Last week: Brown 23 & 24, and Shohamy: Assessment and testing

Assessments are helpful to see where the student is at, their weaknesses and strengths, and the progress the student has made. When creating a test, it is important to make sure they are practical, valid, reliable, authentic and have a wash back effect. These are priorities for the design of language assessments. Like the wash back section mentioned, it is necessary for teachers to provide feedback on test performance. When teachers provide feedback, it always helps me to know my weaknesses and strengths, as well as what and how to improve the next time I take a test. I have known classmates that are scared to argue with the teacher about their grades, because the teacher would get upset or not even listen to the student. But, I have also seen teachers that are more than welcome to discuss grades and be open to receive a student's feedback on a grade. I need to remember not only to provide feedback, but be open to hear my students about their own grade. I need to remember that a letter or number grade cannot help my students improve their own learning. Providing feedback in tests is useful for all grades. Brown also touches on the practical steps to test construction in classrooms which I found very useful. Test development is a delicate process that needs a lot of preparation to appropriately assess students. The before, during and after test strategies could help me when using all kinds of assessments, so my students can fully understand the upcoming test and be aware of their expectations. Any information that is given step by step helps me see exactly what I have to do to develop a more effective learning environment. Every student deserves the right to find out their weaknesses and strengths, and self-evaluate their progress to become more independent in their learning process. I found these chapters very useful because they provide specific steps to design an appropriate test for students, how to help them develop autonomy, and create a more collaborative learning environment. The chapter on assessment by Shohamy addresses how to better assess the discourse competence of the students tapping on the four skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking). It is necessary to use a variety of discourse types on tests to appropriately assess the individual. Another important aspect they focus on is the importance of applying a variety of  discourse features and criteria in evaluation. The testers could create their own scales based on the expected goals and objectives of the test. The chapter also suggests the importance of using different elicitation techniques rather than standard test formats to be able to appropriately test them. As well as Brown, Shohamy suggests teachers to use feedback by giving assessment conferences regularly, so the students can improve their learning. I found these chapters very useful especially for language teachers who are developing tests and assessing ELL students, but these ideas can also work nicely for regular mainstream classrooms.