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Rabu, 30 November 2011
assessment
PRINCIPLES of assessing children’s language learning
a. Assesment should be seen frrom a learning-centred perspective
b. Assessment should support learning and teching
If learning is our central concern, then, in all ideal world, assessment should contribute to the learning process, for both an individual child and for the class. From the three examples in the first secsion of the impact of assessment, we caan see that, even when a supportive relationship between assessment and teaching/learnign is attended, social realities can rapidly push the relationship into something quite different.
In order to be more in control of the relationship between assessment and learning, teachers need to have a clear understanding of language learing processess and of the socio-cultural context in which they operate. They can predict the impact of assessment on their teaching and plan accordingly. If the picture of language learning can be communicated to learners and their parents, then it may also help parents to understand what assessment can tell them and what its limits are.
c. Assessment is more than testing
A skilled teachers continuosly assesses pupils’ learning through what they notices and how they interpret these observation
This is a summary of the paper I gave at the Amazing Young Minds conference in the first part of the session, I raised some issues about assessing young learners and see how they fit into people’s perceptions and experiences of teaching young learners in different countries. In the second, we looked at some of the techniques of assessment that have been experimented with around the world to see if they offered some good ideas for development.
Definitions and examples
Assessment is a wider concept than ‘testing’ and a different thing from Evaluation.
For me the following definition works well:
‘Any systematic way of finding out about learners’ level of knowledge or skills’
Systematic ways can include the following:
•Observation and systematic record-keeping of learners during everyday normal
learning activities
•collection and scrutiny of children’s course wo rk
•possible special ‘set-piece’ events such as pencil and paper tests.
Assessment can be for a number of different purposes
•formative purposes (directed towards helping you to adjust your own teaching
to support the learners better, or towards advising learners how to adjust their
own approaches) and this would take place throughout a course of teaching.
and/or
•summative purposes – to see how well learners have done at the end of a
period of teaching. The results of summative assessment are often used to
affect learners’ chances (selection or rejection for the next stage of learning,
deciding who’s ‘top’, a report to the children’s next teacher/school).
Different assessment ‘cultures’
Different societies seem to vary in their practices and attitudes towards basic issues
such as who receives the results of assessment and how they are reported. Some of
the variations I have found are summarised in the list below.
WHO GETS AND USES ASSESSMENT RESULTS?
•Nobody except the teacher
•The teacher and the school administration
•The teacher, the school administration and the education authorities
•The parents?
•The children
Different teaching cultures also vary over what is considered to be success in an
assessment ‘event’. Number 1, in the list below, The ‘ipsistic’/ ‘good for that child
compared with his or her previous performance’ judgement is one that we may all be
familiar with when writing a verbal report on a child, but in some cultures this is
‘translated’ also into a letter or numerical grade. So for example child 1 who has
struggled and produced medium quality work after heroic efforts might in some
cultures be awarded an ‘A’ whereas his or her companion who is perceived as being
able to achieve good standards effortlessly might be given a punitive ‘B’ for work at
the same or slightly higher standard. If this offends you it means that you do not
share the values of this particular assessment culture. Many assessment cultures are
still interested in who is ‘top’ as in number 3. Sadly for most parents who care deeply
where their child figures on this particular ladder of success, we know that not
everyone can be ‘top’. Number 2, in which everyone can gain praise and receive a
good grade provided that they meet certain criteria, seems healthier for the children
themselves and more likely to focus teachers’ efforts on getting everyone ‘there’. The
criteria themselves can provide useful guidance as to what is to be taught, whereas in
the raw world of no. 3 it is easy to lose sight of what it is important to teach, because
one way or another someone is always going to be ‘top’ whether or not they are being
asked to do anything worthwhile.
WHAT IS A ‘GOOD’ RESULT?
1. Good for that child, compared with past performance, perceived ability [‘Ipsistic’]
2. Good because the child has met the required criteria
3. Good because the child has ‘done better’ than others
4. Good because the teacher’s description of his/her performance has brought out
special strengths as well as areas of need and difficulty
Some other big issues
Transparency
If summative assessment results are being used to influence children’s chances (e.g.
when they change schools) it is of course vital that they should be based on good
evidence. Not only that, they need to be seen to be based on good evidence (parents,
authorities) in the principle of transparency. This means that to be safe, theassessment needs to be traceable/visible. This might suggest ‘pencil and paper’
testing, but not necessarily. Less intrusive informal methods of assessment have
many advantages but they are inherently less transparent, and the danger of biased
judgements or perception of bias is one always to be aware of.
So, the burning issue is: how to ensure that less formalized methods of assessment are
As transparent as possible?
Compatibility
Compatibility with assessment in other parts of the school curriculum. Assessment
procedures used for school English need to be recognisable or at least not too exotic
compared with those for other curriculum subjects. However, language proficiency is
a complicated construct. It involves an element of knowledge, but is strongly
connected with the ability to operate a variety of complex skills. That means that the
most appropriate means of assessing language in children may also be somewhat
unfamiliar to teachers and children used to the ‘handling bits of knowledge’ model of
assessment that might exist in other curriculum areas.
Feasibility
Assessment procedures need to be do-able in reasonable amounts of time that do not
interfere with teaching too greatly and in ways that do not take up too much of the
teacher’s precious time to devise or to analyse. There are documented cases of
countries in which following the ‘normal’ procedure of testing once a week (see
‘compatibility’ above) has halted teaching to the extent that progress through
textbooks has taken more than twice as long as intended.
