>> My topic today is language assessment.
And I'd like to start defining it and I think it helps to think of assessment when we're talking
about teaching as sort of an umbrella term.
So there are a lot of things that we do in the classroom to evaluate students' learning,
to evaluate their language ability, and language knowledge.
And there are some things that we do formally like tests, pop quizzes, presentations.
And there are other things that we do informally like ask students questions
and see if they understood something or have them do a skit or a role-play.
So we're assessing maybe more than we think we are, in classrooms.
But today we're really focused on formal assessment, things like test and quizzes.
And when you think about assessment its good to have three questions in mind, I think.
The first question is why.
So thinking about why you're assessing students, are you trying to place them
into different levels, are you trying to do a diagnostic test to see where their strengths
and weaknesses are, do you want to know if they've learned the material
up through the midterm, or if they're able to listen to a 30-minute lecture and comprehend it.
So always thinking about what are you trying to find out about the students?
And that actually leads to the second question of what, what are you trying to measure?
So once you know why you're assessing them,
you need to think about what is it you're trying to find out.
So going back to listening comprehension, in that case,
you're thinking about what is involved in listening.
Is it understanding when people are pausing, why they're pausing,
is it being able to comprehend certain vocabularies, certain genres but really trying
to define what it is you want to measure or assess?
And once you know why and what, that helps with the third question, how is really the test
and how we get to the assessment instrument.
And often times that's where we like to start but actually thinking about why
and what should help us make a lot of the decisions we need to make with how.