Assessing Performance

Self assessment: Needs to be integrated into day to day classroom activities. Should become an integral part of communicative activities.

Reading and Listening

Learner training

activities. Sts do not have to understand everything to do a reading or listening task. Useful awareness activities:
Sts

grade text types according to difficulty. Think about different types of reading and listening. How much of a text they need to understand to do a task.

For listening Variables that can affect understanding.

Assessing completion of a task

How many correct answers the sts gave? Why the answers are right or wrong? Answers can be gone over with the whole class. It is important to be positive and concentrate on what sts achieved.

Writing
Sts

need to check and assess their own work when they have produced a draft. Get them firstly to assess texts and then to edit them. Establish clear criteria for assessment: Interest and relevance of content, appropriacy of style, presentation, organisation of ideas, linking and punctuation, grammatical accuracy and punctuation.

Sts should show the teacher and edited version of a first draft. They can pass their compositions to their partners. In group writing, they can check the writing done by other groups. Having produced a final version, sts can also make a final assessment of their work, assigning a mark. The next stage is assessment by the teacher.

Speaking
Focus

on activities where performance is an important element. Focus on group or pair performance rather than on individual work. Establish criteria for assessment before sts begin the task: Fluency and lack of hesitation, relevance and interest of the performance, pronunciation, etc.

Rather than asking sts to give themselves marks, the main thing is for sts to think about their problems and their achievements. Self assessment of performance should be done inmediatly after an activity has finished. It is important to complement it with the teachers observation and feedback, encouraging sts on what they have achieved.