Administering Assessment

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Licda Cleopatra Noel Drummond

The eight chapter is base on the administering assessment it has to do on how the teachers adminitrate the different invironment related with the aplication of the test in behalf of the students.

These are some considerations prior to test administration:

1. Scheduling Tests: the first consideration a teacher should take in account is that any assessment should be scheduled at a time that allows students to do their best work. Before scheduling a test, check that the date does not concide with special events like assemblies, fire drills, or sports day. 

2. Providing Information to Students: teacher should be as transparent as possible regarding student assessment. Students need to know when exams are scheduled and policies about arriving and departing. They need clear information about what they may and may not bring into the exam such as food and drink, calculators, and so on.

3. Academic Dishonesty: at the beginning of the school year, teacher should describe for the students the acceptable and unacceptable academics behaviors. Because some students may no know what constitutes academic dishonesty, give examples of cheating, plagiarism, and impermisible collaboration.

4. Physical Setting: in general the setting of a test should provide an atmosphere that is conductive to student learning. Accomadate the classroom in should a way that the students may be comfortable.

5. Test Assembly: all tests should be professionally compliled. This means that they should be typed, well formatted, and free of typos. The test should be clearly identified by a cover page with the name of the test, the date it was given, and the time allowed. The test instructions should be clear and concise whether they are given orally or in writing. if you are giving oral instructions, read slowly and clearly, but do not add or elaborate on anything as this will disadvantage students in other classes.

Test Administration also have some steps for teachers to take in consideration when they are applying a test should as: time, administrator's role, and test security.

• Time: tell students how long they have at the beginning of the test, and give them announcements throughout the exam to help them budget their time more effectively.
• Administrator's Role: it is recommended that the teacher maintain a friendly but stern demeanor. Students should know that you will not tolerate cheating or misbehavior during the test.
• Test security: maintaning security is important for any level of testing. Remind students about the test conditions. Rules that you migh want to institute include no talking, no cell phone calls or text messaging, and the correct procedure for asking a question.

   Grading

After the test has been administered, teachers must mark the papers using the answer key prepared at the same time the test was developed. While grading, make sure that guidelines such as writting scales are readily available to the markets. Inform students when their results will be available.

These are some issues in test administration consider as very important when administering assessment and as teachers we should take in account such as: surprise test/pop quizzes, latecomers, incident reports, and accommodations policy.

Things that teacher should remember about administering assessment and also take in consideration:

1. Create a positive attitude toward testing.
2. Be transparent.
3. Prepare policies and procedures well in advance.
4. Explain to students the distinction between teaching versus testing.
5. Refrain from helping students who are having difficulty.
6. Adopt a specials needs assessment policy.
7. Inform students of the consequences of academic dishonesty.
8. Minimeze the opportunities for cheating and plagiarism.

Finally I will say that administering assessment is very important for teachers in all area, the way they developed their test with the different steps that will allow students to achieve their goal and the teacher to know if the ways they are working in the subject the idea is dropting on good ground.

GLOSSARY  

1. Typos:

2.Ringers:

3. Demeanor:

Student Test-Taking Strategies

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Licda Cleopatra Noel D.

The seven chapter of the book Assessing English Language Learners is related to how student can apply test-taking using different strategies that is going to help them achieve their goals in a successful way.

The key to successful test-taking lies in a student's ability to use time wisely and to develop prratical study habits.

Students should make schedules and revise them when necessary and the schedule should be realistic, include a study place, include a daily study time, and allow plenty of preparation time for important assessments.

Students also need to attend classes on a regular basis for the language learning to take place.

There are necessary some good review techniques for students to be prepare for a test and it should include a plan review sessions, take a practice exam, and review with friends. Teachers can help students be more successful on tests by familiarizing them with the language of rubrics or instructions, particularly the cue words or phrases commonly used to give directions for the tasks students encounter; students also need to understand exactly how they are supposed to answer the questions. If they are supposed to select an asnwer, make sure your instructions are lear about how they are to select it.