Child-friendliness
This isa crucial area. Procedures that are well known for older learners are not all
suitable for younger ones. There is much work left to be done in the field of finding
imaginative and possibly even playful ways of allowing children to show what they
can do. The serial mystery story of the ‘Missing Elephant’ used in Norway and
described in the article by Hasselgren is a very good example of the type of thing that
can be achieved. I have recently also heard of ingenious role plays involving children
being given the chance to produce known chunks of language in new contexts in
response to a teacher playing one of the roles, for example Winnie the Witch is
showing the child guest round her castle to elicit comments from the child on the
rooms.
Adults’ versus children’s perceptions of assessment
We all need to feel competent and to be self-determined – to feel that we can make
choices. It is important also to see success and failure from a child’s point of view. It
is not just a question of a ‘good’ result increasing motivation but of the way in which
the children are enabled to see that the results are actually linkable to actions on their
part rather than just ‘luck’ or the teacher’s whim.
The work by Deci and Ryan on attributions of success or failure is important in this
area
success – attributed to good luck, and the fact that the task is ‘too easy’, (bad for
self-esteem)
– attributed to hard work and a systematic approach (good for selfesteem)
failure – attributed to lack of preparation, task being too difficult, being badly
taught (self- valuing reasons)
– attributed to bad luck, being ‘slow’/dyslexic, being bad at... (selfdevaluing
reasons)
Deci and Ryan claim that it is very difficult to motivate children if they have no
control over the outcome, and they will go to many lengths to avoid the activity.
Technical details of assessment procedures
Many EYL teachers especially ‘new’ ones are very unclear about the technical side of
assessment. During the session we looked at several simply remedied ‘bad’ testing
items. For example, the very popular matching task [pictures to words, first halves of
sentences to their completions] can be answered by elimination once the child is sure
of one or two answers. It also ‘forces’ results which are either mostly right or
disastrously wrong since a mistake, once made will be compounded as future choices
are limited by it.
Assessment and Evaluation
Administrators who want to evaluate a Young Learner’s programme are often looking
for ‘objective’ proofs of the benefits of the enterprise. There is a tendency to see
assessment results as the ‘best’ kind of evidence, and to pay less attention to other
instruments such as observation or interview data with children and teachers. Tests
linked with Evaluation programmes can come with the danger of the ‘glass ceiling’
effect. Some that I have seen are so unchallenging that most pupils are scoring high.
This may seem good news in a climate of anxiety to demonstrate success, but if such
tests do not allow the full range of achievement to show itself precious information is
being lost.
The effects of international exams for Young Learners
Parents are also keen for evidence of achievement but also possibly avid for trophies
of success. It is important for responsible exam providers to steer the difficult path
between this and creating exams which are demotivating because they discriminate
too strictly. A very important issue is that exams have exam syllabuses and these can
have very strong effects not only on the teaching of Young Learners but possibly on
the contents of future published materials. We need to ask how the exam boards
arrived at their syllabuses in the first place. A major source in at least one case was
existing YL textbooks. There seems to be the danger of a ‘closed and possibly
vicious circle’ here.
Examples were show during the talk and many of them were drawn from publications
listed in the following reading list.
ASSESSMENT OF YOUNG LEARNERS
Suggested reading list of sources
Collections of articles and papers
1. Allen, D. (ed.) (1995) Entry Points – papers from a Symposium of the Research,
Testing and Young Learners Special Interest Groups Cambridge 17th – 18th March
1995 Whitstable, IATEFL.
2. Clapham, C. and Corson, D. (eds.) (1997) Encyclopedia of Language and
Education Volume 7, Language Testing and Assessment, Dordrecht. The
Netherlands, Kluwer Academic Publishers.
3. Rea-Dickins, P. (ed.) (2000) Language Testing Volume 17 no 2, special issue,
Assessing Young Language Learners.
4. Rixon, S. (ed.) (1999) Young Learners of English: some research perspectives
Harlow, Longman.
Specially recommended single papers and chapters
Cameron, L. (2001) Assessment and Language Learning in Cameron, L. Teaching
Languages to Young Learners, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Deci, E. L., and Ryan R. M. (1985) Instrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination n
Human Behaviour NY: Plenum Press.
Hasselgren, A. (2000) The Assessment of the English Ability of Young Learners in
Norwegian Schools: an innovative approach in Rea-Dickins (ed.) (2000).
Johnstone, R. (2000) Context-sensitive Assessment of Foreign Language in Primary
(Elementary) and early Secondary Education: Scotland and the European Experience
in Rea-Dickins (ed.) (2000).
Rea-Dickins, P and Rixon, S, 1997, The Assessment of Young Learners of English as
a Foreign Language in Clapham, C and Corson, D (eds.) pp. 151–161.
Rea-Dickins, P. and Rixon, S. (1999) The Assessment of Young Learners: reasons
and means in Rixon (ed.).
Rea-Dickins, P. and Gardner, S. (2000) Snares and Silver Bullets: Disentangling the
Construct of Formative Assessment in Rea-Dickins (ed.) (2000).
Smith, K. (1995) Assessing and Testing Young Learners: Can we? Should we? in
Allen, D. (ed.) pp. 1–10.
Smith, K. (2002) Learner Portfolios English Teaching Professional, Issue 22, January
2002.
http://www.eltforum.com/forum/pdfs/assessment_ylearners.pdf
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