EVALUATING WITH TESTS

First of all, at the moment of designing test with its respective tasks, a number of factors must be taken into account.  The first factor is instructional objectives, which is related to the process of choosing tasks that are to be focused on the same kind of language skills, which are supposed to be described in the objectives. Two kinds of tasks emerge: open-ended tasks and closed-ended tasks. In the case of instructional objectives, closed-ended tasks may permit the examiner to assess precise language skills. On the contrary, open-ended tasks may give kind of carte blanche to the students, so that they respond using ways that are very different from the ones intended by the examiner.

 As stated by the author when we referred about making open-ended test tasks, examiners need to keep in mind that this kind of test tasks don’t control the precise way the specific response is made by the test taker. However, they must have certain structure for the tests to be scored. Open-ended test tasks have the advantage consisting on the reflection of the way authentic language is used. They are characterized by the fact that they are easy to device but time consuming to score. Open-ended task tests must take in to account the feasibility in terms of task topic, task difficulty and the time allotted to perform the task.

In contrast, closed-ended test tasks are the facts that they are focused on comprehension skills and appear to be particularly appropriate for beginners, though they are also used for advance students. They have multiple choice and matching as possible test tasks, letting in this way, which the answer can be measured by the examiner. Closed-ended test tasks offer advantages in terms of time and grade of difficulty, also requiring considerably time and preparation. After having analyzed these aspects of choosing and devising test tasks, it can be concluded that, there are several forms in testing, but one form is not necessarily suitable for all circumstances and purposes. Examiners must look for the one that well fits the objectives that require to be evaluated.

THE USE OF PORTFOLIO

A student portfolio is a purposeful collection of student work that tells a story about the student’s efforts, progress, or achievement in one or more academic disciplines.  This collection must include student participation in the selection of portfolio content; guidelines for the selection of that material; criteria for judging the value of the work collected, and evidence of student self-reflection.

In my opinion, using portfolios can be an important tool to encourage students to be more active in their learning process, since they are able to have a record of the important things they learn, and this makes them feel more motivated and responsible. Moreover, it can promote student´s critical skills, as they will have a voice and their perceptions will be reflected in the portfolio. However, this is not that easy to carry out, even though it has a great purpose its effect is reduced when students do not make part of the decision-making, as it usually happens in schools where the teachers just worry about getting another way to grade, which just makes students have a portfolio in order to please the teacher or to get a good grade that will help in the average to pass the subject.

 An additional aspect that limits the sense of portfolios is the fact that teacher´s subjectivity sometimes plays a role when it comes to grading different student´s assignment, so they will vary according to the teacher´s personality or ideas. Then it is important that teachers receive training on how to know if students achieve the expected goals.

As well, I think that it would be more meaningful if we could teach students that having a portfolio is not a matter of getting grades, but improving and coming up with other strategies; besides if we really help them see the purpose, giving them constant feedback ( meaning that both teacher and student get involved), they will be willing to do their portfolio just for the benefit of learning from their own process.

ASSESSINGN READING

                                       

Nowadays, some people feel the necessity to read in order to being informed about what is happening in the world, looking for that information through internet, magazines, newspapers, etc. Some of them read that information properly understanding the real message  but the others don’t; It could be due to the fact that the people that misunderstand the information have not had education about reading in its own language . So because of that people tend to reject reading or they take this as a boring activity.

Meanwhile, when a person decides to study English teaching program and start the  English learning process know that reading has been considered as one of the important skill, but it hasn´t been given the appropriate and special attention it deserves; one of the main flaws regarding this skill might be that it  is generalized, I mean, it is seen as something every student must know and therefore must perform well, then when it comes to teaching a foreign language, many tasks include it without taking into account strategies, whether the purpose is to use a bottom-up or top-down strategy; so the task becomes useless, because it doesn´t have a specific focus of attention.

