1. Assessment Module
November 22

2. Before beginning…
• Think of the last assessment you gave in the language class
you teach.
– What format was the test? (Written, oral, online,
etc.)
– Was it effective? Fair? Representative of what and
how you teach?
– What was the best aspect of the assessment?
– What would you change about the assessment?
– How did students react to the assessment?
– How did you prepare the students for the
assessment?

3. Introduction to assessment
• “Assessment” is an umbrella term we use to
measure students’ abilities.
– Formal and informal
– Consider:
• Why you’re assessing?
• What are you trying to find out?
• How will the assessment tool assess?
• What forms of assessment do we use?
• What other forms of assessment are there?

4. Sample test
• When you took the sample English test,
– Which questions were easier? Why?
– Which questions were more difficult? Why?
– Which types of questions have you used in
tests in your class?
– Which questions are most difficult to develop?
– Which questions are most difficult to grade?

5. Types of assessment
• Direct assessment tries to measure what a test taker
is doing as a sample of productive language. For
example, having students discuss a topic while the
teacher observers and rates their performances would
be a direct assessment.
• Indirect assessment tries to measure language
through means that are not directly productive. For
example, indirect assessment might ask students to
recognize the correct verb form, but not actually
measure their ability to produce it or use it.
• Performance assessment includes tasks in which test
takers provide a sample of language, such as a written
text or spoken interview, that elicits the ability being
measured.

6. Types of assessment
• Item is often used to talk about test questions,
particularly questions that ask for short answers or
selected responding.
• Constructed-response questions are tasks in which
test takers create an answer in a productive way. For
example, writing a sentence or being interviewed
might be constructed response tasks.
• Selected-response items are test questions in which
test takers choose a correct answer from a list of
provided options. Multiple choice questions are
common selected-response items. These are also
usually considered objective as there should be one
correct answer.

7. Types of assessment
• In groups, discuss the following types of
assessment (or things related to
assessment). Describe the item and
consider its advantages and
disadvantages.
1. Multiple choice
2. Fill-in-the-blank
3. Cloze test
4. Word bank

8. Direct assessment
• Challenges to direct assessment
–Language level
–Feedback
–Score interpretation

9. Lower language levels
• Some solutions to help beginning level
students with direct assessment are:
– use L1 in instructions and feedback
– write clear or familiar tasks
– prior to the assessment let student
practice or model the task
– only ask for short performances

10. Feedback
• Some ways to provide better feedback in direct
assessment include:
– using a scoring rubric
– sharing the rubric with students before the
test
– having students use the rubric to rate their
own or peers performance
– having students design the rubric
– rating selectively rather than providing
feedback on everything

11. Score interpretation
• Many factors can impact a student’s performance
on direct assessment:
– creativity
– nervousness
– personality traits
• … as well as language knowledge
• To ensure accurate scores:
– allow students to practice or warm-up before the test,
– limit time pressure,
– give choices when possible,
– pilot tasks carefully,
– isolate skills if desired, and
– collect multiple measures

12. Key ideas in assessment
• Validity in language assessment refers to how
well the inferences we can make from the results
of our measure match the construct or feature of
language that we want to measure.
• Reliability refers to the consistency of an
assessment. It can be internal (the questions in
the test) or external (the context of the testing
situation).
• Assessment for Learning (AfL) is the idea that
learners should be part of the assessment
process.

13. HANDS-ON PRACTICE
• You will receive a copy of an old (i.e., not current!) test for a
beginning class in the language you teach. In a group of two
or three, review this test and be prepared to discuss:
– Is the test direct or indirect?
– What types of items are on the test?
– What are the strengths of the test?
– What are the weaknesses of the test?
– How do you think students would fare on this
test? Why?