Reflection

Before starting the LTS program I had dreaded creating and administering assessments to my students; I always remembered hating tests as a learner myself and I did not want to instill those feelings in future students. However, after taking LT 549 (Measuring Language Ability) and 548 (Curriculum and Materials Development), I have learned that assessments do not have to be those high-stakes, high-stress assessments that I had encountered during my own learning experiences. During 548, I spent some time experimenting with creating lower-stakes assessments that are more ongoing over time. I also gained much confidence in creating well-aligned and justified assessments through exploring Assessment Use Arguments (AUAs) (Bachman, & Damböck, 2017) as well as the 5 desirable characteristics of assessments (Brown & Abeywickrama, 2019). Such assessments are my writing and listening assessments from LT 549 which I believe very strongly demonstrate my ability to create valid, authentic assessments that are well-aligned with their purposes. I also have gained confidence in creating lower-stakes assessments such as the Exit Ticket from day two of the interactive Japanese course I had planned for 548. 

The assessment that I believe most strongly demonstrates my competency in designing robust assessments is a writing assessment that I created for LT 549. What I mean by “robust” is something that is well-suited to the context and purposes for assessment; this means aligning the purpose with the test format and content and is similar to the concept of a valid test (Brown & Abeywickrama, 2019). While not every test can be completely valid, this test aimed to be mostly valid in terms of authenticity, washback, and facets of validity. This writing test was created for university, novice-level learners of conversational Japanese, and asked learners to write an Instagram post about a picture of their family in order to measure their ability to write simple sentences about their families. Students were also given about a week of time to do so, so they had a somewhat authentic amount of time to complete this task. However, the main component of the authenticity of this test is the task itself; the task of writing a social media post about one’s family was very relevant to the course context, and it is also a task that students would likely find themselves doing in larger Japanese-speaking communities. These parts of the task make this assessment mostly authentic. What detracts from authenticity is the fact that this is an assessment itself, which always slightly decontextualizes the task. This assessment also increases its validity in that it also provides beneficial washback. The washback for this test is designed to help students become familiar with engaging in online Japanese-speaking communities, so this would be beneficial for students this early on in their learning and would well-prepare them for their future courses. In a similar way, this test is further valid in that it rates highly in terms of predictive validity in that this test will somewhat predict how well students might write online posts in Japanese in the future. 

I also believe that the listening assessment that I created for this class demonstrates my competency in designing and understanding aspects of assessments. This assessment was designed for the same context but instead asks students to listen for and draw the placement of items in a room. Here, I had the same intention to create a valid test, and I believe that this is true in terms of the construct validity and washback. The construct being measured is students’ ability to comprehend familiar vocabulary in a string of text and in different word patterns. This test measures exactly that, in that students are visually representing their comprehension for the test which is very reflective of the construct. In this way, this test is highly valid and also attempts to mirror a target language use (TLU) task (Bachman & Damböck, 2018), which is created to represent a language usage task that a learner might encounter in the “real world”. This also increases the authenticity and validity of the test. The washback for this test is also positive, in that students are being asked to practice listening for a variety of sentence constructions, so students will have to rely on more than memorization for this test and it encourages various types of practice. These features of the test make it a valid and desirable test, therefore demonstrating my ability to apply concepts of “good” assessments to my own tests. 

 Another skill that I believe I have gained throughout my time in the program is my reconceptualization of what an assessment is and what it can be used for; this is especially true in terms of my comfort in implementing formative, low-stakes tests for both students and instructors. For LT 548, I created an exit ticket for the second day of a week of class I had planned for a university-level, interactional Japanese course. This is designed to be a low-stakes assessment, and the main “assessment” for students here happens in the first and fourth questions; “1) How comfortable do you feel with the differences between います and あります? and 4) Are there any words that you’re not sure if they use います or あります? Write them below!”. These questions relate to their proficiency with new language pieces and help students to see where they stand on a relative scale. Question 4 also helps students and the instructor to identify what words might need to be reviewed. This assessment is also useful to the instructor, especially in terms of student feedback in questions two and three (“Did you enjoy Go Fish today?, Would you like to play more games with language in class?”), but it will also tell them how much they might need to re-visit in future lessons. So while this test may seem small and not much like a test at all, it still delivers constructive, informative feedback to learners and the instructor that would inform future teaching and learning decisions. In this way, this is a test as it will form approaches in future classroom interactions.

From these experiences in creating assessments, I have gained much confidence and skill in designing well-aligned and valid tests. I have also reworked my understanding of what a test is, and because of this I have become much more open to having more low-stakes assessments in my classes. It is very clear to me that I have come a long way from my perspective and opinions on tests before entering into the LTS program, and I am satisfied with what I have learned. That being said, I also hope to continue to grow in my skills to create relevant, engaging assessments while also decreasing test-stress and anxiety for students. I believe that I demonstrate the beginnings of this with the provided artifacts, but I still have progress to make.

Artifacts