This week's readings included Brown Chapter 22 and Kumar's chapters 7 and 8.
Brown's chapter provided some principles for language assessment that I also thought are extremely important in tests and assessments including practicality, relability and validity, authenticity and washback.
Reliability is very important because it ensures that sources of possible unreliability are noticed and accounted for when considering test scores and making decisions. I, as many of us, have learned in other TESOL courses how important a test's reliability is and of the number of possible sources of unreliability including the test itself, testing environment, test scorer or test takers themselves. Can you think of an example of when you administered or took part of an assessment that you felt was unreliable for one of these reasons? Why is it important for our tests/assessments to be reliable?
Validity is also important because it makes sure that the test or assessment is measuring what it needs to measure. We have come across three different types of validity including the content, face and construct validity. How can we be sure there is validity in our test/assessment?
Washback is another principle Brown discusses, which I find very interesting and important to consider in our future ESL/EFL or bilingual classrooms. This term refers to how assessments or tests affect teaching and learning. I believe it is important in our classrooms, to consider how each assessment we administer will affect our teaching, and the learning occurring in the classroom.
Brown's chapter also learly defined the difference between a test, which can measure someone's knowledge about a given domain, and an assessment, which refers to an ongoing process for a wider domain. As I read Brown's theories on assessments and tests, I wondered when would it be appropriate to use an assessment? When would it be appropriate to use a test?
While brown's chapter looked at tests and assessments, Kumar discussed language awareness. One interesting point of this, addressed Critical Language Awareness (CLA) which considers the sociopolitical nature of language, specifically focused on the exercise of power. Kumar discusses how teaching CLA can teach learners how language can be used as a tool. Overall, Kumar discussed that language awareness, is important in language education as it helps the learner. How do you believe language awareness will affect your future classroom.
Kumar also discussed heuristics, which was an unfamiliar word to me. Heuristics, as Kumar states on page 176, refers to the provess of self discovery as the part of the learner, and to a particular method of teaching which encourages the student to learn about themselves and their own experiences. This is connected to this idea, of language awareness. While there are language rules the teacher should create beneficial linguistic environment, learners can use to use their heuristics and discover the linguistic system on their own while teachers need to show students that grammar is a dynamic system with structure of form meaning and use, they should also promote the students own self-discovery.
