Check List

LISTENING

The audibility
The clarity
The spontaneity
Self confidence
Validity
Reliability
Confidence
Structure
Planning

“Which advantages do you think Assessment through computer technology has over traditional assessment?”

As we know the computer allow teachers to create assessments with the tools that internet and multimedia provide, like, video, audio, images, color, text, etc. With this the fourth skills can be tested with more benefits and facilities, without monotony, with organization and following the required structures. This kind of assessment has the ability to measure time, record information, and present information in a variety of ways, assess to different types of information and inputs, encourage learner’s own strategies and can make use of language rules.

Chapelle, Carol A. (2006) Assessing Language through Computer Technology. Iowa State University. Cambridge University Press.

Other types of assessments

Informal assessment.

“Usually refers to classroom assessment carried out during the course of the teaching and learning process”

It must be in the learning process or during the classes, this evaluation can be achieved through the tasks, conversations or discussions, observations in group works, discrete questions, and grammar test.

Formal Assessment

This assessment is previously planned, here is issued formal structured test, and can be at the end of the course.

Classroom assessment

The assessment prepared in classroom based in learning outcomes, this is excellent because it help identify the student’s needs furthermore the teacher monitor the student performance.

External Assessment

It is prepared outside the classroom and administered by school (in order to evaluate the quality of the school or programme).

Pedagogic purposes

In this assessment the teacher write specific objectives about the lessons, activities and structures, the student can focused in a precise purpose.

Administrative purposes

This assessment give information about the development of the educative community and recognize if the teacher centered the curriculum in the student’s needs.

Content Standards

The research about the levels that students can or need to accomplish and what students need to know also what they are be able to do.

Performance Standards

(Describing how much or at what level students need to perform to demonstrate achievement of the content standard).

“Why test language for specific purposes?”

There are professional or vocational fields in which the English have to be used, likewise, the language teaching has specific characteristics where the person that work in the field must manage.

“There are lexical, semantic, syntactic, and even phonological characteristics of language peculiar to any field, and these characteristics allow for people in that field to speak and write more precisely about aspects of the field that outsiders sometimes find impenetrable”.

Test language for specific purposes is more precise and can be more motivating and understandable for the learner due to the field that they already know furthermore in a future business the person can address the issue more easily and with confidence.

A specific purpose language test is one in which test content and methods are derived from an analysis of a specific purpose target language use situation, so that test tasks and content are authentically representative of tasks in the target situation, allowing for an interaction between the test taker's language ability and specific purpose content knowledge, on the one hand, and the test tasks on the other. Such a test allows us to make inferences about a test taker's capacity to use language in the specific purpose domain.

Reference

Douglas, Dan. (1999) Assessing Languages for Specific Purposes. Iowa State University. Cambridge University Press. 

ASSESSMENTS, REFLECTION

It is necesary to bring up the concepts for each one of the test to understand better this reflection about the following kind of assessments.

Placement test

Once students are accepted for a course, there may be a placement test to help decide which class/group they are to go in. The test may consist of multiple-choice grammar and vocabulary questions, reading comprehension, close passages, etc. It may test all the language skills rather than focus on one or two.

This test is necessary for recognize in what level the student has to stay and what topics need to be reinforce, I like this test because is an opportunity to begin in the correct level to study.

Diagnostic test

Such tests have several functions: they provide information on progress being made and areas of difficulty remaining. Judgment is needed about the frequency of such tests: if they are given too often, they become an end in themselves, and any pleasure there might be in learning is destroyed.

This test allow to the teacher identify the necessities in the classroom, is excellent do it before to start any topic or lesson because not only recognize the requirements but also the previous knowledge.

Achievement/attainment test

At the end of a course a final test is often conducted to see if students have learned what they should have been taught. The final test on an EAP course may reflect the language needs of the target situation and contain a simulation of study skills in use (e.g. listening to a talk, making notes, writing a report, etc.). A true achievement test will have constant standards from one course to the next and from year to year.

This is one of the most important due to that in this test we as teachers can observe what goals or objectives were achieved on the classes.

Proficiency test

A proficiency test looks forward, assessing the suitability of students for specific courses, from the point of view of their control of the language. Such tests are not based upon particular syllabuses, books or teaching programmes. This aims to assess the ability of a student to follow a university course in an English-speaking country.

This test is excellent when we are teaching languages for the reason that we know how the students are acquiring the skills, how is the management of it.

All the previous assessments are important each one in their essence because complement the in a major time the teaching and learning.

Reference

     Hutchinson, T. y Waters, A (2010). (pp. 157-163).English for Specific Purposes. NY: Cambridge University Press.

UNIT 1: Basic concepts on evaluation: Testing, assessing, evaluating, validity, reliability and formative-summative assessment.

Comparative chart

Evaluation	Diagnostic and formative process where the teacher can determine, what topics must reinforce, for the good understanding of the students, I think is not to measure who knows more, is a teaching and learning experience to enhance the techniques, methods and strategies.	Assessment	The term assessment refers to a variety of ways of collecting information on a learner's language ability or achievement.
Formative	Assessment carried out by teachers during the learning process with the aim of using the results to improve instruction is known as formative assessment	Summative Assessment	Assessment at the end of a course, term or school year - often for purposes of providing aggregated information on programmer Outcomes to educational authorities - is referred to as summative assessment.
Validity	1. Construct validity: the extent to which the content of the test/assessment reflects current theoretical understandings of the skill(s) being assessed; 2. Content validity: whether it represents an adequate sample of ability; and 3. Criterion-related validity: the extent to which the results correlate with other independent measures of ability.	Reliability.	Reliability is concerned with ascertaining to what degree scores on tests or assessments are affected by measurement error, i.e. by variation in scores caused by factors unrelated to the ability being assessed (e.g. conditions of administration, test instructions, fatigue, guessing, etc.).
Quantitative	Collects data that can be analyzed using quantitative methods, i.e. numbers, statistical analysis	Qualitative Assessment	Collects data that does not lend itself to quantitative methods but rather to interpretive criteria

References

Allen, D and Tanner, K. Infusing active learning into the large-enrollment biology class:  Seven strategies, from the simple to complex.  Cell Biology Education. 4:262-268. 2006. http://www.lifescied.org/cgi/content/full/4/4/262

CARTER, Ronald. NUNAN, David (2001). The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to     Speakers of Other Languages. Cambridge University Press. 

Initial activity: Previous Knowledge review

What is evaluation?

In my opinion evaluation is a diagnostic and formative process where the teacher can determine, what topics must reinforce, for the good understanding of the students, I think is not to measure who knows more, is a teaching and learning experience to enhance the techniques, methods and strategies.

- What steps are necessary to develop an evaluation?

·         Talking about the English language there are four steps to develop an evaluation, the reading, listening, speaking and writing.

·         Keep in mind the goals, objectives, provide excellent feedbacks, develop evaluations methods, furthermore the curriculum planning.

- What are the best times to apply an evaluation?

At every time teachers can evaluate, with tasks, homework, questions, activities, etc. all of this to know what is the student’s level and what the teachers need to improve in the teaching also create methods and strategies.

- What types of evaluation do you know? What are the most recommendable for you?

There are a lot of types of evaluation, but the 3 that I already know is the diagnostic, formative and summative, of this 3, the formative evaluation is the most important because this must be the objective of the evaluation that don’t be only make a quantitative analysis but also that increasingly the student acquire knowledge.

- What can determine how reliable the evaluation results are?

First that all before an evaluation there are an investigation about what students need to reinforce,  develop  the objectives, goals, what teachers hope that the students learn and then, create or design a practice evaluation can be through tasks, students opinions, every time in class.