Coursework 1: Classroom observation. Appendix 1.

In education, the term assessment refers to the wide variety of methods that
educators use to evaluate, measure, and document the academic readiness, learning
progress, and skill acquisition of students from preschool through college and adulthood.
(Great Schools Partnership, 2013). Test is also stated as appraising or estimating the level
or magnitude of some attribute of a person by Mousavi (2009). I also believe that the single
most important outcome for any primary school is to give as many pupils as possible the
knowledge and skills to flourish in the later phases of education. The term assessment, in its
widest meaning, denotes a process of collecting and interpreting information about learning
and achievement of students that are used to provide information to students and their
parents about the progress in acquiring knowledge, skills and attitudes and to provide
support to teachers to modify their instruction and the learning activities of their students.
In my practice of assessment in my teaching during the practicum, I have identified
many of my weaknesses and strength based on the five principles of language assessment.
They are practicality, reliability, validity, authenticity and washback. The assessment was
done in the production stage where it was suppose to test students acknowledgement and
progress during teaching and learning process. It is on language art on feeling and
emotions. In terms of validity, there is a clear relationship between the goals and the content
of instruction and assessment (between what is learnt and taught and what is assessed). My
strength is I was able to provide relation between the lesson and the assessment, which is
about emotions. It was a valid point where I was testing their understanding about feelings.
But the downfall of my assessment in term of validity is I was fail to provide them with
suitable words to associate the questions (fill in the blank) with the animals due to some of
the students were unable to answer them by their prior knowledge.
In terms of reliability, reliability means the degree to which an assessment tool
produces stable and consistent results. My assessment or my lesson was done in just one
class (advanced students class) and the result was on average level where most of the
students were able to understand, relate it with the topic that I taught and answer it correctly,
while others were lost due to very little information given. The assessment were based on
the various animal name answer and students ability to relate them with the emotions with
the parts of the animal. My weakness in term of reliability is where the there is none of the
animals part example is given during the assessment, thus student have to think on their
own about the answer. Example, I am happy as a mouse with a cheese. This test is not
reliable on aspect that it does not produces stable and consistent results as the answers are
not specified and restricted. I should provide them with options and more examples.
Next, practicality aspect is related to an effective test is practical. This means that it is
not excessively expensive, stays within appropriate time constraints, is relatively easy to
administer, and has a scoring/evaluation procedure that is specific and time-efficient. First of
all, the assessment is not cost consuming as the teacher only provides students with a
worksheet each. In the production stage, the time allocated for completing the questions are
15 minutes but at the end of the lesson, many of the students were unable to finish the task.
My weaknesses are I was not able to give enough time constraint for student to complete the
task as it is very challenging for them. So, this assessment is not very efficient and practical.
Scoring and evaluation procedure is also not specific as the answers have very wide and too
general choices with complex associations between animals and feelings.
A test must be authentic. Bachman and Palmer (as cited in Brown, 2004:28) defined
authenticity as the degree of correspondence of the characteristics of a given language test
task to the features of a target language. Several things must be considered in making an
authentic test: language used in the test should be natural, the items are contextual, topics
brought in the test should be meaningful and interesting for the learners, the items should be
organized thematically, and the test must be based on the real-world. In my opinion, this is
my strength in constructing the assessment. My assessment using meaningful context of
emotions associated with the things that animal feels when they get/lose it. It uses natural
language that are not written down merely for teaching and learning in the classroom but it
involves more than that, contextual clues and association with outside world. Example, I am
unhappy as an ostrich thats lost its eggs. The topic is interesting and students were seen
excited doing it as they brainstorming new ideas to relate the emotions with the questions.
The effects of tests on teaching and learning are called washback. Washback
enhances intrinsic motivation, autonomy, self-confidence, language ego, inter language, and
strategic investment in the students. Instead of giving letter grades and numerical scores
which give no information to the students performance, giving generous and specific
comments is a way to enhance washback (Brown 2004). While language is a tool of
communication, most students and teachers in language class only focus on language
competencies in the test; my aim is to encourage better learning and teaching. My aim is for
student to have their target language to be more useful than solely used in the classroom.
Besides that, I can improve my teaching by teaching them more than stated in the curriculum
and textbook, as for the students are easily bored by normal task.
Conclusively, I still have many weakness that can be improved in constructing,
designing and implementing assessment on students. This is where practice on my
practicum is a vital platform for me to be a better teacher in future.