UNIT 18: ASSESSMENT TYES AND TASKS

In this unit, I have learned many things related to assessment. First of all, I am going to explain what assessment means. It refers to the judgment teachers make on students’ performance by collecting information about it. We have to kinds of assessment formal and informal assessment. Formal assessment is used when teachers assess students by using different tests or exams (diagnostic, summative or progress tests) and they normally involve giving a grade to their work. Teachers use different assessment tasks to assess students. For instance, they can use multiple-choice questions, gap-fill activities, or sentence completion in the case of assessing the receptive skills. For the productive skills, they can use role-plays, compositions, interviews, etc. These assessment tasks can be described as objective or subjective. Objective tasks are easy to grade because there is no judgment involved by the marker at the time of scoring because there is only one right answer. On the other hand, we have the subjective tasks. They involve the marker´s judgment to decide if an answer is right or wrong. In addition, they require more time to score and it is necessary to use assessment criteria by the teacher. Second, informal assessment consists on observing learners to see how well they are doing something and then give feedback for how they can improve it. Unlike formal assessment, informal assessment does not involve giving a grade, and it does not use assessment tasks. This assessment can be done by the teacher using different checklists or taking notes, or by the learners through self- assessment or peer- assessment. In my teaching process, I think I should use both informal and formal assessment in the classroom since both help me to analyze my learners´ language abilities as well as their behavior and attitude for learning. For example, if I ask my students to work on a project I can use informal assessment by moving around the classroom observing how they collaborate one another, if they are motivated or not. Therefore, I will be able to see if it was good to use projects or not. Another example could be when learners have to write articles or compositions. I can use formal assessment to assess them by using specific criteria in which they can clearly see what their strengths and weaknesses were to improve next time.  To sum up, assessment have to take place in the classroom all time either in a formal or informal way in order to check if our teaching is reflected on students´ performance, and how motivated they are during  the learning process.  

Check this video which has extra information about this topic.

 

Here I share you some links where you can find extra information about assessment types and tasks.

·         e-ASSESSMENT COURSE FILES.(2009). Description of e-assessment activities and tasks.U.S. Retrieved from https://learningtechnologies.epigeum.com/courses/learning_technologies/113/course_files/html/course_files/2_1.html

·         Spiller, D. (2011). Assessment Tasks to Promote Learning. The University of Waikato. Retrieved from http://www.waikato.ac.nz/tdu/pdf/booklets/10_AssessmentTasks.pdf

·         Effieboo´s channel. (2011). Formative Assessment Techniques. UK. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc67rq8XmtA