The Principles of Language Assessment and The Use for Daily Classroom

The Principles of Language Assessment and The Use for Daily Classroom

Brown (2004) in his book, “Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices “mentioned five major principles of language assessment which consist of practicality, reliability, validity, authenticity, and washback.

• Practicality refers to tests that should be true. A practical test considers not only the limitation of budget and time, but also has clear administration, scoring, and interpretation.

• Reliability refers to tests that are consistent and dependable. Students or groups of target students are given the same test in two different periods of time, the test result would be similar. For test-takers, they are not ambiguous to a given field of study. Also, a reliable test not only gives learners clear directions but also offers administrated rubrics for grading or evaluation.

• Validity is talks about a test which “is valid if it is measured what it is supposed to measure” and when it is used for the purpose of assessment. Brown pointed out that a valid test should measure according to its purpose, but not “irrelevant or contaminating variables”. Thus, a test’s meaningful information for criterion, and evidence of performance should be considered in order to measure a student’s learning ability. Furthermore, there are many ways to measure the validity of a test, including content validity, construct validity, criterion-related validity (concurrent & predictive) and face validity.

• Authenticity emphasizes that language is natural, contextualized and meaningful. Besides, authenticity offers language theme-based organization, story-line, or episode to reproduce real-world tasks. 

• The last principle is washback which refers to “criterion for a test is the influence of the form and the content of the test” in the classrooms. This is also what Hughes (2003) said,” the effect of testing on teaching and learning”.

Why Assess?

Why Assess? 

 

Assessment of student learning is important to a variety of stakeholders locally, regionally, and nationally, depending on the type and purpose of the assessment. Cohen (1994) identified a number of specific reasons for assessing student learning and organized them by administrative, instructional, and research functions, as shown in the following chart.

Shrum and Glisan (2010) describe a paradigm shift in assessment practices in the world language classroom. In the old paradigm, the purpose of assessment was simply to evaluate language learners and assign grades. The new paradigm identifies multiple purposes of assessment:

• To assess learner progress in proficiency
• To assess attainment of the National Standards
• To guide and improve student performance
• To evaluate and inform instruction and program design
• To make a seamless connection between instruction and assessment

Brown and Abeywickrama (2010) see assessment as integral to the cycle of teaching and learning, and continuous throughout the cycle. They suggest ways that assessments are useful:

• Periodic assessments, both formal and informal, can increase motivation by serving as milestones of student progress.
• Appropriate assessments aid in the reinforcement and retention of information.
• Assessments can confirm areas of strength and pinpoint areas needing further work.
• Assessments can provide a sense of periodic closure to modules within a curriculum.
• Assessments can promote student autonomy by encouraging students' self-evaluation of their progress.
• Assessments can spur learners to set goals for themselves.
• Assessments can aid in evaluating teaching effectiveness. 

short explanation about five principles

Principles of  Language Assesment

 

Five principles of language assessment

1).There are five principles of language assessment:


1. PRACTICALITY
Practicality is a practical test
• Is not excessively expensive
• Stay within appropriate time constraints
• Is relatively easy to administer, nd
• Has a scoring/ evaluation procedure that is specific and time efficient.

2. RELIABILITY
A reliable test is consistent and dependable. The issue of reliability of a test be addressed by considering a number of factors that may contribute to the unreliability of a test.
Consider following possibilities: fluctuations
• In the student (Student-Related Reliability)
• In scoring (Rater Reliability)
• In test administration (Test Administration Reliability)
• In the test (Test Reliability) itself

3. VALIDITY
Arguably, validity is the most important principle. The extend to which the assessment requires students to perform tasks that were included in the previous classroom lessons.
Five types of evidence below :
• Content validity
• Criterion-related Validity
• Construct Validity
• Consequential Validity
• Face Validity

4. AUTHENTICITY
In an authentic test
• The language is as natural as possible
• Items are as contextualized as possible
• Topics and situations are interesting, enjoyable, and/or humorous
• Some thematic organization, such as through a story line or episode is provided
• Tasks represent real-world tasks.

5. WASHBACK
Wash back includes the effects of an assessment on teaching and learning prior to the assessment itself, that is on preparation for the assessment.
• Informal performance assessment is by nature more likely to have built-in wash back effects because the teacher is usually providing interactive feedback.
• Formal tests can also have positive wash back, but they provide no wash back, if the students receive a simple letter grade or a single overall numerical score.
• Classroom test should serve as learning devices through which wash back is achieved.
• Students’ incorrect responses can become windows of insight into further work.
• Their correct responses need to be praised, especially when they represent accomplishments in a student’s interlanguage.
• Wash back enhances a number of basic principles of language acquisition : intrinsic motivation, autonomy, self confidence, language ego, interlanguage, and strategic investment, among others.
• One way to enhance wash back is to comment generously and specifically on test performance.
• Wash back implies that students have ready access to the teacher to discuss the feedback and evaluation he has given.
• Teachers can raise the wash back potential by asking students to use test results as a guide to setting goals for their future effort.