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Hello! Open the link and click on the different circles in order to know more about assessment and testing!
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Assessment is a commonly misunderstood concept in education; it refers to a continuous process of monitoring learners' learning processes. It is used to assess cognitive skills, observe and value criteria, and plan successful classes in order to fulfill goals.

Assessment & Testing

PURPOSES

PRINCIPLES

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Assessment is not an isolated practice that only reduces to finish a process, in contrast it has purposes. Some of the of them are related to classroom practices, and others are related to language policy intentions. Click on each star to know more about it.

LANGUAGE POLICIES AND TESTING

REFERENCES

Are the test effective, appropriate, useful or down-to-earth? There are five main principles that will guide the creation of a good test. It is important to highlight that having a CRITERIA is key, as well as recognizing the institutional setting, educational demands, and policies. CLICK on each key to know more.

Did you know that one of the most crucial aspects of the teaching-learning process is assessment?

TESTING

Did you realize that tests are not only measurement instruments, but also mechanisms for influencing de facto policies?CRITERIA in tests are being employedto alter roles in education and society! We know certain things regarding language mastery, and there are those that are hidden. CLICK TO READMORE!

Yes, all the circles in the tree represent some of the types of assessment. There is not a correct or incorrect way to assess the learning, but instruments selection depends on the goals to value. CLIC HERE!

TYPES

Testing refers to a method of measuring a person's abilities (Brown & Abeywickrama, 2019). It is associated to standardized tests, but also serves as an instrument. Some of them measure the ability, others competences.

PROCEDURES

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TYPES OF TESTS

You can assess a learner depending on Achievement assessment or proficiency assessment.The achievement assessment refers to the value of specific objectives. The proficiency assessment refers to the value of what a learner can do in the real world.

LANGUAGE POLICY & TESTING PURPOSES (Shohamy, 2007)Manipulate people's behaviorsControl language knowledgeImpose teaching methods, pedagogy, and teaching content. Engage teaching in "test-like". Provide social status. Promote uniforms language.

GUIDE TEACHER TO (Martinez, 2020):Identify strengths and weaknessesRedesign and adapt lessons, tests, assessment procedures, and more.Create meaningful communicative tasks and activities for learnersPromote autonomous learning.Contextualize practicesReflect on practicesConsider testing and assessment principles

PROVIDE BENEFITS FOR TEACHERS AND LEARNERS IN AN ONGOING PROCES AS (Thomas et al. 2004; Herrera & Macías, 2015):Help teachers determine the appropriateness of content and the pace of the lesson.Assist teachers in monitoring student learning throughout the course.Supervise the effectiveness of specific teaching methods.Assist students in monitoring their own progress and understanding.Build student confidence in preparation for national standardized tests.

PRACTICALITYEveryadministrated test should be easy to administrate. It means that its implementation and taking time, cost, scoring, interpretation, and reporting. For this, it is important to consider all the resources as human, material, and time while creating a test (Bachman and Palmer, 1996).

RELIABILITYAccording to Shahomy & Inbar (2006), "reliability refers to the extent to which the test is consistent in its score, thus indicating whether the scores are accurate and can be relied upon" (p. 5). A test is not reliable different factors affect the result (Brown & Abeywickrama, 2019). This depends on:Students:Personal issues may affect the "real score" got by a learner.Rater:Some vias can be presented while assessing or testing a learner, as human error.Test administration:Environment conditions may affect the test implementation, as well as the resources such as copies, noise, or lights.Test:Test design also may affect the performance.

VALIDITYThis principle is connected to how appropriate, meaningful, and useful are the assessment and test results. According to Shohamy & Inbar (2006), claim that instruments must match with the objectives that were developed during all the teaching and learning moments. On the other hand, this validity can be evident by (Brown & Abeywickrama, 2019):Content:What is assessed must be familiar and under the same settings in order to achieve goals.Criterion:It refers to the similar information got in the implementation of another tool with the same criteria.Construct:The assessment tools should be aligned with the theories of learning.Consequential validity:Preparation, measuring, and consequences must be taken into account when designing an assessment instrument.Face validity:Not only do assessment instruments' designers provide validity to test, but also learners are in charge of evaluating the instruments. This must be seen as fair, relevant, and useful.

AUTHENTICITYThis is a complex term to define, as it refers to "how real" assessment seems to be. According to Newman & Smith (2016) "authenticity is a concept aimed at capturing dimensions of truth or verification."

