Part 3: Critical Reflection

The use of assessment to provide feedback to teachers and students in the course of
learning is called formative assessment. Information gained through informal assessments
provides opportunities for teachers to make adjustments to the ways in which they deliver
instruction (Brown, 2010). This assignment required me to prepare a lesson plan which
incorporates formative assessment that can be used to assess the language skill
identified.The lesson that I conducted was a writing lesson with having the writing skills as
the language skills identified. The Curriculum Specifications (CS) of 3.2 and the Learning
Standards (LS) of 3.2.1 (b) as well as 2.2.3 (a) were also used in the lesson. Having that as
a basis, this critical reflection will be discussing the insights that I have gained after
designing, constructing and using the assessment task with the focus being on formative
assessment.
First and foremost, after using the assessment task in the lesson that I planned, I
found that it indeed showed a very clear link to the CS and LS chosen for the lesson. It
means I am able to produce a task that shows the collaboration between teacher and
students to achieve learning objective that has been set up. Before moving on to the
worksheet, I am able to engage the students with the prior knowledge and input first. This is
important as it can reduce the gap between weak and advanced students in my classroom
for the activity. The task that I gave to the pupils assist them to read and demonstrate their
understanding of the sentences by matching to the correct pictures. This became the most
prominent strength of the task that I used, for as part of the education transformation in
Malaysia, the MOE has implemented the National Education Assessment System whereby
teachers are supposed to get more involved in curriculum and assessment decision making
under this system, and employ suitable teaching approaches in response to students
needs (Maxwell and Cumming, 2011). Thus, since the pupils need based on the CS and LS
was fulfilled through the assessment that I conducted, hence I believe that the assessment
was appropriate for my pupils and the lesson itself.

Next, I would like to mention about the strength of the task by pointing out the
importance of allowing insight into the extent to which the students can transferred their
learning in new situations. According to Fisher D, formative assessments allow students to
show their thinking and allow teachers a way to see and gauge students cognitive
processes. In order to test their skills to apply the knowledge that I have taught, I asked my
students to work in few groups to create sentences based on several pictures that have
been pasted up on the whiteboard. By doing so, I can engage my students to deeper
thinking as they try to apply the skills of writing simple sentences that have been taught. In
addition, by using the task, I can also incorporate cooperate and supports from peers among
the students as mentioned by Brown &William,1998, involving students in decisions about
their own learning and in self-assessment helps students to engage in reflection and build
their metacognitive skills. By doing this group work, I believe it can influence on student
motivation and self-esteem when students are involved in self-assessments and understand
how to improve. Thus, I have made this task as a deep assessment in the lesson.
As for the weakness, I found one that is the feedback. Feedback must include a
description of how their response differed from that reflected in the desired learning goal and
how they can move forward (Maxwell,2011). I noticed that I failed to provide a positive
feedback that could affect the pupils learning. In doing formative assessment, I should be
able to comment generously and specifically on the test performance. However, since the
assessment was time-bound, hence I ccould not give a proper feedback after they have
completed the task that would help enhance their future language development. This is
something that I should work on in future as a teacher.
In conclusion, after completing this assignment, I learnt that designing, constructing
and implementing an assessment for the pupils is a very important job that a teacher must
do (Clapham, 2003). Teachers must think carefully before giving them any assessment task.
The principles of language assessment provide useful guidelines for teachers to design
effective assessments for the pupils. Quizzes, tests, worksheets and even Q&A sessions

can all be scrutinised through these lenses of principles of language assessment. What
important is that teachers need to know which area they should be focussing on, so that the
assessments would benefit both teachers and learners.
(800 words)

APPENDIX

REFERENCES
Fisher D, N.F. (n.d). Principles of language assessment. academia.edu. Retrieved from
https://www.academia.edu/4587581/PRINCIPLES_OF_LANGUAGE_ASSESSMENT

on

27th August 2014.

Brown, H.D. & Abeywickrama, P. 2010. Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom
Practices, Second Edition. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.
Clapham, C. (2003). Principles of assessment. Centre For Languages Linguistics & Area
Studies. Retrieved from https://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/1398#toc_3 on 27th August
2014.
Maxwell, G.S. & Cumming, J.J. (2011). Managing Without Public Examinations: Successful
And Sustained Curriculum And Assessment Reform In Quensland. In Yates, L. Collins, C &
OConnor, K. (Eds.), Australias Curriculum Dilemmas. Australia: Melbourne University
Press.