Assessment Philosophy

Yini Chen

Colorado State University

 In the field of education, the term "assessment" refers to various methods or tools used by

educators to evaluate, measure and record students' academic preparation, learning progress, skill

acquisition or educational needs. According to Brown (2010), the principles of language

assessment include practicality, reliability, validity and authenticity. In my opinion, this is also

an important standard to determine whether an assessment is effective or not. My original

teaching target was students in a Chinese public elementary school. At that time, most public

elementary schools in China were inclined to use traditional assessment. Thus, I only chose to

use traditional assessment at first. For example, I used some exercises with select-response

format to check whether the students have mastered certain language knowledge or skills that

they learned in the class. After a period of observation, I found that although this traditional

testing method can indeed identify the students' weakness, it sometimes lacks authenticity and

practicality. The students could remember some specific sentence patterns or grammatical

structures, but it is difficult to apply the learned sentence patterns or grammatical structures to

the actual English conversation. The students were passive throughout the language learning

process.

After a period of observation and summarization, I decided to use alternative assessment.

The alternative assessment means the process of learning is active, emphasizes the process and

product. In addition, alternative assessment takes learning as a collaborative process. Thus, after

completed the teaching of a unit, I would randomly arrange different topics (the topics were

associated with a particular unit) for each the student and asked them to complete a personal

presentation according to their topic. As my students were all elementary school students, I

usually provide some reference materials or preparation plans for the students before letting them
prepare their presentations independently. I played the role of an assistant in the whole

preparation process, but I didn’t interfere with students' choices. In the process of presentation, I

made assessment on the students' performance (such as oral skilling, the understanding of the

knowledge etc). My evaluation criteria were all based on the standards of the elementary school

syllabus at that time, and the performance of students' autonomous learning ability in the

preparation process also be counted as part of the final score. After all students finished their

presentations, I divided them into several groups for self-assessment and peer assessment. The

most students were more active than before in the test activities, and they were brave enough to

share their assessment for themselves and their team members. The students have gained more

useful assessment in such activities and have improved their speaking skills.

However, traditional assessment is also an indispensable part in my language teaching

work. Traditional assessment can help me to have a more systematic and direct understanding of

the students’ learning situation. For example, I can use specific data to figure out the

grammatical structure or vocabulary usage with the highest error rate among students and help

me to design some teaching plans.

In a nutshell, alternative assessment is a more effective way for me; however, traditional

assessment is also an indispensable part of language teaching.

 Reference

Abeywickrama, P., & Brown, H. D. (2010). Language assessment: Principles and classroom

practices. ​NY: Pearson Longman.​