ALSO SERVES TO PROMOTE AUTHENTIC LEARNERS' PARTICIPATION (Nasab, 2015).Assessmentforlearning:It provides opportunities of monitoring the process of learning in students (Council of Europe, 2001). According to the Ministry of Education (2016) "assessment for learning promotes learning goals for life, increases student performance and improves equality among the learning indicators and opportunities to learn" (p. 38).Assessment as learning:It is about the understanding of learners' role as active. They are in charge of assessing their own learning by the provided feedback.Assessment of learning:This assessment intends to provide a grade to the learning process. According to the Ministry of Education (2006) "assessment of learning is summative and is evidenced in procedures and instruments that teachers propose as activities that allow evaluating the level of achievement and performance of students in a certain topic, to compare their results with the standards or learning indicators previously established" (p. 39).Assessment in learning:It is related to learning in authentic conditions.

WASHBACKThis term is considered as the feedback that learners receive from administrated assessment instruments. On one hand, it can be beneficial, or in contrast, harmful. This aims to find how the testing or assessment influences teachers, learners, and curriculum. Instruments are not really related to scoring but serve as a learning device (Brown & Abeywickrama, 2019).

LANGUAGE POLICY AND TESTINGTesting is not only reduced to measure and value learners' performance in order to help them to improve the learning and teaching conditions regarding a language. On the other hand, these instruments serve as a tool to change people's behaviors, as they are being controlled by classes practices, imposition of knowledge, implementation of standardized tests, etc. (Shohamy, 2007). This is part of the covert agendas of de facto policies. This practice violates human rights, as well as language value according to Shohamy (2007).

The assessment also serves as a way to MEASURE (Martinez, 2020). Its objective also lies in conceiving learners' tasks into a number or an alphabet letter. On the other hand, this is part of the subgrading culture that tests learning isolated.

You can assess a learner depending onNorm-referencing or criterion-referencing.Norm-referencing is the action of placing the learner on a level.Criterion-referencing is about assessing proficiency in a continuum.

You can assess a learner on Assessment by others or self-assessment.Assessment by others means that a different person as an examiner, teacher, or someone else is in charge to develop the measurement.Self-assessment means that the learner is in charge of completing his or her own value by assessing proficiency.

You can assess a learner by Series assessment or category assessment.Series assessment is the procedure of developing a single assessment task in order to value the learners' outcomes. Category assessment is about the development of a series of isolated tasks to be measured in a complete way.

You can assess a learner as Holistic or analyticHolistic is about assessing a global value.Analytic is about looking at different aspects of performance separately.

You can assess a learner depending on Impression or guided judgment.The impression is about the value of learners' performance without reference to specific criteria but based on classroom experiences.Guided judgment is about the value of performance in reference to specific criteria.

You can assess a learner depending onMastery criterion-referencing or continuum criterion-referencingMastery criterion-referencing is about the claim of deciding if a learner masters or not a topic.Continuum criterion-referencing is about conceiving the master in an ongoing process.

You can assess a learner depending on Formative assessment or summative assessment.Formative assessment is an ongoing process in order to strengthen the learning process. It feedbacks processes instead of grading them. Summative assessment is based on instruments that allow appreciating learning in the achievement of goals by grading.

You can assess a learner depending onDirect assessment or indirect assessment.Direct assessment is about observing the learning in a moment but not by a test but in school moments. Indirect assessment refers to the sitting of a test in order to show skills.

You can assess a learner depending onRating on a scale or rating on a checklist.Rating on a scale refers to the placement of learners into a series of bands like international tests. Rating on a checklist refers to the fulfillment of items in order to know the score of a learner. It compels spaces that must be marked (like yes or not to the achievement of criteria).

You can assess a learner depending on Subjective assessment or objective assessment.Subjective assessment is about the judgment of the performance of a learner. Objective assessment is about providing a test with a unique question with a unique answer.

You can assess a learner depending on Continuous assessment or fixed point assessment.Continuous assessment refers to the process of valuing the work of a learner throughout the complete course.Fixed point assessment refers to taking assessment procedures at a specific moment.

You can assess a learner depending on Performance assessment or knowledge assessmentPerformance assessment is about checking a sample of language in a provided task to learners. Knowledge assessment is about providing a question to learners with no control in order to observe the learners' linguistic knowledge.

Assessment can be completed by grids, checklists, and others (Council of Europe, 2001).

There are a lot of elements that can be assessed and tested in a task. The competences criteria can be made-up of different categories, but their value may be complex to complete. It is important to have taken advantage of the feasible assessment, which invites the testers to control those by renaming, combining, and reducing the categories (Council of Europe, 2001).

