This article is submitted by Sara Vali and Parnaz Kianiparsa, lecturers at Payame Noor University, Iran (Damavand Center).
Abstract
As everyone knows, assessment becomes an indicative tool for analyzing the success of the teaching methods. Additionally, it helps students to recognize that they are making progress in foreign language development, which can motivate them to identify their own strengths and weaknesses, and encourage autonomy and independent learning skills. However, a teacher’s role is one of the significant elements in teaching process. Nowadays, a variety of alternative assessments have become popular. It has been suggested that unlike traditional assessment methods, alternative assessment techniques promote a trustful atmosphere so that students that are influenced by evaluation become engaged in its process. They are provoked to communicate freely and are more able to involve in self-criticism and rethinking. Students’ involvement in their own evaluation assists them in reaching maturity and responsibility in succeeding in language learning.
This paper aims to have a short review on the so-called “movement of alternative assessment” (Alderson & Banerjee, 2001) that has recently used in the field of language testing and assessment. In other words, this study tries to introduce new methods of assessment in the second or foreign language acquisition.
Introduction
These days, there has been an increasing interest in the use of assessment procedures that are completely different from conventional methods of assessment. More reliable forms of assessment, such as portfolios, interviews, journals, project works, and self- or peer- assessment have become more and more common in the second and foreign language classrooms.
These alternative forms of testing or assessment are more student-centered as they involve students in their learning, so that they can control their own language learning. Furthermore, these kinds of assessment–called alternative assessment–can help teachers to get enough information for developing their instructional plans and practices. Table below can indicate the obvious differences which exist between the traditional and alternative forms of assessment (Richards & Renandya, 2002).
Old forms New forms
1. Focus on language 1. Focus on communication
2. Teacher-centered 2. Learner-centered
3. Isolated skills 3. Integrated skills
4. Emphasis on product 4. Emphasis on process
5. One answer, one-way correctness 5. Open-ended, multiple solutions
6. Tests that test 6. Tests that teach
The aim of the present paper is to review some studies which have conducted on examining these new forms of assessment, and express their findings and their researchers’ beliefs about the usefulness of these kinds of testing in EFL/ESL classrooms.
Review of the related literature
Before 1990’s our testing and assessment were based on behaviorist views of cognition and improvement, but after 1990’s it was suggested that some alternative ways of testing are needed to evaluate a person’s performance (Hancock, 1994). Studies have revealed that innovative individuals do not have unique mental sections, but they use what they have in more well-organized and flexible ways. Such individuals are enormously thoughtful about their activities, their use of time, and the quality of their products (Gardner, 1993). Thus, a need for a new assessment process was needed to test the learners.
Alternative assessment includes a variety of instruments that can be modified in varying situations. According to the literature (e.g. Anthony, Johnson, Mikelson, & Peerce, 1991; Goodman, 1991; Holt; 1994), these instruments include, for example, the use of checklists of student behavior, products, journals, reading logs, videos of role plays, audio tapes of discussion, self-evaluation questionnaires, work samples, and teacher observations or anecdotal records.
In her article on alternative assessment, Huerta-Macias (1995) claimed that although traditional forms of assessment can provide somehow suitable measures of students’ performance, they often fail to give information about what the students can do in their second language. Because of this, a new method of assessment has been suggested in recent years which is called alternative assessment, authentic assessment, or informal assessment. The focus of this new method is on assessing learners’ ability to use language holistically in real-life situations and is usually carried out constantly over a period of time.
As Miriam and Fran (1995) said in their article about ESL learners’ assessment, assessment is difficult for adult ESL educators. Finding a means that can measure learner achievements and program success to institutions, display improvement in English proficiency and literacy skills to learners, and clarify for the educators themselves what has been learned and what has not is not an easy task. Dissatisfaction with accessible tools has been widespread, and many teachers can not find some methods to evaluate learner gains in a way that helps teaching and learning. Today, it seems that using a combination of available and program- developed alternative assessment instruments can be helpful for assessment.
Alternative assessment is a flexible way to gather enough information about learners and evaluate what has been taught in class. “Learner portfolios,”– collections of individual work– are common examples of alternative assessment. Portfolios can include such items as reports on books read, notes from learner/teacher interviews, learners’ reflections on their progress, writing samples, data from performance-based assessments, and scores on commercially available tests (Fingeret, 1993; Wrigley, 1992).
Grosvenor (1993: 14-15) defined portfolio as a list of three basics models as follows:
1- Showcase model, consisting of work samples chosen by the student.
2-Descriptive model, consisting of representative work of the student, with no attempt at
evaluation.
3- Evaluative model, consisting of representative products that have been evaluated by criteria.
DeFina (1992: 13-16) listed the following assumptions about portfolio assessment:
• “Portfolios are systematic, purposeful, and meaningful collections of students’ works in one or more subject areas.