Teachers should train students in effective strategies for the various skills areas to be tested. Important activities should be demonstrated to students during classroom activities. Spend time analyzing the particular skills that your students will encounter on standardized exams and then build strategies for these skills as part of classroom instruction. When you introduce new vocabulary that includes phrasal verbs, collocations, or idioms, point out that these words occur together and if one is missing, it is important to look at all of the words surrounding the gap before making an answer choice. When the teacher consider the development of good test-taking skills as synonymous with good learning skills, it is easy to integrate them into his/her classes.

Strategize Your Exam Plan

It is said that when teacher plan what will happen on exam day and not leaving anything to chance she or he will build on students' confidence and reduces anxiety. It includes the following:

1. Mechanics: students feel better prepared if they have the mechanical aspects of taking an exam well in hand. They should arrive early at the designated exam room  and find a seat.
2. Procedures: if one section is given first, such as the listening portion of English exams, the students should focus attention on this section.
3. Time Management: an important consideration in effective test-taking is time management. Teachers can assist students with time management by alerting them to time remaining in the exam. If the teacher gives exams with separate timings for each skill, time management may be easier.

Each test should be part of the everall learning experience. If a student experienced a problem as a direct result of a test-taking skill, point that out so it doesn't happen again. Each exam students take should help them do better on the next one.

Teachers can promote learner autonomy through self-assessment. Self-assessment plays a central role in student monitoing of progress in a language program. It refers to the student's evaluation of his or her own performaance at various points in a course. An advantage of self-assessment is that student awareness of outcomes and progress is enhanced.

According to Oscarson (1989) there are five reasons that self-assessment can be beneficial to language learning:

1. Self-assessment truly promotes learning, it gives learners training in evaluation, which results in benefits to the learning process.
2. It gives both students and teachers a raised level of awareness of perceived levels of abilities.
3. It is highly motivating in terms of goal orientation.
4. Through the use of self-assessment methodologies, the range of assessment techniques is expanded in the classroom.
5. Practicing self-assessment, the students partipate in their own evaluation.   

 Self-assessment Techniques and Procedures

There are many ways or techniques to develop a self-assesment such as: students progress cards, rating scales, checklists, and questionnaires, learner diaries and dialogue journals, videotapesstudents-designed test, and learner-centered assessment.

What should a teaccher remember about student test-taking skills:

• Students test-taking skills are really good learning skills.
• Build skill strategies in the classroom.
• Spend time on reading and following instructions.
• Familiarize students with a wide range of formats.
• Promote and reward good planning.
• Discuss and practice timing issues.
• Provide students with helpful feedback. 

GLOSSARY

1. Uneven:

2. Plateaus:

3. Alloted:

4. Bogged:

5. Rate

The Advantages of Rubrics.

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 Licda Cleopatra Noel Drummond

As teachers of English as a Second Language it is necessary to understand what is a rubric, that is the reason way we define it as a scoring guide that seeks to evaluate a student's performance based on the sum of a full range of criteria rather than a single numerical score.

Also we can say that is an authentic assessment tool used to measure students' work. Rubrics can be created for any content area, once we developed a rubric they can be modified easily for various grade levels.

It is important to use rubrics in our daily ESL work and why do we use them, many experts believe that rubrics improve students' end products and therefore increase learning. When students receive rubrics beforehand, they understand how they wil be evaluated and can prepare accordingly.

There are many advantages to using rubrics:

• Teachers can increase the quality of their direct instruction by providing focus, emphasis, and attention to particular details as a model for students.
• Students have explicit guidelines regarding teacher expectations.
• Students can use rubrics as a tool to develop their abilities.
• Teachers can reuse rubrics for various activities.

The rubrics can be analytic and holistic, but what is the difference between analytic and holistic rubrics? The analytic rubrics identify and assess components of a finished product and the holistic rubrics assess students work as a whole.

1. Neither the analytic nor the holistic rubrics is better than the other one.

2. Consider your students and grader(s) when deciding which type to use.

3. For modeling, present to your students anchor products or exemples of products at various levels of development.

What is a weighted rubrics?

A weighted rubrics is an analytic rubric in which certain concepts are judged more heavily than others. Some advantages of this kind of rubric is that it permits a clearly communication, also it focuses on specific aspects of a project.

