’ learning achievements we can use tests and other forms of assessment (observation, reports, presentations, projects, …).

Test task – a separate task performed by candidates. It may be of different formats (true/false, multiple choice, short answer response, etc).

Types of tests:

- Placement\entry test – to select and place learners into a group according to their language abilities. It must be difficult

- Progress tests –is given during courses. It may be given after certain blocks of study, e.g. after a number of units, at the end of each week, each term. The test aims to find out info about how well classes as a whole and individual students have grasped the learning objectives, how well the course content is functioning within the specified aims and objectives and future course design. You can easily identify how well pupils are progressing in a very short period of time.

- Achievement test – a test designed to measure the extent of learning achieved by a learner in relation to a particular course of instruction, i.e. a curriculum-dependent test. It is based on the material taught that is based on text-books/

- Diagnostic test – a test which is used for the purpose of discovering a learner’s specific strength or weaknesses. Allows to reveal mistakes typical for an individual or for a group. Thus the results may be used in making decisions on future training, learning or teaching.

Testing receptive skills:

That is testing reading, listening and Use of English (grammar, vocabulary and phonetics).

The aim of testing use of English is to demonstrate knowledge and control of the language system by completing a number of tasks, some of which are based on specially written texts. Testing use of English is important but we should remember that while grammar and vocabulary contribute to communicative skills, they are rarely to be regarded as ends in themselves.

Such tests (Use of English) require recognition of vocabulary items and grammar structures, manipulation of structures and collocations, understanding of meaning in context and awareness of appropriacy in context.

Test tasks for testing vocabulary: Multiple choice, Matching, Odd man out, Gap filling, Cloze (systematic deletion of words (together with reading skills), Negative cloze/cloze elide/intrusive word (candidates must delete words which the tester had added to the text but which do not belong there) (together with reading skills), C-test (candidates are to restore words in the text from their parts (together with reading skills), Word formation (together with reading skills), Editing/proofreading (together with reading skills), Listing, Labeling (together with reading or listening skills), Translation

Test tasks for testing grammar: Multiple choice, Editing/proofreading (together with reading skills), Translation, Sentence completion (opening brackets), Sentence combination, Addition, Ordering, Transformation, Gap filling (modernized cloze), Table completion (three forms of verbs, degrees of comparison of adjectives), Matching (sentence halves, structures and their names), Identifying structures, Cued sentences (from pictures or words).

Testing listening comprehension. OBJECTS OF QSSESSMENT:

- Micro-skills and macro-skills or skills and sub-skills

- Skills: understanding of gist, listening for specific information, follow the instructions, interpreting the information (appreciate the speakers’ attitudes and intentions), inferring the information (the underlying meaning) etc.

- Sub-skills: recognition of function of structures, interpretation of intonation patterns etc.

Test tasks for testing listening: True/false, Multiple choice, Information transfer (trace the route, complete the table, draw a diagram etc), Labeling, Sequencing (texts, pictures), Text completion (complete the information about the film), Short answer questions, Note taking

Testing reading. OBJECTS OF QSSESSMENT:

Elementary students – to show ability to skim factual texts for gist and to scan them for specific information.

Intermediate – to identify the text type, to recognize attitudes, emotions expressed by the writer, to see what the writer’s purpose is and understand the text structure.

Advanced – to decide whether a text is based on fact or opinion, to select information and use it to perform a task, to infer meaning from context, to appreciate style.

Test tasks for testing reading: True/false, Multiple choice, Matching, Information transfer (trace the route, complete the table, draw a diagram etc), Labeling, Sequencing (texts, pictures), Short answer questions, Problem-solving (from the following information work out people’s names), Identify topic (match the title with the text), Linking, Identify linking words in the text, Cloze ( together with vocabulary skills), C-tests, Summary (together with writing skills)

Testing productive skills:

That is testing speaking, writing. Activities used should be creative. Pupils are required to express their own ideas. Tests must be interactive and as close to a real-life situation as a test can get.

Purpose of testing: to assess a wide range of skills.

IN SPEAKING: The examiner will want to see how well pupils can:

- communicate their opinions and information on everyday topics and common experiences;

- speak at length on a given topic using appropriate language

- organise their ideas coherently

- express and justify their opinions

- analyse, discuss and speculate about issues

Typical criteria for assessment: fluency, coherence, lexical resource, grammatical range and accuracy, pronunciation.

Task formats: interview, picture description, answering questions, reports, information transfer, problem solving, etc.

We test both monologue and dialogue speech.

IN WRITING:

Typical criteria for assessment:

- Content refers to how well you have done what you were asked to do.

- Communicative Achievement refers to whether you have used the appropriate level of formality.

- Organisation refers to how well you put together the piece of writing; is it logical and structured?

- Language refers to the vocabulary and grammar that you used. Is it accurate and varied?

Task formats: writing an article, an email, an essay, a letter, a report, a review or a story, etc.