Discussion Of Classroom-Based Language Assessment For Colleges And Universities

Purpose of Classroom-based Assessment

Discuss about the English Language for Colleges and Universities.

The language assessment or language testing refers to the field, which study about the first, second or other languages taught in schools, colleges or universities. According to Jenkins & Leung, (2013), the part of applied linguistic focuses on the assessment of the language used in the workplace context or in the citizenship, immigration and asylum contest. In general, the assessment helps the students in the schools or colleges to analyse their learning and improvement. In this essay, the language test has been evaluated through a classroom-based assessment to assess the improvements in the students’ understanding of skills and communication. It has two main priorities that indicate the overall impact of the learning procedures followed in the classroom. The study has discussed the various processes of language testing to analyse the students’ capacities and improvements to test their language learning process (Cohen, 2014). Therefore, the purpose of the classroom-based assessment has been disclosed to set the objectives of the study and then the role of teachers or assessors has been evaluated to analyse the overall testing process.

The purpose of classroom-based assessment is to test the learning improvement of the students in a class whether the study procedure is helping them to improve their understanding about the lessons in class. According to Kaplan, (2015), assessments are required to develop the skills of the students about what they had learnt from the lessons in class. These assessments can be conducted in various manners and every process has its own pros and cons. Therefore, it is the responsibility of a teacher to decide which assessment process should be best for the students to measure their improvement. There are other purposes of this classroom-based assessment. It helps to inform and guide the teachers about the teaching and learning processes, helps students to set their learning goals and motivate the students for improving their skills. In thus study, the essential objectives are – to analyse the effect of lessons taught in the classes on students, to evaluate their improvement in classes, to analyse the benefits of the learning processes and to assess the effectiveness of teaching procedures in classes. Therefore, the study is focussing on the purpose of the assessments to meet these objectives.

There are some processes or assessments instruments for assessing the learning improvements of the students. The students can be accessed through the activities of quizzes, writing assignments, tests and many more, which have the facility to get the outcome instantly. Therefore, this kind of assessments has proved to be effective as the teachers can easily identify the drawbacks of the students through this. As opined by Yu, (2014), the language can be learnt through formal, informal, assessed, not assessed, structured, unstructured, fun, arduous, and essential and hobby or interest. The formal setting can be in the kindergartens, language centres, schools, clubs, universities, workplaces, short courses and TAFES. In these settings, the students can be accessed through the school like environment where the content is almost set from earlier. The processes of assessments also are formal in these settings and the students are assessed based on the qualifications and accreditations. On the other hand, the informal setting is the called in the setting of homely environment where the students can learn with their family or friends or in a homely ambiance (Richards & Rodgers, 2014). In these cases, the assessment process follows the interest of the students who are learning from various practical incidents rather than the formal contents that have set before. The assessments in this case will find out the effectiveness of the learning in the outcome of social connectedness and life skills. There can be another type of assessment, which focuses on the interest or fun or hobby of the learner to analyse their improvements. Therefore, the processes in which the improvement can be analysed properly of a student’s is perfect for the students to assess them.

Processes of Language Assessment

There are some classroom-based assessments such as, alternative, educational, authentic, informal, formative and statutory (Bygate, Swain & Skehan, 2013). All these assessment processes have their individual importance. The quiz is one of the assessments processes that help to improve the practice of regular lessons through a fun activity. The teachers to reduce the stress level of the students between classes can use it. As quiz is considered as a fun game rather learning, therefore, the students find it more interesting to participate. However, it is a fun game; the teacher can assess the improvements of the students from this classroom-based assessment procedure. Apart from this, there are many ways to assess the students in classes with fun activities like quiz. Likewise, debate competition can also be used to analyse the understanding of the students about the language-based subjects such as English. On the other hand, the writing assignments can be very helpful for the students to assess their learning. If the students cannot understand the subject properly, then they cannot develop the content in writing to explain their understanding (Kunnan, 2013). Therefore, it can be used as an assessment program to analyse the students’ improvements through assessment. General class tests also can be the assessment process for understanding the improvement in a frequent manner. Although it is a formal process, which the students have to face in the classes and the teachers think, it can be the most effective process to assess a student’s whether he or she is able to learn the language in a proper way or not. Therefore, in this case the teachers have to play a crucial role to develop the questions based on which it can be analysed the students improvements. All these processes are helpful to meet the objectives in this study to get the benefit of the purposes of classroom-based assessments for language testing.

There are some language assessment approaches to conduct this classroom-based assessment such as, Discrete-point testing approach, Communicative Testing Approach, Integrative Testing Approach and Performance testing approach (König et al., 2014). The Discrete-point testing approach is the process that can assess the students understanding about the components of language. Any language can be divided into its component parts and can be tested through the assessments like reading, writing, speaking, listening, phonology, lexicon, syntax and morphology. This discrete point tests are aiming to achieve a high reliability factor by testing a large number discrete items. In the Communicative Testing Approach, the students’ communication level on a particular language is tested through the teachers or assessors. In this case, the test should be conducted through the processes of listening, speaking, writing and reading. In the testing procedure, the teachers can assess the students in involving them into various pretending situations to test their communication levels in that Language. Therefore, it can be considered as the performance based testing approach for the language assessment.  Along with this, the approach of Integrative Testing helps to put back the language skills, which were taken out from the language with discrete items (Richards & Schmidt, 2013). Additionally, it helps to assess the capacity of a learner to understand the capability of the person to communicate through the language, which they are learning. Apart from this, there is another approach Performance testing approach to evaluate the performance level of learner after learning the language. The performance level can be accessed through the various testing processes to assess their improvements.  According to McLaughlin, (2013), this approach has some principles such as, in this process the teachers have to state the overall goal of the performance and to analyse the performance level they have to evaluate the performance checking process and then can test the performance. This process will help the assessors to understand the improvement of the students. All these are some important approaches that help the assessors to analyse the students’ improvement in the learning process.