Finally I will say that weighted rubrics are useful for explicitly describing to students and parents what concepts take priority over others for certain activities.

Assessing Speaking

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Lcda. Cleopatra Noel Drummond

The six chapter is related to assessing speaking, but we need to define what is speaking? and it is define as the way to utter words or articulate sounds, or to express thoughts by words, express opinions: to say; to talk. This productive skill is more complicated than it seems at first and involves more than just pronouncing words.

Canale and Swain (1980) argue that there are four competenes underlying speaking ability:

• Grammatical competence: includes knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, and mechanics.
• Discourse competence; concerned with relationships beyond the sentence level, of cohesion and conference, holding communication together in a meaningful way.
• Sociolinguistic competence; applying knoweledge of what is expected socially and culturally by users of the target language.
• Strategic competence: the way learners manipulate language in order to meet communicative goals.

To focus on assessment speaking we need to understand the differences between the two productive language skills (writing and speaking). Writing and speaking differ significantly according to Jones those differences "are fundamental to our understanding of the construct of speaking and any assessment of this skil must take these features into consideration." In contrast to writing, speaking is more ephemeral unless        measures are taken to record student performance.

Before teacher design speaking assessments she/he needs to know if to focus more on fluency or accuracy. Fluency is important for students, but if there are many errors, that might impede comprehension. If you expouse an equal emphasis on fluency and accuracy, we recommend the following marking categories: accuracy (grammar), vocabulary, linguistic ability (pronunciation, intonation, and stress.) fluency (ability to express ideas) and content or ideas.

A final concern before designing the assessment is deciding what type of speaking samples to collect from students. Brown and Yule (1983) recommend collecting speaking data with the following characteristics:

• speech that has a purpose
• extended chunks of speech
• speech that is structured or organized
• tasks where the amount of speech is controlled
• tasks where there is a specific number of points of required information 

The formal speaking assessment techniques include the speaking test or oral interview which is perhaps the most common format for assessing speaking on well-known language examination. Canale believed that students perform best when they are led through these stages: warn up, level check, probe, wind down.

There is a variantion on the way students can be tested such as: individually, in pairs, or in groups of three, it is important to provide time for each individual to speak as well as opportunities for interaction. However, examiners should take care not to let one student monopolize the conversation. 

Here are some common tasks that can be used for the level-check stage:

• Picture clue
• Prepared Monologue.
• Role play.
• Information Gap Activity

The classroom speaking assessment techniques include the following: oral presentations, debate on a controversial topic, reading aloud, retelling stories, verbal essays, and extemporaneos speaking.

There are some important things to remember about speaking assessment:

1. Allow time for a warm-up.
2. Keep skill contamination in mind.
3. Larger samples of language are more reliable.
4. Choose a range of appropriate techniques.
5. Ensure valid and reliable scoring by choosing an appropriate scale.

Finally to conclude with this item of assessing speaking I will say that it is important to permit the students to use the language in the classroom and as teacher of a second language this topic enhance my knowledge in such a way that for my profesion and vocacion as a teacher it will help the students to develop and use this skill which is speaking.

GLOSSARY

1. Underlie: 

2. Germane:.

3. Ephemeral

4. Feasible:

5. Odds

Assessing Listening.

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 Lcda. Cleopatra Noel Drummond

The fifth chapter of the book Assessing English Language Learners is base on how do we assess listening, but what is listening? To give attention with the ear; attend closely for the purpose of hearing."Active listening is a way of listening that focuses entirely on what the other person is saying and confirms understanding of both the content of the message and the emotions and feelings underlying the message to ensure that understanding is accurate."

Models of Listening

Acording to Nunan (2002) we must first understand the nature of listening. They are two models that have been identified in the literature.

1- Bottom-up processing listening is believed to be a linear, data-driven process. Comprehension occurs when the listener successfully decodes the spoken test. Comprehension occurs un the bottom up processing view when students take in a word, decode it, and link it with other words to form a sentence.

2- Top-down listening, the listener is directly involved with the constructing meaning from input. in this process the student uses background knowledge of the context and situation to make sense of what is heard.

