Principles and Purpose of Language Assessment

Prepared by: Erika Joyce M. Santos

Key Concepts Evaluation  is the process of analysing, reflecting upon, and summarising assessment information, and making judgements and/or decisions based on the information collected. Measurement  refers to the set of procedures and the principles on how to use those procedures in educational tests and assessment. Some of the basic principles of measurement would be raw scores, percentile ranks, derived scores, standard scores, etc.

Key Concepts Assessment is the process of gathering information on student learning. It may include test, and may also include methods such as observations, interviews, behaviour monitoring, etc. a. Informal assessment can take a number of forms: • unplanned comments, verbal feedback to students, observing students perform a task or work in small groups, and so on. b. Formal assessment are exercises or procedures which are: • systematic • give students and teachers an appraisal of students’ achievement such as tests.

c. Formative Assessment is evaluating students in the process of forming their competencies and skills with the goal of helping them to continue that growth process. d. Summative Assessment aims to measure, or summarize, what the student has grasped, and typically occurs at the end of the course or unit of instruction.

Language Assessment Assessment in language teaching has purpose to evaluate the students mastery both students skills and knowledge.

Principles of Language Assessment 1.

Practicality  Not expensive, within appropriate time constraint, relatively easy to administer, and it must be a scoring/ evaluation procedure that is specific and time-efficient. 2. Reliability  Consistency of assessment results (Linn & Gronlund).  A test is reliable if: You give the same test to the same student or matched students on two different occasions, the test should yield similar results. (Brown, 2004)  Factors that may influence the reliability of a test:  Students-related reliability  Rater reliability  Test administration reliability  Test reliability

Principles of Language Assessment 3. Validity  Measuring what should be measure. • Content-Related- If a test samples the subject matter about which conclusions are to be drawn and if it requires the test-taker to perform the behavior that is being measured. • Criterion-Related Evidence- it is used to demonstrate the accuracy of a measure or procedure by comparing it with another measure or procedure which has been demonstrated to be valid. • Construct Related Evidence- How well performance on the assessment can be interpreted as meaningful measure of some characteristics or quality. • Consequential Validity- How well use of assessment results accomplishes intended purposes and avoids unintended effect.

Principles of Language Assessment Face Validity- It refers to the degree to which a test looks right, and appears to measure the knowledge or ability it claims to measure, based on the subjective judgment of the examinees who take it, the administrative personnel who decide on its use, and other psychometrically unsophisticated observers (Mousavi in Brown, 2004) Authenticity  The language: as natural as possible.  Items: contextualized rather than isolated.  Topics: meaningful (relevant, interesting) for the learner.  Some thematic organization to items is provided, such as through a story line or episode.  Tasks represent, or closely approximate, real-world tasks. Washback  The effect of testing on teaching and learning (Hughes in Brown, 2004).  Generally refers to the effects tests have on instruction in terms of how students prepare for the test (Brown, 2004). •

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Purpose of Assessment Diagnose students strengths and needs Provide feedback on student learning Provide a basis for instructional placement Inform and guide instruction Communicate learning expectations Motivate and focus students’ attention and effort Provide practice applying knowledge and skills

Purpose of Assessment Provide a basis for evaluation for the purpose of: Grading Promotion/graduation Program

admission/selection Accountability Gauge program effectiveness

Functions of Language Test In learning, it is used to measure student’s ability to discover how much they have been learning, to diagnose the student’s  strengths and weaknesses, and to motivate learning. In teaching, it is a means to ensure and improve effective teaching quality to obtain feedback on students learning. In research, it serves as a basis related to language proficiency, language processing, language acquisition, language attrition and language teaching.