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FP012 – ASSESSMENT AND TESTING IN THE CLASSROOM
GROUP ASSIGNMENT
Name and surnames: Luciana Mokuy Abeso Nkara
Milena Clotilde Asangono Ndong Milam
Nicole Carole Ngono Tamba
Group: FP TEFL 2023-11
Date: January 26th 2025.
TEFL: DISCUSSING PRINCIPLES AND INSTRUCTIONS IN READING AND
WRITING ASSESSMENT AND TESTING ELABORATION
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TABLE OF CONTENT
Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
ASSESSMENT TEST..................................................................................................................4
speaking skill Assessment.......................................................................................................4
listening skill Assessment........................................................................................................4
Reading as a Receptive Skill:..................................................................................................5
Writing as a Productive skill:....................................................................................................6
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................7
Bibliography...............................................................................................................................8
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Introduction
The importance of evaluation in a formal teaching/learning situation is not the focus of the
current debate in this area, because evaluation issues are usually covered before any program
is launched. It occurs because of its extensive educational function. The real concern is how to
organize and conduct the evaluation process to help us consider every important feature
implied and guide student in learning. Even in the last ten years, many alternative forms of
assessment have been proposed, but even in communicative language teaching, it is still
common to use objective summary tests to measure performance and proficiency.
This paper develops a formal progress assessment test for assessing the listening- speaking
skills and vocabulary to a group of students at a basic level (elementary level). The test
purposes are to look over the syllabus of the last unit that has been taught during the latest
two weeks. The syllabus is within the context of stores and locations in a city/town, where
students should be able to ask for directions and give responses about locations. Thus,
dealing with a type of vocabulary, grammar and a type of expression.
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ASSESSMENT TEST
speaking skill Assessment
Objective: The student will be able to ask for and give information and directions on a location
in a city.
Information: The vocabulary to be used are prepositions of place: near, next to, behind, in
front of, opposite, between; the commands for giving directions: turn left/right, go/walk,
straight-ahead/along, go past, cross. The tense employed is the simple present tense.
Instructions: Given worksheet 1 to student A and worksheet 2 to Student B (both of them
containing a location in the city), each student will have to follow the written instructions to
make up an oral dialogue in which they ask for and give directions of the places requested,
according to the map given.
Ask for and give directions to places in a town. Look at your map and follow the instructions
given below.
Explanation: This task is a communicative one since it tests the students' ability to perform
their knowledge of the language (language use). Thus, it is a forward-looking assessment as it
evaluates what students can do with the language in a simulated real situation. This task does
not only tests competence but also performance, using a testing task of the same type as a
language task in the real world. When a test assesses both, competence and performance, we
are dealing with a direct assessment. This task is also known as an integrative/global one
since it assesses the student's ability to combine knowledge of different parts of the language
and sees language use as indivisible.
listening skill Assessment
Objective: The students will be able to focus their attention to scan for specific details in a
conversation between two friends.
Information: The activity consists on an audio where a common daily conversation takes place.
The assessment is divided in two different parts, both of them gaining students’ attention to the
detail.
It’s a multiple-choice activity. Students listen to the conversation and them must choose one
option that best fits the answer.
Students are asked to complete the chart with specific information from the conversation.
Instructions: The teacher gives students an answer sheet of paper with the possible options to
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each question. The teacher explains students that from questions, they are going to choose
just one option according to what they head on the audio (listening). It is recommendable that
the listening/audio can be play twice so students will have the chance to listen for the specific
information they were asked for.
From these questions the students have to write the information missing on each task and
practice.
Explanation: Listening is a critically important skill to improve. And to improve it, you must be
able to practice, assess and track progress. Listening is the ability to accurately receive and
interpret messages in the communication process. Listening is key to all effective
communication. Without the ability to listen effectively, messages are easily misunderstood. As
a result, communication breaks down and the sender of the message can easily become
frustrated or irritated.
Reading as a Receptive Skill:
Wallace (1992) considers reading and the process of learning to read to be social and
participatory processes that should be done on a personal level. Grellet (1981) defines
reading comprehension as the process of obtaining relevant information from a text in an
efficient manner. Nuttall (1982) goes on to say that reading includes not just comprehending
the written words but also interpreting them in light of the writer's expectations, which Ur
(1991) also believes.
According to Watkins (2017), reading is a skill that is intentionally learnt and typically begins
at the beginning of a student's formal education; thus, if L2 learners learn to read in primary
school, they will be better prepared to learn to read in L2. Furthermore, while reading in
one's home tongue is beneficial, being able to read in another language may be even more
advantageous in terms of exceeding the limitations of new language learning. It is important
to note that in the same way that native speakers benefit from reading in their mother
tongue, Smith (2016), the same premise can be applied to reading in an L2. Reading is a
limitless input source that helps L2 learners to improve their level by providing and helping
them to perfect their vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and morphology. Watkins (2017).
People read for two reasons: to learn, particularly from newspapers, books, and magazines,
and to enjoy themselves. EFL teachers aim not just to transmit these two motivations for
reading in an L2 setting, but also to help students employ reading methods when learning to
read in a foreign language. According to Nutall (1992), in every reading act, the encoder and
decoder must share the same code in which the message was conveyed in order to
communicate with each other via pre-prepared or genuine texts. These texts will give the
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reader the impression that the content is either digestible or difficult to comprehend. In the
case of L2, activities that engage learners' schemata and familiarize them with various
reading activities that can be used to assess their reading comprehension are vital in
teaching.
According to Scrivener (2005), people read at different speeds, and students' success in
reading depends on their background knowledge of the topic presented in the reading, the
amount of lexis and grammar structures they are familiar with, and their attitudes toward
reading; and their success in reading assessment depends on how familiar they are with the
various formats of reading exercises they face when their reading skills are evaluated.
