2. Discussion Questions
1. What is assessment?
• collecting information about students’ progress to find out about their learning
• finding out what students know
2. Why do teacher assessment students?
• to find out what students have learnt in lessons
• to find out what students know at the start of a class
• to decide on what to teach students
3. Do students assess teachers assess?
yes, students assess teachers
• it is good because it helps teachers to evaluate their lessons and their teaching
3. • When do teachers assess students?
• students’ language (grammar, vocabulary) and language skills (reading, listening, writing, speaking)
• students’ attitude
• students’ progress
How do teachers assess students?
• formally: in tests, for example
• informally: during classroom activities, for example
When do teachers assess students?
All the time
4. Look at the assessment tasks, marking processes, and main reasons for assessment below and decide whether they are
connected mostly with formal assessment or informal assessment.
If you think they relate mostly to formal assessment, mark F in the box. If you think they are connected mostly with
informal assessment mark I in the box.
1. exams
2. The teacher keeps a note of strengths and weaknesses but doesn’t give students a grade for
their work.
3. classroom activities, e.g. discussions and role-plays
4. Students get a grade for their work, e.g. Pass/ Fail, 65 %
5. to help teachers to select appropriate materials and activities for lessons
6. to give feedback to learners about how they can improve their learning
7. to assess overall language ability or proficiency
8. to assess learning at the end of a course, to decide if learners can move on to the next level
9. homework tasks
10.to provide feedback to the teacher so that she can find out what aspects of her
11.teaching are useful and successful
12.tests
5. 6. students get missing
information from a
partner to complete a
task.
3. Students complete a text with selected
words blanked out
2. Complete the sentence so that it means
exactly the same.
4. Students correct mistakes in a text.
5.From text to diagram,
table etc)
1. Students complete a text with every nth
word blanked out.
Guided writing
Cloze test
Information-gap activity
Sentence transformation
Information transfer
Proof reading
6. TASKS
• 1. Cloze test/gap fill (in a cloze test the gaps are regular e.g. every seventh word, a gap fill is not
regular but selected by the teacher or assessor)
• 2. Comprehension task – open comprehension questions (students answer in their own words)
• 3. Matching task
• 4. Multiple-choice task
• 5. Sentence completion task
• 6. Sentence transformation task
• 7. Sentence ordering task/Jumbled sentence task
• 8. Odd one out task
• 9. Essay/letter writing task
• 10. Speaking task
• 11. True/False
# Exercise 2
Which of the activities and tasks are subjective tests and which are
objective tests?
7. Read the following statements and decide whether they are true(T) or False (F).
1. In cloze tests we choose the words to blank out.
2. We can make a true /false more challenging by adding a third option.
3. Portfolio assessment can include self-assessment by the learner.
4. We can use information transfer tasks to test listening skills.
5. Summary writing is an objective assessment activity.
6. Guided writing may test more than one subskills.
7. Assessment criteria help us to give fair marks for subjective tests.
8. Sentence transformation is a real-life assessment activity.
9. Interviews are challenging because learners can prepare all their
answers.
10. Proofreading tests skills that learners can transfer to real-life situations.
