Assessment

Prior to my time in the LT 549 Assessing Language Ability Course, my understanding of language assessments was pretty narrowly constrained to formal assessment– in short, anything that had the word test, exam, or quiz written clearly on the label. Moreover, I had some experience proctoring and administering assessments, but I had never designed one (that I recognized as such, at the time). LT 549 gave me a much broader understanding of the variety of forms assessments could take. It also introduced me to assessment justification using Brown and Abeywickrama’s (2019) five principles of assessment: practicality, validity, authenticity, reliability, and washback, as well as Bachman and Damböck’s (2017) Target Language Use (TLU) tasks. Each of these concepts have ensured that the assessments I develop are well-suited to the language learning contexts that I administer them to and sensitive to how students will be applying their knowledge of the target language in the future. These concepts have also afforded me an understanding of how to recognize when an assessment may be ill-suited for a learning context or the content that precedes it, as well as how to adapt it to be a more successful indicator of student knowledge and performance.

The first artifact included here is the integrated reading assessment developed as part of LT 549. This assessment was designed for a context of intermediate-high to advanced-low ESL learners at a US university, and was designed to focus on utilizing English language skills in regards to US culture, specifically pop culture, as well as social media and online interaction. The TLU task was reading movie summaries to determine acceptable films for a movie night, which students did by exploring movie reviews taken from an internet movie database and writing their reasons why they would or would not wish to show this movie at a movie night. This was a formative, criterion-based achievement assessment that was designed to be practical, valid, authentic, reliable, and provide excellent opportunities for washback, making it an effective and useful test by Brown and Abeywickrama’s (2019) five principles. Any possible weaknesses as far as aspects of assessment were addressed, and solutions to address these weaknesses were provided within the artifact. 

The second artifact included here was also taken from LT 549: an integrated listening assessment for a context of adult ESL learners at a US university, with proficiencies ranging from intermediate-high to advanced-low and focusing on bridging the gap between 200 and 300 level English courses, functioning as a 301 of sorts to ensure that students are prepared to interact with and produce materials at a 300 level in the target language. The TLU task was to listen to a podcast, identify key details, and summarize the main ideas, which students did by listening to an excerpt from a podcast in class, taking notes and writing a summary that was then graded numerically and with written feedback for their accurate inclusion of relevant details given in the podcast. This was a formative achievement assessment as well, though what made this artifact most interesting to me was that it was used within the context as a preparation or practice for a larger, summative assessment of a very similar format that would be worth a portion of the students’ final grade. With the materials used, authenticity was particularly high for this assessment, while face validity was a potential concern. However, once again, this was addressed  within the body of the actual artifact.

The last artifact included within this competency was not created for LT 549; it was, in fact, not created as part of any of my LTS classes. Rather, this was an assessment that I proposed as part of my LT 548 curriculum portfolio, as can be referenced in Language as a Dynamic System, but only recently went back and retroactively created. Because of the LT 549 class, I was able to confidently create a test that usefully and effectively assess student knowledge and application of literary and figurative devices, as well as a test that fit well within the curriculum that I had already created. This quiz included a number of different assessment tasks, including matching tasks where students had to match the name of the literary device to its example, open-ended short answer where students had to write the name of the literary device to its corresponding definition, reading sections where students had to identify figurative devices in context, and extended, open-ended answers where students had to create an original example of a literary device. When the idea for this assessment was created in my portfolio, I was uncertain how it would be developed. After the assessment course, I found it much easier, leaning on Brown and Abeywickrama’s (2019) principles to ensure that the assessment functioned as I wanted it to with the desired outcomes, and Bachman and Damböck’s (2017) TLU tasks to ensure that there was a clear, useful task being assessed that would be relevant to students’ language use and language learning.

Moving forward, I am confident in my ability to administer “good” tests–that is, tests that are useful and effective at assessing students in the manner that they are designed to do so, and provide helpful, positive washback to students so that they may continue to improve. I have a system of assessment design that I can modify to my needs and contexts, and even apply to already-developed assessments to determine where an assessment’s strengths and weaknesses may be. My view of assessments has expanded greatly. 

References

Bachman, L. & Damböck, B. (2017). Language assessment for classroom teachers. Oxford University Press. 

Brown, H. D. & Abeywickrama, P. (2019). Language assessment: Principles and classroom practices (3rd ed.). Pearson Education.