• Students of any age or grade level can learn not only to select pieces to be placed into their portfolios but can also learn to establish criteria for their selections.
• Portfolio collections may include input by teachers, parents, peers, and school administrators.
• In all cases, portfolios should reflect the actual day-to-day learning activities of students.
• Portfolios should be ongoing so that they show the students’ efforts, progress, and achievements over a period of time.
• Portfolios may contain several compartments, or subfolders.
• Selected works in portfolios may be in a variety of media and may be multidimensional.”
Polaksowski (1993) has talked about the benefits of the portfolio, and has said that portfolios are a striking alternative to more traditional assessment approaches for teaching children. He enumerated the benefits of portfolio as follows:
1- It complements such developmentally appropriate curriculum and instruction as whole language, hands-on approaches, and process mathematics.
2- It also allows them to assess children’s individual learning styles.
3- It enhances their ability to communicate with parents about children’s learning.
4- It helps to fulfill professional requirements of school and community accountability.
In his article about alternative assessment and social studies, Pat (1993) stated that assessment should be separated from instruction. Student evaluation is most authentic and reasonable when it is based upon the ideas, processes, and products. The criteria of judgment and the expected results should be determined for the students clearly at first. Both the teacher and student are responsible for each student’s success. Thus, the social studies classroom becomes a model of the real world in which social and public responsibility and participation is an ongoing process, uninterrupted by time-outs for the strangeness of formal testing.
In an article on authentic assessment and writing assessment, Chapman (1990) suggested that due to the role of writing in people’s academic, social, and personal lives, the improvement of students’ ability to write is a main concern in every society. Since educators can use writing to assess students’ higher-order thinking skills–such as the ability to make reasonable connections, to compare and contrast solutions to problems, and to sufficiently support arguments and conclusions–authentic assessment seems to provide excellent criteria for teaching and evaluating writing. He suggested a design for authentic writing assessment that can be crucial to teaching and testing writing skill. He believed that an authentic writing assessment should reveal various types of writing as well as levels of difficulty related to the task. For example, a writing assessment assignment can be:
* totally open-ended, where the student is asked to construct an essay either requiring or not requiring certain background knowledge
* limited to specific components of the writing process, such as planning, outlining, or even revising
* used for short answers which may be either a part of planning or an abbreviated check for a basic understanding of key points
Yap (1993) reported the results of a research project involving thirty-five adult basic (ABE) and English as a second language (ESL) programs. Writing assessment, portfolio assessment, and classroom assessment were shown to be suitable approaches to the type of authentic assessment called for within the profession. Pierce, Swain, and Hart (1993) reported on a study of 500 eighth-grade students, signifying that self-assessment was an applicable and reliable measure of language proficiency. Pavis (1988) indicated similar results for college students learning French based on a journal writing project in which students checked their own learning and recognized problems encountered as well as achievements over the course of the term. Allwright (1988) has argued that the quality of learning can improve by controlling what happens in the mind of the learner. Based on studies such as these, alternative assessment that involves the learner in self-assessment is recommended, regardless of possible claims of subjectivity as a negative factor in their use.
Hancock (1994) believed that one of the advantages of alternative assessment is that it gives enough opportunities for the learners to discover that they can complete the tasks successfully. He said those language programs that focus on alternative assessment are apt to help the learners to evaluate what they learn both in and outside of the language class in a real life situation.
One of the alternative ways of assessment which is used as alternative to norm-referenced tests as Elliott (1995) said is performance assessment. Teachers can use performance assessment to get a much richer and more comprehensive picture of what students know and can do.
As defined by the U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) (1992, as cited by Elliot, 1995), performance assessments are those “testing methods that require students to create an answer or product that demonstrates their knowledge and skills” which can have different forms, such as conducting experiments, writing extended essay, and doing mathematical computations.
Performance assessment is a continuum of assessment formats ranging from the simplest student-constructed answers to comprehensive expressions or collections of work over time. By choosing good assessment tasks, sharing the scoring criteria with students, motivating students to do the tasks, and understand their performances, teachers can direct instruction to its appropriate destination with performance assessment.
Although performance assessment is very useful for both teachers and students it has some disadvantages in terms of the concept of fairness. Although consistency to assure fairness in performance assessment increases the ease of administration it decreases the task’s meaningfulness and creates some biases.
Conclusion
Although alternative assessment procedures are less formal than traditional testing and have valuable washback effects according to the literature, they have some drawbacks which make them difficult to be used. Using these kinds of procedures is very time consuming for both learners and teachers. The cultural factors and educational backgrounds of the learners may result in some problems in use of this assessment. Moreover, it is hard to measure the outcomes without using some standardized test. Owing to these issues, ESL programs often use a combination of commercially available and program-developed assessment instruments to evaluate literacy and language proficiency.
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