Reinforcing argumentation in reading, it is well accepted that in EFL education, both receptiv
e and productive abilities are related and cannot be taught separately.
As a result, in L2 education, as demonstrated in coursebooks, reading activities are linked to
any productive skills, although in real life, there is no single situation in which receptive and
productive abilities are used in isolation (Grellet, 1981).
Given this, the academics devised a writing production activity after proposing reading activit
ies (articles).
As part of the teaching and learning process, the student's reading performance evaluation, i
ncluding pronunciation, is important because it familiarizes them with top-down and bottomu
p processing, skimming, and scanning, as well as the promotion of intensive and extensive r
eading, resulting in benefits to the student's language level.
Furthermore, when students' reading skills are assessed, they are evaluated holistically, whi
ch means that not only are their reading comprehension skills tested, but also the process of
rearranging letters and words separately in a phase or text, which justifies the exercises desi
gned here.
Writing as a Productive skill:
As previously stated, a receptive skill used to be linked to a productive skill in teaching a
foreign language, and this is shown in coursebooks; however, despite its importance, most
of the time teachers, as well as students, feel reluctant to do it either in class or outside of it,
and perhaps one of the reasons for that is the fact that writing takes a long time. Harmer
(2015). However, it's vital to note that "reading is a survival skill that allows you to respond to
various social demands." Writing, on the other hand, is a less important ability, but it can
lead to more proactive positions." (Tribble, 1996, p.11).
According to Smith and Conti (2016), writing helps learners improve their L2 acquisition by
establishing a relationship between sound and writing, which aids students in learning by
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heart vocabulary, visualizing grammar structures, creating sentences, and even
experimenting with new lexical and grammar structures. Swain (1993).
Many activities tend to develop writing abilities. The most relevant could be brainstorming,
text begins, and quick writing. Text-start activities, for example, encourage L2 students'
initiatives in writing output by exposing them to models that would provide some feedback to
authors as well as ideas for how to organize the text to keep the qualities of that particular
genre.
It is true that reading and writing are inextricably linked; and by exposing students to various
reading genres, teachers are providing students with the background knowledge they need
to produce some pieces of writing, which activates their schemata (writing achievement),
allowing them to produce a full written text.
This will help us to discriminate between stronger and weaker students in order to help the
latter ones to overcome their difficulties. In terms of practicality, the test format chosen is
practical since the setting, the scoring and the marking will be easy to carry out.
Another reason why we have chosen this test format is its reliability. As most of the tasks will
be marked objectively, the test will have high reliability. There is only one task which will
require a more subjective scoring, that is activity A.3 in which students have to answer
questions about the information in the text. In this activity, the teacher may have to deduct
some points if the students make serious grammar mistakes. In general, the test may be
said to be fairly reliable with regard to marking.
Conclusion
To finish all the things said above and to sum up, we can conclude that there is not only one
way to assess learning of language. Choosing the best way to assess students is a hard
task for teachers since they have to bear in mind their students’ best interests, different
necessities as well as the teaching and learning setting. There are many aspects to consider
when designing an assessment such as the type of test that will suit the students’ needs the
best, the principles of language, and objectives to mention some.
Assessments always need some degree of reliability and this can be done through designing
a scale. This will help teachers determine the criteria students are going to be assessed on.
Having a fixed band scale and related descriptors that all evaluators can follow will give a
greater reliability to any assessment
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Bibliography
- “Assessment and Testing in the Classroom” Chapter 2. Formal Assessment. 2.9. First,
Second and Third Generation Tests. 2.9.3 Third Generation Tests. FUNIBER (2019)
- Bachman, L. (1990). Fundamental Considerations in Language Teaching Testing.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Gronlund, N.E. (1998) Measurement and Evaluation in Teaching. 4th Edition,
Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., New York,
96.http://blogrizkirmd.blogspot.com/2014/01/principles-of-language-assessment.html
[Retrieved May 26th 2020]
- Lennon, A (n.d) Assessment and testing in the classroom, (study material) FUNIBER.
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APPENDIX
Assessment of the speaking skill.
OBJECTIVE: The student will be able to ask for and give information and directions
about locations in a town. The vocabulary to be used is the simple present tense,
including prepositions of place: near, next to, behind, in front of, opposite, between;
commands for giving directions: turn left/right, go/walk straight ahead/along, go past,
cross.
TASK: GIVING AND ASKING FOR DIRECTIONS
PAIR WORK. Given worksheet 1 to Student A and Student B (both of them containing a
map of a city), each student will have to follow the written instructions so as to make up
an oral dialogue in which they ask for and give directions of the places requested,
according to the map given.
INSTRUCTIONS:
Ask for and give directions of places in a city or town. Look at your map and follow the
instructions given below.
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Work sheet 2
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work sheet 4: Listening and practice
Revision of ordinary numbers
Student A: use the information on Number 1 and give direction to someone from a starting point to
the school.
Student B: use the information on number 2 and give information to someone from the starting point
to the bus station.
Working sheet 2: vocabulary
Names and places in a town or city.
• Ask your classmate if there is a library near there.
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• Ask your classmate about how to get there.
• Say thanks.
• Do the same with the following places: a supermarket/ a gas station
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Work sheet 3
Grammar:
Answer to your classmate specifying where the place is located
by using a preposition of place.
Look carefully at the positions
• Answer to your classmate. Give him the directions to get to the place.
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Work sheet 4
Writing and speaking
Appendix
INSTRUCTIONS
Ask for and give directions of places in a town. Look at your map and follow the
instructions given below.
