Language

Assessment
Hello!
We are group 6
Mai Lan,
Bao Trinh &
Vy Nguyen

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In our
presentation…
1. Scenario Overview
● Assessment goals: Assessing students’ achievement of the
contents they have been taught in 3 units (Grade 11; MOET’s
new textbook)
● Assessing contents: Vocabulary & Grammar
● Assessing conditions:
○ Time: 30 minutes
○ Students’ age: grade 11; 17 years old
○ Students’ level: B1 of the CEFR

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2a.
Assessment
Purposes
“The assessment serves the
summative purpose in order to
evaluate students’ achievement on
grammar & vocabulary, assign
grades & provide feedback after
learning 3 units”
● Formative and Summative assessment purpose
Formative assessment
Summative assessment Main purpose
● Teaching and learning purposes
Diagnostic assessment
Assigning grades
Progress
Selection
Placement
Providing feedbacks
● System improvement purposes
Reflectives for teaching and learning
 Assigning
grades

Progress Diagnostic
assessment
Teaching and
Learning
purposes

Selection Placement
Providing
feedbacks
 Assigning Providing
Progress
grades feedbacks

In the teaching Teachers record their Assessment can

progress, teachers evaluation of provide feedback to
want to check how students’ progress students. .
far students have  Represent about their learning
gone in meeting their summative
learning target. evaluations

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System improvement
purposes

Students and teachers

determine their next teaching
and learning steps
2b.
Assessment
Targets
The assessment targets are to assess students’ abilities to:
(1) Grammar:
• Identify the meaning of modals (should, ought to, have to,
must) and use them correctly in context.
• Recall verbs of perception (seem, be) and use them correctly in
context.
• Recognize structure of cleft sentences (It is/was...that…).
• Use to-infinitives correctly after adjectives and nouns.
(2) Vocabulary:
• Recall the meaning of vocabulary items from Unit 1, 2 & 3 (topic
Generation gap, Relationships & Being independent) and use them
correctly in context. 14
The assessment targets …
• Followed the model mentioned in the textbook to write an
assessment target:
(target population) (action verb) (target content) (condition)
E.g: Identify the meaning of modals (should, ought to, have to, must)
and use them correctly in context.

• Based on the learning targets regarding vocabulary & grammar, E.g:

o “By the end of the unit, Ss can use words and phrases related to the
generation gap and family rules (unit 1); the topic Relationship (unit 2); related
to being independent (unit 3)
o “By the end of the unit, Ss can identify the meaning of modals (should, ought
to, have to, must) and use them correctly in context.”
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3a.
Possible
Assessment
Methods
Assessing
Vocabulary Matching meaning

Selected Response Cloze

MCQs
Assessing
vocabulary
Constructed
Gap-fill
Response

Personal Response Paragraph writing

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Assessing Vocabulary:
Matching meaning
Students match the words one column with their meanings in the other.

● Objective in marking ● Can only measure

● Easy to design receptive knowledge
about meaning of the
word

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Assessing Vocabulary: Cloze
Students match the word in one column with the part of sentence in the other to
complete the sentence (there are more words than needed → distractors)

● Objective in marking ● Can only measure

● Can measure receptive knowledge
students' both
meaning and form of
the word in context
● Reduce the chance of
guessing
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Assessing Vocabulary: MCQs
Students choose from 4 options to complete the sentence

● Objective in marking ● Difficult to design

& easy to mark ● 25% of guessing
● Not practical in real-
life situations
● Measure students’
passive knowledge

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Assessing Vocabulary: Gap Fill
Ss fill in the blank with a word that they’ve learnt
E.g: There are two types of family: nuclear family and ________ family. → extended

● Easy to mark & ● Some questions can

create have multiple
● Can test students' possible answers
active knowledge → fail to test the
about the meaning targeted vocabulary
and form of the word
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Assessing vocabulary:
Paragraph writing

● elicit authentic ● May influence validity and

communication reliability (rater inconsistences,
inadequate content coverage,
scoring criteria, etc.)
● Difficult to design a task that
requires students to use learnt
vocabulary item as they were
some words or phrases
related to the broad theme,
not a specific topic of writing
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Assessing
Grammar
Matching
Selected Response
MCQs

Assessing Gap-fill
vocabulary Constructed
Response
Combining
Sentences

Personal Response Paragraph writing

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 Assessing Grammar :
Matching
Students select items in 1 list that match the ones in the other.

● Objectivity in marking. ● Measure passive

● Suitable to test Ss'
knowledge about Cleft
sentence as it's most
important for Ss to imprint ●
the grammatical structures
that are divided into 2
parts: It is/was... - that...
vocabulary and grammar
knowledge, especially
sentence structures.
Can't test the use aspect
of grammar.
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Assessing Grammar : MCQs
Students examine a sample of language material and select an answer that
best fills in a blank from a set of 4 options.

