Tenth Lesson

Name the different criteria and what you need to observe.

• communicative success: can the learner make themselves understood?

• vocabulary: uses familiar word appropriately

• fluency: speaks with some continuity

• interaction: responds to prompts / maintain exchange

• support needs: benefits from visuals, extra wait time, gestures, sentence starters

How do you assess oral competences?

• speaking is a core competence

• assessment communicative ability, not perfection

• assessment should be continuous and low-stakes

• inclusive assessment principles: visual prompts, sentence starters, additional wait time

• typical assessment criteria: vocabulary range, pronunciation, fluency, interaction

What does assessment mean in this context?

• assessment = testing and the need for certification of language proficiency

• most of the assessment in class is done by the teachers, mismatch between curricular aims, pedagogy and test content

• attention to oral skills in CLT clashes with written forms of assessment

What principles should you pay attention to?

• assessment should be seen from a learning-centred perspective

• assessment should support learning and teaching

• assessment is more than testing

• assessment should be congruent with learning

• children and parents should understand assessment issues

What are 3 major criteria?

• Validity: Does the test measure what it aims to measure? Do learning outcomes, teaching content and test content match?

• Reliability: Are the results the same, if the conditions differ?

• Objectivity: Are the test items phrased in a way that there is only one possible solution?

What levels can you focus on?

• Personal Level: General cognitive abilities, study and work habits, social behavior, etc.

• Environmental Level: personal situation of student, situation at school, not being able to hear the teacher

• Classroom Level: attitude towards the individual subject, motivation and dedication, ability to comprehend and communicate in given contexts

What is formative assessment?

• prepared, ongoing feedback

• routinely carried out by teacher; related to what has been taught

• identifies the individual learner’s strengths and weaknesses; non-graded

• the outcome is used for further diagnosis

• weekly quizzes

What is summation assessment?

• evaluate student’s learning at the end of an instructional unit

• comparison to some benchmark

• feedback can be used for further teaching/learning by both teachers and students

• graded

• final exams, tasks, reports, presentations