miércoles, 23 de octubre de 2013

Assessing in ELT, seen it beyond the paper



Assessing has been truly considered as one of the most challenging part of teaching. It has been known that assessment for learning should be part of effective planning of teaching and learning. Assessing also must be seen by the teacher as a way to know his students and the most important as a tool to make desicions about his teaching method not only to gather data or worse to collect scores. The teacher at the moment of assessing has to consider a set of variables about students like: previous education experiences and culture. This one is very important here, because this one strongly defines the way students learn and also how they assimilate situations.

We do not know what really matters about teaching, if it is the students' learning or the score. At the moment of creating a test the teacher has first to think about what he is interested in; it means the test creator has to analyze what his test is focus on. On the other hand, teachers have to become aware about the importance of assessing. Assessing can be useful not only for students but also for teachers: students can fall in motivation to learn through assessing, seeing it from the point that this is the moment for them to show how much they have learned; and secondly teachers can evaluate the way or the method which they use to teach, it means they can measure the efectiveness of his methodology on students' learning, in other words it could be called "self-assessment"

To talk about how a teacher can improve his teaching we must not forget about students indeed, because they are the directly affected ones, so in order for the teacher to know if he is doing a good job. Nothing better than asking your students about your activities, your lessons, your tests, and all those which is related to the class development.

miércoles, 2 de octubre de 2013

Testing Through Tests

Through years tests have been consolidating themseleves in education as one of the most useful ways to measure learners' knowledge, if it is not the most used one. How meaninful a test can be depends on many factors. First, establishing a purpose for the test before applying it; second, being aware of what has been taught in order to know what to assess; third, the different reflections the teacher can subtract from the test experience; and fourth, being exposed to possible changes on the way to assess the learners. The teacher must consider all these issues at the moment of applying a test, the old fashioned idea of seeing a test just as a tool to get a grade and classify the learners' knowledge must not be accepted nowadays.



Another aspect very important to mention is that the teacher must not forget telling his students about the objective of the test, as well as giving them the instructions very clear; if it is necesary the teacher must repeat them. The teacher must let students know that tests are the opportunity to show how much they have learned and also to know what topics need more attention and maybe explanation. A test must be seen by students as a challenge in order to learn, and the teacher is the person in charge of encouraging them to take tests in a good way, he is who motivates them to keep learning. On the other hand, the teacher must be concious that kids have different learning skills, it means the teacher have to know how to measure the knowledge of each student doing a balance between the different skills the students are assessed.  


-While large-scale standardized tests may appear to have great influence at specific times. Without question, teachers are the drivers of the assessment systems that determine the effectiveness of schools. 
Stiggins, 1994, p. 438