Download - Assessing Language Learning
• What does it mean to know a second language?
• How do international, national and state standardized tests influence language learning and teaching?
• What are advantages and disadvantages of teacher-made tests?
ASSESSING LANGUAGE LEARNING
• Impossible to determine how people learn languages without knowing what they have learned
• Language testing researchers seek to assess consistently and accurately
• All assessment is an estimate of what people know
What they know
Learning
What they can show
Assessment Data
INTRO TO ASSESSMENT
WHEN DOES ASSESSMENT TAKE PLACE?
Pre-assessment and adjustment (differentiated instruction)Instruction and formative assessment
Assessment and reteaching/relearning
DEFINITIONS
• Language test – systematic and practical way to elicit samples of a learner’s oral, written, listening and reading performance
• Publisher-produced tests
• Standardized testing
• Alternative assessment
• Norm-referenced
• Criterion-referenced
DEFINITIONS
• Multiple choice
• True/False
• Matching
• Short answer (constructed response)
• Essay (extended constructed response)
• Oral interview
• PresentationSources: University of Waterloo, Northern Illinois University
FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT - DIAGNOSTIC
FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT
STANDARDS
• Standards give us a vision of what students ultimately need to be able to do with the language
• ACTFL and state
• European Framework
ACTFL STANDARDS
• 5 goal areas known as the 5 C’s• 11 total standards
Communication
Cultures
Connections Comparisons
Communities
ISSUES – COMPETENCE-PERFORMANCE
• Competence-performance problem – theoretically impossible to access “true” language ability
• We can observe what students can write or say in situations, but students may be anxious, unmotivated, or have nothing to say
• Think of a time that for any reason you were not as communicative as usual
ISSUES
• Reliability - Does your assessment consistently produce output?
• Validity – Does your assessment address what you want to address?
• Does your overall grade represent students’ language ability?
• What will your grade system be?
ISSUES
• Face validity – Does it measure what it is supposed to?
• Predictive validity – Does it produce accurate predictions about students?
• Concurrent validity – Two tests about the same skill should yield similar scores
• A test may be valid for some audiences and not others
• Use multiple assessments to increase validity of results
AUTHENTICITY AND WASHBACK
• Language tests should determine whether learners can use the language in the context they are studying
• Because of this, language tests should mirror real-life (in theory)
• Washback – the effect that assessments have on learning and teaching
• If you want students to be able to do something, make sure to measure it
TESTING APPROACHES
• Integrative
• Oral interviews/compositions
• High validity
• Perhaps not a reliable
• Nonintegrative/discrete-point
• Focus on one unit of language at a time
• Highly reliable
• Does “knowing” the answer have to do with the ability to use it in conversation?
TESTING APPROACHES
• Dictations
• Elicited imitation
• Grammaticality judgments (DOL)
• Cloze tests
• Indirect tests – sub skills
• Direct tests – actual skills
PORTFOLIOS
• Purposeful selection of student work chosen by student and teacher
• Eg., an assignment a student is proud of, a test, a written piece selected by a teacher, and an oral recording (link, etc.)
• Students must be involved in self-assessment to foster learner autonomy
PERFORMANCE TASKS
PERFORMANCE TASKS
PERFORMANCE TASKS
PERFORMANCE TASKS