Assessment in the Language Classroom Assessment in the Language Classroom Teachers Supporting Student Learning Liying Cheng Professor of Language Education, Queen’s University, Canada Janna Fox Professor of Applied Linguistics & Discourse Studies, Carleton University, Canada Applied Linguistics for the Language Classroom Series Editor: Andy Curtis © 2017 Liying Cheng and Janna Fox All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2017 by PALGRAVE Palgrave in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–1–137–46483–5 paperback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Contents List of Figures and Tables vi Series Editor’s Introduction viii Acknowledgements xii Introduction xiii 1 Why Do We Assess? 1 2 What Do We Assess? 30 3 How Do We Assess? 62 4 How Do We Develop a High-Quality Classsroom Test? 102 5 Who Are We Assessing? Placement, Needs Analysis and Diagnostics 139 6 Who Are We Assessing? Feedback and Motivation 166 7 When We Assess, How Can We Use Assessment to Move Forward? 188 Appendix 215 Glossary 223 References 231 Index 241 v List of Figures and Tables Figures 1.1 Dimensions of assessment 7 2.1 Alignment of learning goals, assessment and classroom activity 31 2.2 Specific curriculum expectations in listening and speaking 33 2.3 Aligning course activity and assessment tasks with intended learning outcomes through horizontal and vertical course planning and design 45 3.1 Assessment observations, conversations and products 76 4.1 Overview of a test development process 109 5.1 An example of an online diagnostic assignment 154 5.2 Follow-up diagnostic assignment 155 5.3 Diagnostic assessment: student profile of targeted needs 158 Tables 1.1 Purposes of assessment and evaluation 10 1.2 The commonplaces of language curriculum 21 1.3 Questionnaire: What is most important in teaching a language? 23 1.4 My philosophy of teaching and learning 27 2.1 Course example: ESLCO, Level 3 (Open), Listening and Speaking 46 3.1 Reading 78 vi LIst OF FIGURes aND TaBles vii 3.2 Writing 79 3.3 Speaking and listening 80 3.4 Classification of Marta’s portfolio requirements 89 4.1 History file (excerpt) 112 4.2 Table of specifications (sample specification) 113 4.3 Some commonly used item and task formats 117 4.4 Holistic scale – Section 1: summary writing 124 4.5 Analytic scale – Section 1: summary writing 126 4.6 Item analysis for Class 6B (Level 3) 130 5.1 Mapping assessment approaches onto philosophies of needs assessment 149 5.2 Diagnostic approaches 159 5.3 A sample diagnostic assessment tool 163 6.1 Assessment practices, teacher responses are in italics, students’ work is underlined 169 7.1 Principles of test preparation practices 206 7.2 Overarching themes and code frequencies 210 Series Editor’s Introduction The purpose of this Applied Linguistics for the Language Class- room (ALLC) series is to help bridge what still appears to be a significant gap between the field of applied linguistics and the day-to-day classroom realities of many language teachers and learners. For example, Selivan recently wrote that: “Much applied linguistics research remains unapplied, is often misap- plied, or is downright inapplicable” (2016, p.25). This gap appears to have existed for some time, and has yet to be bridged. For example, in 1954, Pulgram published Applied Lin- guistics In Language Teaching, which was followed a few years later by Robert Lado’s classic work, Linguistics Across Cultures: Applied Linguistics for Language Teachers (1957). However, we are still seeing articles 60 years later helping language teachers to apply linguistic theory to language lessons (Magrath, 2016). Therefore, one of the features of this ALLC series that makes it distinctive is our focus on helping to bridge the on-going gap between applied linguistics and language classrooms. Our envisaged readership for these books is busy classroom lan- guage teachers, including those entering the profession and those who have been in it for some time already. We also gave a lot of thought to what teachers completing a first degree in Education, teachers doing MA TESOL courses, and language teachers completing other professional qualifications, would find most useful and helpful. Bearing such readers in mind, one of the ambitious goals of this ALLC series is to present language teachers with clear, concise and up-to-date overviews and summaries of what they need to know in key areas: Assessment; Methods and Methodologies; Technology; Research Methods; and Phonet- ics, Phonology and Pronunciation. Attempting to do what viii SERIes EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION ix much larger and weightier volumes have attempted, but doing so in volumes that are slimmer and more accessible, has been a challenge, but we believe these books make an original and creative contribution to the literature for lan- guage teachers. Another distinctive feature of this ALLC series has been our International Advisory Board, made up of Professor Kathleen Bailey and Professor David Nunan. These two outstanding fig- ures in our field helped us to keep our target readers in mind and to stay focused on the classroom, while keeping the con- nections to applied linguistics, so we can advance the building of the bridges between applied linguistics and language classrooms. In Assessment in the Language Classroom: Teachers Supporting Student Learning Liying Cheng and Janna Fox – two educators with more than 50 years of classroom experience between them – focus on how assessment can be used as a tool to help teachers help learners. Each chapter starts with a set of schema-activating questions, which encourage the readers to reflect on their own experiences before delving further into the text. Chapter One starts with definitions and the different pur- poses of some essential aspects of assessment. One of those aspects is the voices of test-takers, which are often conspicuous by their absence, but in this book, those voices are heard. In Chapter Two, Cheng and Fox address the big and impor- tant but complex and complicated questions: What is worth teaching, and what is worth assessing? To help answer those questions, Cheng and Fox give concrete examples of specific curriculum expectations in relation to particular language modalities. The authors also help teachers align their class- room activities and assessments with the learning goals and outcomes. As in Chapter One, definitions and descriptions of key terms, such as ‘learning outcomes’ – which form the basic vocabulary items of the language of language assessment – are presented. The importance of contextual understanding is also highlighted in this chapter, which concludes with a very helpful template for planning a course. x SERIes EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION Like the other books in this ALLC series, one of the main the goals of this book is to help language teachers in their day-to- day classroom practices. Therefore, Chapter Three starts by comparing and contrasting large-scale testing with classroom testing, as a way of explain the three key concepts of assessment of learning, assessment for learning, assessment as learning. To complement the voices of language test-takers in the first chapter, the voices of language teachers are presented here, and reiterating the importance of contextualization, detailed assessment plans – which are “an overall guide for how we will assess students’ achievement of the learning goals and out- comes relevant to instruction” (p. 66) – from two different con- texts are given. Details of a wide range of assessment tools are given, including alternative assessment methods, such as use of portfolios, again, with detailed examples. In more and more countries, classroom teachers are being asked to develop their own tests, to analyse tests, and to be able to evaluate the quality of tests. Unfortunately, in many of those countries, the initial teacher training programs do not include required courses on test design, analysis or evaluation. Chapter Four, therefore, helps teachers to build this knowledge and these skills, including the expanding of teachers’ lan- guage assessment vocabulary, with thorough explanations of ‘construct definition’, ‘criterion-’ and ‘norm-referenced assessment’, ‘Target Language Use’ and other terms which teachers need to know in order to be able to think, talk about and do assessment. A detailed overview of the test development process is also presented. Chapter Five looks at who we are assessing, in relation to placement, needs analysis and diagnostics. In this chapter, Cheng and Fox start by emphasizing the importance of teachers and learners getting to know each other, which is not something that cannot happen with large-scale, standardized testing, in which all test-takers all over the world are, by definition, assumed to be the same.