1.

0 INTRODUCTION
Assessment is a comprehensive process of planning, collecting, analyzing, reporting,
and using information on students over time (Gottlieb, 2006, p. 86). Assessment is an
important aspect in the fields of language testing and educational measurement and
perhaps, the most challenging part of it where it is acts as an on-going process.
2.0 CLASSROOM OBSERVATION
Based on these 2 weeks at the school, I taught year 5 Waja pupils on topic unique
buildings. I assess them on reading skill. The assessment that I use is assessment of
learning where it uses the task or an activity to measure, record, and report on a pupils
level of achievement in regards to specific learning expectations. This assessment is
also known as a summative assessment. I use the textbook as my main resource of
reading materials where I used the text in the textbook to assess the pupils. They need
to answer some true or false questions after they have read the text. Although this
assessment looks easy, this will help me to measure whether they understand the text
that they have read or not. According to Brown (2004), there are five important principles
of language assessment that the testers need to look into for produce a good
assessment. They are practicality, authenticity, validity, reliability and washback.

2.1 PRACTICALITY
Practicality is one of the important characteristics of assessment where it refers to the
logistic, down-to-earth, administrative issues involved in making, giving and scoring an
assessment instrument (Brown, 2004, p.26). There are many matters that we have to
consider in making sure the practicality of an assessment. For example, we have to think
how long the test will last, how much it will cost, how to evaluate pupils performances
and how much pupils can get feedback from the assessment itself. The strength of this
assessment is it is practical to be done in the classroom where the teacher can directly
observed the pupils and guide them if they are not able to achieve the learning objective
but the weakness that I can identify from this assessment is the test is not assesses

pupils to their maximum level. So, I will make the questions a little bit harder to challenge
themselves.
2.1 AUTHENTICITY
According to Brown & Abeywickrama (2010), an authentic test should contain language
that is natural and has items that are contextualised rather than isolated. We can use a
situation or story line that has a theme, so that we can assess the knowledge that
contextualised in a meaningful context where the pupils can find the topic and content
are interesting. Furthermore, the situation or the skills that the pupils assess have to be
practical where the pupils will experience them in real world either academically or not.
As for this assessment, the questions in the task are relevant as they are based on the
text they have read but the language is not natural enough where it is too hard for their
level. So, to improve on that, I will use the simpler words suits with their level.
2.2 VALIDITY
Brown stated that a valid test should measure what it has supposed to measure. (Brown,
2004). The assessment that has been done is valid in term of the content related
evidence where the teacher requires the pupils to perform the behaviour that is being
measured (Brown & Abeywickrama, 2010). The strength of this test is it tests on the
pupils reading ability where all the questions are based on the text that they have read.
This will make pupils learn on how to transfer the information that they get from the text
that they have read and adapt them as answers to all the questions. However, the
instruction of the task is not clear enough and no example is given to the pupils. So, I will
give a clear instruction and an example to the pupils.
2.3 RELIABILITY
Reliability has to do with the consistency and accuracy of the measurement where the
reliable test should ensure pupils could conduct consistent performance among several
administrations. This assessment is reliable because all the answers for the question are
based on the text that they read. No matter how many people done the assessment the
results are same. However, the questions are not really organised according to the

answers in the text as pupils will get confused. So, I will organise the questions better
next time.
2.4 WASHBACK
It refers to the impact of the test through the teaching and learning process. Through this
feedback, pupils can acknowledge their strengths and weaknesses where they can
maintain their good performances and improve on their bad performances. The strength
of this assessment is I discussed the correct answers of the task in the class where they
could know the correct answers but the weakness is I did not return back the task to the
pupils. This is unable the pupils to refer to the task as their guidance. So, to improve on
the weakness, I will give back the task to them after I already marked, so that the pupils
can paste it on their exercise books.
3.0 CONCLUSION
In conclusion, assessment is the important element in learning. As a teacher, we have to
come out with assessment, so that pupils can acknowledge their levels and can make
some improvements on them. It depends on the teacher how to regard the assessment
whether it is for learning or of learning. By using the principles above, I believe the
assessment can help their learning process as it is not to judge them as good or weak
pupils but use the assessment to help them.