Delphi module

13.0
Introduction

A bit like teaching itself, assessment is a topic that suffers from the fact that everyone has had first-hand experience of the process (as 'victim', so to speak) and has therefore certain fixed views on it. We have all come through it, more or less unscathed, and this can make us reluctant to stop and reflect on whether we knew enough about what was going on when we were being assessed, whether the process we underwent was a fair one, and whether the assessment measures employed were appropriate. This is the principal reason why some of the methods of assessment in use today in higher education (HE) have not changed substantially despite major developments in approaches to other areas of language learning and teaching. One of the aims of this module is to get you to consider how you currently assess, to reflect on why you do it this way and to look at alternative approaches.

Activity 1

In Module 1 you were asked to elaborate a set of personal beliefs about teaching and learning. As a preliminary to our work on assessment, refer back to this statement of beliefs and produce a similar statement of your views on assessment and feedback. To help you on your way, have a look at the following two statements about assessing language work that I asked two colleagues to produce. Both were asked to list a maximum of 10 beliefs and to limit each statement to 25 words.

Tutor 1 works in a department of languages and teaches primarily 'specialist' students of modern languages; Tutor 2 works in a language centre and teaches on an institution-wide language programme.

'What I believe is important in language assessment'

Tutor 1

Students need regular homeworks; they need to do weekly written work.
Course work should be assessed but should count a little less than end-of-year exams.
Assessment is about being formative as well as summative; course work should help students to learn better and feedback is crucial to this.
Translation is the ultimate test: it pins students down, they cannot hide their lack of knowledge, like they can in comprehension.
English > FL translation is something for final-year work only.
Vocabulary needs regular testing. Otherwise students won't learn it.
Students need the chance to redeem any failures.
It's probably not really a belief, but we must assess efficiently. We have so little time these days and lots of students to assess.
Both exams and course work should be challenging. They're meant to examine what students know, not make them feel good.
You cannot separate language and content. Students need to learn they are here not just to learn the language. Assessment criteria need to reflect this.

Tutor 2

It is important to assess all four language skills, plus knowledge of grammar.
Oral work should, on the whole, take precedence over written work.
Generally, we are not professional enough in our approach to assessment. University language teachers ought to be trained in assessment.
Students should be involved in assessing their own work where possible.
Assessment tasks should be as naturalistic as possible, ie tests should be open-book and allow use of dictionaries.
Translation into the foreign language is an inappropriate task for students.
Assessment must be equitable: some students panic in exams, while others like them. Balancing assessment methods is the only way to be fair to all.
We should use the full mark scale from 0-100. Even the best student rarely gets more than 75 or 80 in our marking culture.
Transparency is very important. Students need to know why they are being assessed and exactly how marks are being allocated.
Teaching and assessment need to be dovetailed. We should never assess anything that hasn't been taught.

Now it is your turn. Same rules apply: 10 beliefs, maximum 25 words each. Remember the above examples are for illustration only and should not constrain your own reflections which can range over the whole field of language assessment. Keep a written record of your beliefs as you will need them again at the end of the module.

Besides encouraging you at various points to reflect on your own approaches to assessment, this module provides an overview of important general issues in assessment. It considers the examining process and alternative approaches to assessment, helps you to understand language errors and looks at ways to provide feedback on assessed work. At certain points in the module you will find extracts from interviews with language tutors and students on the subject of assessment, entitled 'Tutor voices' and 'Student voices' respectively.

This module is not concerned with specific forms of language testing, for which you are referred to Module 14. Ideally these two modules should be worked through consecutively, but in any case you will find a number of cross-references between them.