Lesson 7 Assessment and evaluation of young learners

Plan

1. Purposes and principles of assessment and evaluation

2. Formal and informal assessment

1. Purposes and principles of assessment and evaluation

Both assessment and evaluation help to improve students learning. But there is the difference between assessment and evaluation.

Assessment focuses on learning, teaching and outcomes. It provides information for improving learning and teaching. Assessment is an interactive process between students and faculty that informs faculty how well their students are learning what they are teaching.

The information is used by faculty to make changes in the learning environment, and is shared with students to assist them in improving their learning and study habits. This information is learner-centered, course based, frequently anonymous, and not graded.

Evaluation focuses on grades.

Assessment	Evaluation
Formative: ongoing to improve learning	Summative: final to measure quality
Process-oriented: how language is going	Product-oriented: what has been learnt
Diagnostic: identify ares for improvement	Judgmental: arrive at an overall grade/score

Note:

Formative assessments are often said to be for learning, while summative assessments are of learning.

The primary goal of summative assessment is to be able to provide an overall measure of student performance at a particular point in time in a grade or score format. This report can be given to parents, districts, states, and others and can have serious consequences attached to it for both the student and the school, such as students not being promoted to the next grade, not getting into their college of choice or the school not receiving funding.

The primary goal of formative assessment is to provide feedback within the classroom with no real consequences attached.

Formative and summative assessment can be combined. For example, teachers often provide feedback on a module essay to a student as well as providing a grade for it that will count towards the student’s summative profile of marks.

2.Formal and informal assessment

In teaching young learners we distinguish between formal and informal assessment.

Formal assessment

Formal assessment uses formal tests or structured continuous assessment to evaluate a learner's level of language. For example, at the end of the course the learners have a final exam to see if they pass to the next course or not. Alternatively, the results of a structured continuous assessment process are used to make the same decision. Standardized tests are formal tools for measuring student progress. Standardized test is a test in which all the questions, format, instructions, scoring and reporting of scores are the same for all test takers.

Informal assessment

In formal assessment is a way of collecting information about students performance in normal classroom conditions. Often the students don’t realize that they are being assessed.

Informal and formal assessments are both useful for making valid and useful assessments of learners' knowledge and performance. Many teachers combine the two, for example by evaluating one skill using informal assessment such as observing group work, and another using formal tools, for example a discrete item grammar test.

Alternative (informal) techniques of assessment for young learners

-Non-verbal response (for silent period)

-Oral interview (using visual clues)

-Role-play

-Written narratives (writing sample)

-Presentations

-Student-teacher conference: structured- interviews.

-Self-assessment: A pupil who learns to assess his or her own work moves from being “other -regulated” to “self-regulated” or autonomous.

-K-W-L Charts (Know, Wonder, Learn)

-Learning Logs

-Dialogue Journals

-Peer and group assessment

-Student portfolios

-On-line quiz

Nonverbal response

At the early stages of learning, before the emergence of speech, children should be instructed and assessed largely through the use of physical performance responses and pictorial products. These tasks require simple directions to carry out. At a later stage, students may perform hands-on tasks. They may be asked to produce and manipulate drawings, models, charts. This technique fits very well within the Total Physical response methodology for early language development

Oral Interview

Teachers can do a one on one interview with each of their students to get a good idea of their listening and speaking abilities. They can schedule these types of interviews during class (perhaps take each student into the hall to have a private discussion while the rest of the class does seat work) or schedule with students individually. Asking questions that use grammatical structures and vocabulary that the class has studied will help teachers know exactly what each student has grasped.

Role Play

By giving students a situation and roles to play, teachers can see how creatively the students are able to use language with one another. Teachers listen for content and grammar as with any oral assessment, but they should also pay attention to how the students are making creative use of their language to communicate with one another.

Class Presentation

A presentation in class assesses a different aspect of spoken language. When teachers ask a student to speak in front of the class, he is able to prepare and practice what he wants to say. He can also research information on his topic. In this case, the grade teachers give to the student should be based on both content and presentation.

Student –teacher conferences

Conferences and interviews provide opportunities for one-to-one interactions where the teacher can learn about a student’s communicative abilities, emotional and social well-being, attention span, attitudes, pace of learning, strengths and weaknesses.

Writing Sample

Having the students give the teacher a writing sample is another good way to assess their proficiency with grammar. Teacher gives them an adequate amount of time to write about a definite subject.

Portfolio

A portfolio is a collection of work samples that cover several aspects of the assignments the students have completed. Teacher asks each student to compile a collection of ten works for him to grade. Teacher can include specific assignments on the list, but he can also give a category and ask his students to present their best work. He may ask for a grammar homework assignment, a writing sample and a vocabulary exercise, for example. The students can then choose the work that they are most proud of. They may feel more encouraged to be graded on their strengths rather than their weaknesses.

Self-assessment

Self-assessment could be done using one of the following two techniques:

K-W-L charts: With this type of chart, individual students provide examples of what they know, what they wonder, what they have learnt. These charts are especially effective when used at the beginning and at the end of a period of study. At the start of a course, the completed charts can help the teacher learn about students’ background knowledge and interests. At the end of a course, the charts can help the students reflect on what they have learnt as well as gain awareness of their improvements.

Learning logs

A learning log is a record of the students’ experiences with the use of the English language outside the classroom, including the when and the where of language use and why certain experiences were successful and others were not. Students may also use logs to comment on what they have studied in class and to record what they have understood and what they haven’t.

Dialogue journals

Journals are informal and provide a means of fee, uncensored expression; enabling students to write without worrying about being corrected. As an assessment technique, dialogue journals can help the teacher assess students’ writing ability and improvement over time.

Peer and group assessment

For assessment students can write evaluative, encouraging notes for each member of their team emphasizing their positive contribution to team work. The role of the teacher would be to provide guidance, to explain to the students what they have to evaluation one another’s work, and to help them identify and apply properly the evaluation criteria.

Portfolio

The concept of portfolio was borrowed from the field of fine arts where portfolios are used to display the best samples of an artist’s work (Brown 1998).

A portfolio is a collection of work samples that cover several aspects of the assignments the students have completed. Teacher asks each student to compile a collection of ten works for him to grade. Teacher can include specific assignments on the list, but he can also give a category and ask his students to present their best work. He may ask for a grammar homework assignment, a writing sample and a vocabulary exercise, for example. The students can then choose the work that they are most proud of. They may feel more encouraged to be graded on their strengths rather than their weaknesses.

Portfolios help students to:

-determine meaningful work

-reflect on their strengths and needs

-set learning goals

-see their own progress over time

-think about ideas presented in their work

-see the effort they put forth

-feel ownership and pride in their work

-realize their work has personal relevance

Online Quiz

With the extensive collection of online resources for ESL students, the teacher can require his students to spend time at home or in a language lab period working on exercises and quizzes available online. The teacher asks his students to print out their final scores or e-mail them to him. In so doing, the students will still get feedback on their work and knowledge, but the teacher will not have to give up valuable class time for it to happen.