Chapter 6 Assessment
38 Designing classroom tests
39 Giving feedback on classroom tests
40 Getting learner self-assessment going
41 Getting learner peer-assessment going
42 Preparing learners for public examinations
Assessment can be described as the engine that drives students’ learning. The fact
that, in many contexts, students are becoming more strategic means that
assessment can be harnessed to help them to focus their learning, as well as to
measure the level they have reached. If you wish to read from a cross-
disciplinary perspective on the different kinds of assessment you may wish to
choose from, please look at 500 Tips on Assessment (Sally Brown, Phil Race and
Brenda Smith, 1995), where a much wider range of assessment formats is
addressed.
Our chapter on assessment begins and ends with testing. The primary benefit
that learners can reap from testing is feedback, so the design of a classroom test
should be regarded as paving the way for learners to deepen their learning from
feedback on anything they get wrong, rather than trying to find out how many
learners can get things right.
We also include some suggestions for involving learners in their own
assessment. Self-assessment can bring the comfort of privacy to finding out about
strengths and weaknesses. Peer-assessment can extend the amount of feedback
that learners receive, and deepen their learning through the process of applying
assessment criteria to someone else’s work. Both self- and peer-assessment can
help learners to tune in to the assessment culture in which they are learning
English, and can help them to see how the examiner’s mind will work when
assessing their work when it counts.
Our final suggestions in this chapter point towards helping your learners to
succeed in public exams, where you may need to join forces with your learners to
help them to adjust their strategic preparations in the most sensible ways.