One more aspect worth mentioning is that most of the times the skill of every single student is not considered, and as a consequence, it is impossible to know what to expect from him/her or to determine the special instruction, and feedback the student needs. According to this, reading tasks should be meaningful, and should get a lot of practice, having a purpose and a clear strategy in mind, this way the student will start to care more about it.

As a conclusion, I firmly believe that reading should be regarded as a very significant skill, because it not only allows the student to get involved with the language, but to create schema that will help him in his development and understanding of the other skills.
                                                                 

PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE ASSESMENT

According with the reding of chapter #2 "Brown, H. D. Principles of languages assesment"  and the analysis of it, I could explore how these principles should and could be applied in formal tests and how some questions can help us to identify five main criteria at the moment of testing a test.

These principles are:

• Practicality: It is not expensive, it is within appropriate time constraint, it isrelatively easy to administer and scoring/evaluation procedure that is specific and it is time-efficient.
• Reliability: *"Consistency on assesment results" (Linn and Gronlund)                                                                                   *A test is reliably if: " You give the same test to the same student or matched students in two different occasions, the test should yield similar results." (Brown 2004)                                                                                      Some factors that might influence reliabilityof a test are:                                          * Students- Releated Reliability: The most common lerner related issue in reliability is caused by temporary illness, anxiety, fatigue, a bad day and other physical or phsychological factors.                                                            *Rater Reliability: It has two subdivisions (Inter-rater reliability: when two or more scores yield inconsistent scores of the same test. Some factor could be "lack of attention to scoring, inexperience, inattention") and (Intra-rater reliability: Scoring criteria, fatigue, bias toward particular "good" and "bad" students or simple carelessness)                              *Test Administration Reliability: It can be caused by administration facators. E.g: noisy from outside, photocopying variation, room condition, even condition of desks and chair.                                                                    *Test Reliability:
• Validity: "Measuring what should be measured"                                      *Content-Related Evidence: If a test examples the subject matter about which conclusions are to be drawn.                                                                       If a test requires the test taker to perform the behavior that is being measured.                                                                                                    *Criterion-Related Evidence: Is used to demostrate the accuracy of a measure or precedure by comparing in with another measure or procedure which has been demostrated to be valid.                                                              *Construct-Related Evidence: How well performance on the assesment can be interpreted as meaningful measure of some characteristics or quality.                                                                                                         *Consequential Validity: How well use of assesment results accomplishes purposes and avoids unintended effect.                                          *Face Validity: It refers  to the degree to which a test looks right, and appears to measure the knowledge or ability it claims to measure, based  on the subjective judgment of the examinees who take it, the administrative personnel who decide on its use, and other psychometrically unsophisticated observers (Mousavi, 2002, p. 244). 
• Authenticity: In a test, authencity may be present in the following ways: * Te language in the test is as natural as posible.                                            * Items are contextualized  rather than isolated.                                                  * Topics are meaningful: (relevant, interesting) for the learner.                          * Some thematic organization to items is provided, suchs as through a story line or episode.                                                                                    * Task represent, or closely approximate, real-world taks.
• Washback: Any language test or piece of assessment must have positive washback, by which I mean that the effect of the test on the teaching must be beneficial. This should be held in mind by the test constructors; it is only too easy to construct a test which leads, for example, to candidates learning material by heart or achieving high marks by simply applying test-taking skills rather than genuine language skills.

As a conlusion, testing and assessment occupy a big part of teachers' time and, maybe partly because of this, there is currently great interest in validity issues, washback and in the ethics of testing. More and more tests now have a pre-testing element built in to their construction and, in addition, there is a lot of research into the construction, marking and validation of 'subjective tests'.

 ASSESMENT AND EVALUATION 

It is thought that the teachers assess their students understanding of what is being taugh throughout activities, tasks, feedbacks and so on, That the majority of the time it finishes with any grade analysis of their learning status. Whereas teachers evaluate the result or product of what they have learned throughout quizzes, test, projects, essays an so on, in which the majority of them finishes with grades results.