Approaches to Listening Assessment

According to Buck 2001) they are three major approaches to the assessment of listening abilities these are:

1- The discrete-point approach it broke listening into component elements and assessed them separately.

2- The integrative approach attempt the assess a learner's capacity to use many bits at the same time, they believed that the whole language is greater that the sum of its parts.

3- The communicative approach arose as the integrative approach as a result of the communicative language teaching movement. The listener must be able to comprehend the message and then use it in context.

Before attempting to design a listening test, teachers should consult the course objectives and the listening test specifications that will provide information about objectives, formats, and themes. The tasks should reflect those that occur in real-life situations, and the language used should be natural.

Background knowledge.

the background or prior knowledge needs to be taken into account because research suggests the background knowledge affects comprehension and test performance. The background knwoledge is related to: test content, the texts, the vocabulary, the test structure, the formats, the item writing, timing, and skill contamination. 

Techniques for Assessing Listening Comprehension

1- Phonemic discrimination.

2- Paraphrase recognition (students listen to a statement and select the option closest in meaning to the statement.)

3- Objective formats (like MCQs and T/F can be used to assess listening content.)

4- Short answer questions.

5. Cloze.

6- Dictation.

Information Transfer Tasks

Information transfer tasks require students to transfer information they have heard to a chart or visual. Common examples of information transfer tasks used in the assessment of listening are filling in a form or a timetable, labeling a graph, finding something on a map, and following instructions.

Note-taking

Note-taking is an authentic task in academic programs. Students are actively involved as they write key information they understand from the input test. This can be done in two ways: students listen abd simultaneously fill out the questions paper or take notes.

Things to remember about assessing listening.

1- Assess listening comprehension even though is to difficult to assess.

2- Give credit for what students know.

3- Don't forget the importance of background knowledge.

4- Don't just test what is easy to test.

5- Give students a reason for listening.

Finally I will say that this skill is a bit difficult to assess notwithstanding as teachers we can find the adequate method to do so in behalf of the students. 

GLOSSARY

1. Rationale: The reasoning or principle that underlies or explains something, or a statement setting out this reasoning or principle.

2. Scope: To look at or examine something.


3.Purports: To pretend to be or to do something.


4. Contrived: Something that is contrived seems false and not natural.


5. Overlap: To position things in such a way that the edge of one thing is on top of and extending past the edge of another, or be positioned in this way.

Assessing Writing

By: Licda Cleopatra Noel Drummond

Assessing writing skills is important becasue good writing ability is highly sought by higher education institutions and employers. Some of the things to do to ensure valid and reliable writing assessment are:

• Avoids an approach of assessing writing ability by giving students plenty of opportunities to practice a variety of writing skills.
• Gives multiple-measures writing assessement by using tasks that focus on product and process.
• Gives frequent writing assessments because she knows that assessment is more reliable when there are more samples to assess.
• Avoids using a red pen to mark students' papers.

Approaches to writing assessment

Indirect measures of writing assessment assess correct usage in sentence-level constructions and assess spelling and punctuation via objective formats like multiple choice and cloze test.

Direct measures of writing assessment assess a student's ability to communicate through the written mode based on the actual production of written texts.

They are some considerations in designing writing assessment tasks. The first element of a good writing assessment is the rubric, the instructions for carrying out the writing task. A rubric can also mean the set of criteria on which a piece of work, such as a project, is evaluated, and it is used in this sense in elementaru education. The second essential part of any test of writing is the writing prompt as the stimulus the students must respond to. We can identify three main prompt formats: base, framed, and text-based. The first two are the most common in second/foreign language writing assessment. Base prompts state the entire task un direct and simple terms, whereas framed prompts present the writer with a situation that acts as a frame for the interpretation of the task. Text-based prompts present writers with a text to which they must respond or utilize in their writing. The third essential element of good writing assessment es the expected response, a description of what the teacher intends students to do with the writing task. Before communicating information in the expected response to students, the teacher must have a clear picture of the type of response the assessment task should generate.

