1. Assessment types and tasks
Assessment means judging learner’s performance by
collecting information about it.
We assess learners for different reasons, using different
methods to do so.
Assessment tasks are the tasks we use for assessing
learners.
We can assess learners informally or formally. Informal
assessment is when we observe learners how well they
are doing something and then give them comments on
their performance.
Formal assessment is when we assess learners through
tests or exams and give their work a mark or grade.
5. 1. When a students’ work is judged through a test and the student is given a report or a grade to say how
successful or unsuccessful they have been.
2. When a test is used at the end of the course. A mark or grade is given, but no other feedback.
3. When a teacher decides whether a student is doing well or not but does not necessarily set a test or
write an official report or give a grade.
4. When a teacher gives students feedback on their progress during a course, rather than at the end of it,
so that they can learn from the feedback.
5. A collection of work that a student uses to show what he/she has done during a particular course. A
purposeful document, regularly added to that may be part of assessment.
6. A type of testing which is different from a final examination. Some or all of the work that students do
during a course is considered by the teacher on a monitoring of classroom performance and
contribution.
7. When students give feedback on each others’ language, work, learning strategies, performance.
8. When students decide for themselves if they think their progress or language use is good or not.
6. KEY CONCEPTS (of TEST)
• There are several reasons why we might want to assess learners formally.
Can you tell me how do you assess your learners formally?
7. • At the beginning of a course we might give
them a test to find out what they know and
don’t know
Diagnostic
test
• When learners go to language school or
evening classes, the school may want to know
what level learners are at, so they give them a
test.
Placement test
• After we have finished teaching a part of a
course, we may want to find out how well
learners have learnt it. We use the
information from the test to decide if we
need to do more work on this area of the
syllabus or not and perhaps to give learners
feedback on their strengths and difficulties in
this area. Using information from assessment
to feed into our teaching and maybe give
learners feedback is called formative
assessment.
Progress test
8. •Some teachers prefer not to assess their learners’
progress in a tern through tests but through piece of
work given throughout the term.
Continuous test
or
Formative
•This is the collection of learners’ work done during
the course which the learner puts together during or
at the end a course and then presents to the teacher.
Often it also contains comments on the work written
by learner or classmates.
Portfolio
•At the end of a term or course, we may give learners
a test to see how well they have learnt the contents
of the whole course. Learners usually receive a score
or mark from this kind of testing.
Achievement test
or
Summative
9. •Sometimes learners take tests to see how good
they are at language. The test measure the
learner’s general skill or ability in the language as a
whole (e.g the IELTS test) or a use of it.
Proficiency test
10. Sample Task
For Questions 1–5, match the descriptions of different tests with the types of
test listed A–F.
Mark the correct letter (A–F) on your answer sheet.
You need to use some options more than once
• Types of test
A progress
B achievement
C subjective
D proficiency
E diagnostic
F placement
11. • Descriptions
1 These tests are designed to test language taught on the
whole course.
2 These tests are designed to help teachers to plan course
content.
3 The purpose of these tests is to test language taught on
part of the course.
4 These tests help teachers to put students in classes at the
appropriate level.
5 The marking of these tests depends on decisions made by
individual examiners.
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12. Assessment tasks
There are many different tasks a teacher can use to assess her learners, e.g
Multiple-choice questions, interviews, gap-fill, table completion for listening
or reading for specific information.
The tasks a teacher chooses to use for formal assessment depend on what
aspect of language or skills the teacher wants to assess.
Assessment tasks are often described as objective and subjective,
13.
14. Objective tasks Subjective tasks
Multiple choice
True/ false
Gap-fills
Matching
Circle the right word
Role plays
Group discussion
Compositions
interviews
15. 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?
16. Complete the sentences.
In Paris the people were
much ______ and more
polite than I had _____.
The food though was not
as _______.
Read the text and answer
the following questions.
Why did John go to the
party?
What happened when he
got there?
Choose the correct answer.
1. The car he drove was
a) Ford b) Peugeot c) BMW
2. It was
a) red b) white c) black
Rearrange the words in the sentences.
1. month/travelled/France/we/last/to
2. Japan/Tom/a/ago/week/went/to
Complete sentence B so that it
means the same as sentence A
A. Jack doesn’t have to do the
test. B. It’s ________ Jack to do
the test.
Which word does not fit
the group?
cup, plate, knife, bowl
banana, apple, onion, pear
17. Finish the sentence with an
answer from the text.
It was sunny so she _____ ___
____.
Write a letter to a friend inviting
him/her to a party at your house
next Saturday.
Which word belongs to each
group?
Apple vegetable
Juice meat
Potato fruit
Beef Drink
Look at the picture. Talk about
the people, what they are doing
and what they are wearing.
Where do you think they are
going?
18. Follow up Activity
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 test 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 subskill.
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.
19. For questions 1–5, match the situations in which a teacher sets a test with the reasons
for assessment, A–F.
Mark the correct letter (A–F) on your answer sheet.
There is one extra option which you do not need to use.
Situations
1 The teacher has a new class. On the first day of the course, she sets a
test which covers some of the language points she expects the students to be
familiar with and others that she thinks the students may not know. The students
do not prepare for the test.
2 The teacher notices that his intermediate students are making
careless mistakes with basic question formation, which they should know. He
announces that there will be a test on this the following week. The students have
time to prepare for the test.
3 The students are going to take a public examination soon. The teacher
givers them an example paper to do under test conditions.
4. The teacher monitors students whenever they carry out speaking tasks and
keeps notes about each student.
5 The class has recently finished a unit of the course book which focused
on the use of the present perfect simple with ‘for’ and ‘since’. The teacher gives
the class a surprise test on this.
20. • Reasons for assessment
A to familiarise students with the test format
B to allow the teacher to plan an appropriate scheme
of work
C to show students how well they have learned a
specific language point
D to allow students to assess each other
E to motivate the students to revise a particular
language area
F to assess students’ progress on a continuous basis
21. Task Types for Formal Assessment
• READING WRITING
1. True/False 1. Sentence completion
• LISTENING SPEAKING
1. Tick the word you heard 1. Describing pictures
• GRAMMAR VOCABULARY
• 1. Transformation exercises 1. Categorising
