SUMMARY WEEK 6 – GROUP 5
BEYOND TESTS: ALTERNATIVES IN ASSESSMENT
Materials: Brown and Abeywickrama 2010 - Chapter 6
1. Key concepts and meaning:
• Tests are formal processes that are typically given under time constraints to
sample a test-taker's performance in a certain topic.
• Assessment is a broader term that encompasses everything from informal
observations and feedback to formal tests.
• Alternative assessment: a substitute for standardized testing and all of its
drawbacks.
• Performance-based assessment is a type of assessment which requires
students to perform specific tasks to demonstrate language proficiency.
• Rubrics is a grading tool that provides clear and specific criteria for evaluating
student performance including open-ended spoken and written responses.
• Portfolios: a collection of a student's work collected over time. Portfolios may
include essays, presentations, projects, and other student work.
• Journals: a log that allows students to write about their thoughts, feelings, and
experiences.
• Conferences and interviews: Direct communication between teachers and
students to assess learning progress.
• Observations is an assessment technique in which teachers observe students
while they are learning.
• Self- and peer-assessment are forms of assessment in which students evaluate
themselves or each other.
2. Main points:
- Characteristics of alternatives in assessments (Brown & HUdson, 1998):
• Focus on real-life tasks that reflect everyday learning activities.
• Provide detailed information about students' strengths and weaknesses.
• Promote learning motivation: Encourage students to actively participate in the
assessment process.
- The dilemma of maximizing both practicality and washback classroom-
based assessment: Large-scale, standardized, multiple-choice tests are often
highly practical but have low washback. In contrast, portfolios, journals, and
conferences, while providing positive washback, are less practical.
- Characteristics of performance-based assessment:
• Students generate their own answers.
• Open-ended assignments encourage students to use higher-order thinking skills.
• The tasks are meaningful, engaging, and authentic for students.
• Tasks focus on integrating language skills.
• Emphasize both process and product.
• Focus on in-depth assessment
- Rubrics:
• Benefits: Providing clear and detailed feedback to students, supporting teachers
in assessing objectively and consistently, and increasing transparency in the
assessment process
• Limitations: Risk of simplifying assessment
- Some alternatives of assessment:
1. Portfolios:
• 6 attributes of portfolios: CRADLE (collecting, reflecting, assessing, documenting,
linking, evaluating)
• Benefits: Portfolios allow teachers to track student progress over time and
provide students with opportunities to reflect on their learning.
• Guidelines: Teachers should provide clear guidance on objectives, content and
assessment criteria, allocate appropriate time for portfolio development and
review, provide a convenient location for storing portfolios, and offering positive
washback-giving final assessments
2. Journals:
• Types: Language- learning logs, grammar journals, responses to readings,
strategies- based learning logs, self- assessment reflections, diaries of attitudes,
feelings, and other affective factors, and acculturation logs
• Benefits: Raising awareness of learning, practicing writing skill, providing
opportunities for personal reflection, and receiving feedback from teachers.
• Guidelines: introducing the concept of journal writing, stating the objectives,
giving guidelines, specifying the criteria for assessment, and providing optimal
feedback.
3. Conferences and interviews:
3.1 Conferences:
• Focusing on discussing specific students’ works such as drafts, portfolios,
journals, etc.
• Purposes: reviewing, assessing, giving feedback, suggesting strategies for
improvement, setting goals
3.2 Interviews:
• Purposes: gathering information about students’ needs, learning styles, and their
assessment of the learning process.
• Questions need to be carefully prepared to collect information effectively.
4. Observations:
• Objectives: to maximize the naturalness of students’ language performance by
evaluating them without their awareness.
• Techniques: anecdotal records, checklists, rating scales.
• Guidelines: identifying clear objectives, deciding on the number of students to
observe simultaneously, arranging logistics for unnoticed observations, creating a
recording system, limiting the elements observed at once, planning the total
number of observations, and specifying how the results will be used.
5. Self- and peer-assessment:
• Types: Direct, indirect, metacognitive, socio affective assessment, student-
generated tests.
• Benefits: promoting learners’ autonomy, developing students motivation, and
fostering cooperative learning
• Guidelines: explaining the assessment's goal to students, providing a clear
definition of the tasks, encouraging an unbiased assessment of students'
performance and abilities, and making sure that follow-up assignments provide
positive washback.
3. Questions:
1. What are the challenges of implementing alternative assessments like peer
assessment or self-assessment in a large class?
2. Do you think the traditional assessment methods outlined are still relevant in
modern-day language teaching?
3. Can you link the alternative assessment strategies mentioned to the challenges
faced by Vietnamese EFL learners?
4. How do you decide which observation technique is most appropriate for
different situations?
