UNIVERSIDAD CATOLICA DE LA SANTISIMA CONCEPCION

FACULTAD DE EDUCACION

PROGRAMA PEDAGOGIA EN EDUCACION MEDIA EN INGLES

“Reaction Paper”

Subject: Language Assessment

Professor: Roxana Correa

Student: Andrés Hunter

Concepción, July 23th of 2010

Reaction Paper: Testing to Learn: A personal view of Language Testing

This article exposes an assessment issue which is not taken into consideration at the moment of assessing student performance after taking major tests like TOEFL or IELTS. Hence, Brian Tomlinson demonstrates the importance of “learning validity” without excluding the concepts of reliability, fairness and validity mentioned in this article. Learning validity could be understood as the opportunities that a test could bring for test takers. Therefore, this author shows the importance of this concept providing crucial ideas that supports it. In fact, learners can learn from the preparation for a test as well as the developing opportunities for knowledge/skills they know or can do. Unfortunately, this idea is very hard to achieve because of the influence of major test is not only in the summative assessment preparation for them but also during the formative assessment process. In fact, books associated with the assessment issue give useful information of the tools and theory necessary for assessing correctly but they do not mention the opportunities to learn while being assessed. This explained quoting Tomlinson citing Alderson (2001) who said that the purpose of an assessment task is to collect relevant information for purposes of making inferences or decisions about individuals” (p.42 , 2005). Thus, Tomlinson proposes ideas of how incorporate learning opportunities for preparing a test, during a test and from feedback. Firstly, it involves the use of similar activities and situations in the test and also expending time reviewing and extending what students know. Secondly, students can learn new vocabulary, knowledge and skills as they are being tested, i.e. they learn skimming for the gist as they do an exercise. Finally, feedback can be applied as a self one during a test; this can be done leaving an activity in which they give feedback themselves.

Personally, this document evoked encountered feelings in my mind that I have to describe. I admire the insight that Tomlinson has about the importance of what assessing students should involve additionally to the fact of obtaining information of the assessed person. This insight reaffirms a popular saying that is “life is a never-ending process of learning” and as an educator it surprised me because the assessing instances are considered as unpleasant events that are need for continuing learning. Unluckily, this particular vantage point for improving learning demands to increase the teaching efforts to achieve learning. In fact, the eight point of learning during a test indicates that students can learn new topics by including them in tests as you assess them using the common activities and exercises. This requires looking for texts that contain similar vocabulary (in terms of complexity) and structures that could not confuse them. Also, there is a risk in the point 10 which tells that it is a good idea to test learners in pairs or groups, but it does not indicate the fact that some students could rely over others who are better at the language, which is something totally unfair. On the other hand, I think that the way in which this author proposes for giving feedback is extremely useful. Indeed, giving students the criteria that

will be used for assessing them help students to prepare themselves focusing their efforts on the aforementioned elements (the criteria). Additionally, I think that giving feedback to students during and after a test not only help them to increase their learning but also encourages them to continue making efforts to learn because they can see that there is someone who cares about their language learning process. Lastly, I cannot finish this essay saying that this is a worthless article or the other way around but what I can say is that it will give new things to think about for teachers of English and also for teachers of other disciplines.