Issues in Writing Assessment

They are some issues in writing assessment that I will share with you and it is important to know such as:

1. Time allocation.
2. Process versus product.
3. Use of technology.
4. Topic restriction.

The techniques for assessing writing are two free writng and guided writing. The free writing requires students to read a prompt that poses a situation and write a planned reponse based on a combination of background knowledge and knowledge learned from the course. The guided writing in contrast, requires students to manipulate content that is provided in the prompt, usually in the form of a chart or diagram.

Authentic Writing Assement include the following elements:

1. Student-teacher conferences.
2. Self-assessment (dialogue journals and dialogue journals)
3. Peer assessment (another assessment technique, involves the students in the evaluation of writing). 
4. Portfolio-based assessment (examines multiple pieces of writing produced over time under different constraints rather than a single essay written in a specified time period.).  

The writing assessment scales includes the holistic and analytic. The holistic marking scales is based on the marker's total impression of the essay as a whole. Holistic marking is variously as impressionistic, global, or integrative. marking. The analytical marking scales raters provide separate assessments for each of a number of aspects of performance.

They are some things to remember about the writing assessment such as:

- Give students multiple writing assessment opportunities.

- Develop prompts that are appropriate for the students.

- Evaluate all answers to one question before going on the next.

- Mark only what the student has written.

- Get students involved.

- Provide students with diagnostic feedback.

GLOSARRY

1. Snapshot:  A record or view of a particular point in a sequence of events or a continuing process.

2. Benchmark: To provide a standard against which something can be measured or assessed.

3. Cloze: A test of comprehension and grammar in which a language student supplies appropriate missing words omitted from a text.

4. Prompt: to make somebody decide to do something.

5. Approach: A way of doing something.

Assessing Reading

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Licda Cleopatra Noel Drummond

The third chapter of the book a practical guide to Assessing English Language Learners is related to how to assess reading but what is reading?  Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols for the intention of constructing or deriving meaning (reading comprehension). It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas. Like all language, it is a complex interaction between the text and the reader which is shaped by the reader’s prior knowledge, experiences, attitude, and language community which is culturally and socially situated. The reading process requires continuous practices, development, and refinement. 

The approaches to reading for most English language teachers reading includes both bottom up skills - recognizing and making sense of letters, words, and sentences - and top down processing that deals with whole texts. teachers would also agree taht text applies to booth linear passages of prose as well as a wide variety of non linear sources of information such as maps and pie charts.

Reading Subskills

The reading subskills can be divided in two stages:

Major reading skills that includes:

• Reading quickly to skim for gist, scan for specific details, and establish overalll organization of the passage.
• Reading carefully for main ideas, supporting details, author's argument and purpose, relationship of paragraphs, and fat versus opinion.
• Information transfer from nonlinear texts

Minor or enabling reading skills include:

• Understanding at the sentence level.
• Understanding at inter-sentence level.
• Understanding components of nonlinear texts. 

The specifications help teachers and administrators establish a clear link between the overall objectives for the program and the design of particular assessment instruments. Some typical features of specifications are:

1. content.
2. conditions.
3. grading criteria.

There are many sources for reading texts. Texts can be purpose written, taken directly from authentic material, or adapted. The best way to develop good reading assessments is to constantly watch for appropeiate material. Reading texts include both prose passages and non-linear texts such as: tables, graphs, schedules, maps, advertisements, and diagrams.

Assessing reading is also related to questions and formats which the teachers are in the need to build the appropriate reading comprehension in their classrooms, in which they apply the adequate format and the questions that are need to achieve the goal.

Teachers should take in consideration these tips whenever they are going to apply an assessment in reading such as:

• Make sure your assessment matches your reading program.
• Use authentic or asapted texts whenever possible.
• Exploit the entire text.
• Include grammar and vocabulary in context.
• Assess inferencing and critical thinking.

GLOSSARY

1. Schemata: An outline, diagram, plan, or preleminary draft.

2. Interwoven: To weave together; interlace.

3. Gist: The essencial point or meaning of something.

4. Inferences: A conclusion draw from evidence or reasoning.

5. Washback:Is the influence that a test has on the way students are taught.

6. Coverage: The attention gives an event or topic by newspapers, radio, and televsion in their reporting.

7. Allocated. To give something to or set something aside for a person or purpose.

8. Collocations: The association between two words that are typically or frequently used together.

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