Language Assessment Approaches

The role of the assessor or the teacher plays a crucial part in the process of classroom-based assessment. The teachers have to serve internal and external responsibilities to complete the assessments processes. Monitoring the assessment processes, keeping records of the progress of students and giving the results to other teachers as well as parents and students, selection, certification and meeting statutory requirements are the main responsibilities of an assessor.

As per the point of view of some of the eminent scholars, assessment is the systematic procedures based on which one individual student has been tasted as per the knowledge, skills and competencies. Only teaching and learning process is not enough for evaluating the minds of students. Students should be tasted time to time in order to know their learning progress. Teachers have to play a major role in the entire process of assessment (Allen et al., 2013). While dealing with the students within a classroom, teachers should gather detailed information regarding the problems and obstacles of the students. Based on those issues an ideal teacher should proceed for enhancing the mental skills and development of students. However, this particular essay has provided an in-depth understanding about the role of teachers for arranging the entire process of assessment effectively.

As stated by Astin (2012), assessment is one of the most effective ways of data collection procedure based on which the teachers can evaluated the growth and the progress of the students. After conducting an entire class, the students may not be able to understand that the teachers have conveyed in the classroom (Reschly & Christenson, 2012). Therefore, assessment is the only way, based on which teachers can get an in-depth overview about the learning improvement of every individual student equally. Before, conducting an assessment the teachers generally tend to take an effective remedial class (Treagust, 2012). In this particular class, every student within the classroom is allowed to throw any questions related to their study. This particular class is considered as interactive session where the students have to play a major role along with the teachers. After clarifying the doubt to the students, teachers tend to take an effective interaction with them. Teacher intends to ask some of the basic questions to the students based on which they can evaluate whether students have understood or not.

After conducting the remedial session, the entire process of assessment is started so that students can carry good marks.  At the time of this assessment, teachers have to follow some of the major factors (Brown, Bull & Pendlebury, 2013). The teachers should follow the expression of every individual student on how they are feeling comfortable with the assessment questions. If any individual students are followed uncomfortable with the assessment paper, the teacher should note the name of this individual as soon as possible. After the end of the session this particular students should be taken an effective interview session in order to know the problems individually. At the same time, some of the major factors should be taken into consideration.

Role of Teacher in Classroom-Based Assessment

At the time of conducting the assessment, teachers should maintain strictness at the assessment hall. Students should not discuss with each other at the time of assessment session. All the solutions should be conducted at the own competency of the students (Crisp, 2012). However, after conducting the entire process of assessment, teachers should evaluate the data about the performance of students. The students who have performed well in the entire session should not be highlighted. Teachers should enjoy the success the achievement of student learning process.

In the assessment, the students who have failed to provide an effective feedback should get more guidance and training from the teachers. The role of an ideal teacher in this particular case should be more vital (Falchikov, 2013). At the very first stage, teacher should identify the student who has failed to perform well in the assessment after collecting data. After identifying this individual, the teacher should make an effective session in order to know the problem. A friendly environment should be needed to deal with such kinds of students (Treagust, 2012). Teachers while making the face-to-face interaction should maintain a polite and humble approach to the students so that the students do not hesitate to share their point of views.

The role of an ideal teacher should be providing equal respect and dignity to the students from different culture and background (Healey, 2014). While dealing with the different kinds of learners, the teachers tend to come into close contact with students from various attitudes. However, it has been observed that the students have faced immense difficulties and challenges for maintaining their learning process due to the family background. As a result, those students fail to communicate properly with the teachers at the classroom (Imrie et al., 2014). These are the major problems, due to which students fail to provide their best performance in the assessment. The teacher should deal with those students especially. One of the major roles of an ideal teacher is to provide equal priority and response to the students of every culture and background.

Arranging parents teacher meeting is also been considered as one of the most effective initiatives for improving the future growth of the students. The mental and learning growth of a student is highly dependent on the family background of a particular student. After collecting sufficient data and information from the assessments, the teacher should make an effective interaction with the parents individually (Piech et al., 2013). Teachers should give an in-depth overview regarding the growth and the success of an individual. The students who have provided negative feedback on the assessment need guidance that is more effective. Therefore, parents would have to take a major initiative regarding the factor as well, so that their children can get a successful future. The role of an eminent teacher in this case is not only to convince the students, but also to make the parents understand on how their children can grow their mental skill and ability (Reschly & Christenson, 2012). The parents should provide a good environment to their children so that they can get a sufficient time for continuing their study.

Conclusion

The intention of this study is to analyse the purpose of classroom-based assessment and the various processes to find the importance or usefulness of the assessment. The usefulness of these procedures has been analysed and the role and responsibilities of the assessors has been evaluated to understand the importance of language test through classroom-based assessment. However, the entire essay has provided an in-depth understanding about the importance of assessment for improving the future growth of the students. At the same time the role of teachers have also been provided equal priority in this particular study.  

Reference List

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