PRINCIPLES OF ASSESSMENTThere are five main principles that support the assessment tools in order to make them a good test. Those are PRACTICALITY, RELIABILITY, VALIDITY, AUTHENTICITY & WASHBACK (Brown & Abeywickrama, 2019). Furthermore, there is no correct order, but it is important to consider the context to be assessed.There are other principles such as JUSTICE, TRANSPARENCY, INTERACTIVITY, AND DEMOCRACY (Arias et al., 2012).

ASSESSMENTAssessment is an ongoing process that values and judges people's competences in the context in order to show the formative and summative achievements of goals (Martinez, 2020). Those competences are declarative knowledge, skills and know-how, existential competence, and the ability to learn, according to the Council of Europe (2001).In language learning, the assessment measures how effective language policies scales, frames, and guides are being implemented in classes (Shohamy, 2007). On the other hand, this leads to creating a vision of standardized and homogeneous language achievement, no matter the learners' psychological, social and political condition, as stated by Shohamy (2007). This is an important step to evaluate purposes.However, teachers must grasp how to assess in order to fulfill the real purposes of assessment. Testing is a term popularly confused in assessment; it refers to the methods used to measure learners' abilities (Brown & Abeywickrama, 2019).In this infographic, we will talk about the purposes of assessment and its different types, as well as testing types.

According to Shohamy & Inbar (2006), "deciding which assessment tool (s) to use depends on the purpose for assessment and on how language knowledge is defined" (p. 1).

REFERENCESArias, C., Maturana, L., & Restrepo,I. (2012). Evaluación de los aprendizajes en lenguas extranjeras: hacia prácticas justas y democráticas. Lenguaje, 40(1), 99-126.Bachman, L.F.,&Palmer, A.S.(1996)Language testing in practice:Designing and developing useful language tests. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.Brown, D., & Abeywickrama, P. (2019). Chapter 2.Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices (3rd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Pearson Education.Council of Europe (2001). Chapter 9. Common European Framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University PressHerrera, L., & Macías D, (2015). A call for language assessment literacy in the education and development of teachers of English as a foreign language. Colombian Applied Linguistics Journal, 17(2), 302-312.Martinez, J. (2020). Assessment purposes, principles and types. [animated video].Martinez, J. (2020).Assessment subculture vs. grading subculture: an educative conflict in Colombia.Ministerio de Educación Nacional, MEN (2016). Pedagogical Principles and Guidelines. Suggested English Curriculum.Bogotá: Colombia Bilingüe.Newman, G. E., & Smith, R. K. (2016).Kinds of Authenticity. Philosophy Compass, 11(10),609-618. doi:10.1111/phc3.12343Nasab, F. G. (2015). Alternative versus traditional assessment. Journal of Applied Linguistics and Language Research, 2(6), 165-178.Shohamy, E. (2007). Language tests as language policy tools. Assessment in Education, 14(1), 117-130.Shohamy, E., & Inbar, O. (2006). The language assessment process: A multiplism perspective. CALPER Professional Development Document (CPDD), 605.Thomas, J., Allman, C. B., & Beech, M. (2005). Assessment for the diverse classroom: A handbook for teachers. Bureau of Exceptional Education and Student Services, Florida Department of Education.

Assessment procedures by Shohamy & Inbar (2006)◦Establish the purpose(s)◦Define language knowledge (construct)◦Select the instruments, procedures or tools◦Design items and tasks◦Determine ways of administration◦Check quality of the language sample◦Assess quality of the procedure◦Interpret results◦Report results

Some of the types of tests that you can find are (Brown & Abeywickrama, 2019):Achievement tests:These tests measure if learners have met the objectives in a specific time frame of the curriculum.Diagnostic tests:These tests help teachers to identify what aspects of the content to work the learners already know, as well as the needs for improvement they have.Placement tests:These tests place learners in a particular level of the curriculum where the content to meet is not easy nor difficult, but challenging.Proficiency tests:These tests measure the global level of competence in learners. It is not over a course or content, but overall the abilities.Aptitude Tests: These tests measure the capacity of learning before as course starts, as well as predict the future success on it.

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Assessment & Testing by Jackeline Valencia on Genially

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Assessment is a commonly misunderstood concept in education; it refers to a continuous process of monitoring learners' learning processes. It is used to assess cognitive skills, observe and value criteria, and plan successful classes in order to fulfill goals.