● Objective in marking ● 25% of guessing.

● Suitable to test Ss’ knowledge ● Can't test Ss use
about model verbs - Ss have aspect of
to differentiate the meaning & grammar.
form of modal verb (put in
options)
● Each modal verb is short
enough to be MCQs options. 25
Assessing Grammar : Gap Fill
Students choose from 4 options to complete the sentence

● Objective in marking & ● Focus on single

easy to mark words or short
● Suitable to test Ss' phrases.
knowledge about verbs of ● Can't test Ss use
perception - Ss have to aspect of grammar.
recall, differentiate the
meaning of each verb and
use them correctly in a
given context.
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 Assessing Grammar:
Combining sentences
Students combine 2 sentences into 1 by a given criteria.

● Objectivity in marking. ● Measuring a limited

● Effectively test form aspect of learning points
grammar. (usually for
Grammar).
● Suitable to test Ss' knowledge
about to-infinitive - Ss have to
use them correctly after
certain Adj/ N to make
sentence.
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 Assessing Grammar:
Paragraph Writing
Students write about 1/3 topics given & write with some grammatical criteria

● Can test 3 aspects (form, ● Subjectivity in

meaning, use) of grammar. marking.
● Integrated to test vocabulary. ● Not suitable
for being a
part of a
30 min test.

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3b.
Selected
Assessment
Methods
“ Assessing Grammar
• MCQs
• Matching
Assessing Vocabulary

• Cloze
• Gap-fill
• Gap-fill
• Combining
Sentences

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Assessing grammar
with MCQs Justification

Assessment target served “MCQs can be used in tutorials as a language

awareness raising exercise. Subtle differences in
language and the need for precise use of economic
Identify the meaning of
terms should be brought to students’ attention in quite
modals (should, ought to,
an explicit way” (Paxton, 2000)
have to, must) and use them
correctly in context.
 Suitable to make Ss differentiate between
“Must/have to" or “Mustn’t/Don't have to”.

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Assessing grammar
with Matching task
Assessment target served Justification

Recognize structure of cleft The matching task (match 2 sentence parts starting
sentences (It is/was...that…). with it is/ it was… & that…) perfectly matches the
assessment target

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Assessing grammar
with Combining sentences task

Assessment target served Justification

Use to-infinitives correctly Suitable to test Ss' grammatical knowledge about

after certain adjectives and to-infinitive as Ss are required to use place them
nouns. correctly after certain adjectives/nouns to make 1
complete sentence

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Assessing grammar & vocabulary
with Gap-filling task
Assessment target served
Grammar: Recall verbs of
perception (seem, be) and use
them correctly in context.
Vocabulary: Recall the meaning
of vocabulary items from Unit 1,
2 & 3 (topic Generation gap,
Relationships & Being
independent) and use them
correctly in context.
Justification
“the user input is word plus word sense. Much of their
effort is spent on dis-ambiguating the key in potential
carrier sentences in order to find a carrier sentence in
which the key is used in the intended sense.” (Smith et
al., 2010)
 Suitable to help Ss recall some verbs of perception
and topic-related vocabulary with intended meaning
indicated by the suggested part of sentence.
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Assessing vocabulary
with cloze task
Assessment target served Justification
Vocabulary: Recall the meaning
of vocabulary items from Unit 1, “Allows more items to be tested within the same
2 & 3 (topic Generation gap, amount of time” (Ur et al., 2018)
Relationships & Being
independent) and use them
correctly in context. “Reduce the amount of work designing distractors
compared to MCQs” (Ur et al., 2018)

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4.
Test
Specification
References
● Paxton, M. (2000). A Linguistic Perspective on Multiple Choice Questioning.
Assessment & Evaluation In Higher Education, 25(2), 109-119. doi:
10.1080/713611429
● Smith, S., Avinesh, P. V. S., & Kilgarriff, A. (2010). Gap-fill tests for language
learners: Corpus-driven item generation. In Proceedings of ICON-2010: 8th
International Conference on Natural Language Processing (pp. 1-6). Macmillan
Publishers.
● Ur, P., Haim, O., Kluska, M., Plavin, S., Shlayer, J., Steiner, J. & Timna, L. (2018). A
practical guide for teaching vocabulary. State of Israel
● Bloom, B.S. (Ed.). Engelhart, M.D., Furst, E.J., Hill, W.H., Krathwohl, D.R.
(1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, Handbook I: The Cognitive
Domain. New York: David McKay Co Inc.

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