Running head: ASSESSMENT PHILOSOPHY 1

Statement of Assessment Philosophy

Monchi Liu

Colorado State University

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In educational practice, assessments serve to evaluate the extent of knowledge that

individuals possess or have acquired. As a language teacher, it is my belief that an effective

assessment should be dependable, measuring the exact outcomes that based on the instruction

targets, using real-world language, designing within appropriate administrative constraints, and

displaying useful information for learners (Brown & Abeywickrama, 2010). In other words, an

appropriate assessment includes a thorough combination of validity, authenticity, practicality, as

well as a balanced use of formative and summative approaches to apprise learners’ learning

outcomes.

I believe that an effective assessment should primarily consider validity when developing

a test. Because a valid test measures exactly what is supposed to be measured (Brown, &

Abeywickrama, 2010). The test results should be consistent with the target content, otherwise the

entire test will be meaningless. For example, if I conduct a whole lesson for English past perfect

tense, but all of my test items measure the ability of English past tense, then the test result will

have nothing to do with my instruction. It will not be considered as a high validity test.

Authenticity is another important principle that I valued in assessment because no matter

how and for what purpose we appraise the learners, they are going to apply the language in some

domain (e.g. academic, real-world, etc.). The purpose of learning English should be learning how

to use it precisely, appropriately, and fluently. Authentic tasks help learners build connections

between theory (e.g. syntax, grammar, etc.) to practice (real-world situation). So, tasks which

from real-life situation would be one of my best choices. For instance, when working with

learners who intend to study abroad, I have adopted listening tasks from the TOEFL test. The

listening passages from TOEFL are modeled after the American college classroom because they
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are semi-authentic, it helps my learners to build connection and better understand what would

happen in the real American classroom if they are admitted to a university in the US.

An effective assessment should also be a concern in light of practicality. From my

perspective, “the cost, the amount of time the assessment takes to construct and to administer,

ease of scoring, and ease of interpreting/reporting the results” (Mousavi, 2009, p. 518) are all

essential elements to evaluate the usefulness of an assessment. For example, I shouldn’t

construct an interview for a 20 people classroom-based assessment. Because in a limited time, it

is not practical to interview 20 students one by one. In this situation, the practicality is low, and

the interview is time-consuming. In addition, a classroom-based assessment shouldn’t take test-

takers 4 to 5 hours to finish.

The creation of a student-centered classroom environment will enable teachers to better

facilitate the learning process of students compared to the classroom where teachers dominate. It

also promotes the development of formative and summative assessments. Because by letting

students lead the learning, the teacher can step aside and observe students’ learning process. This

enables the teacher to better understand the student’s learning situation, so as to assess it

formatively, and at the end of instructional period, conducting a summative assessment.

In conclusion, I believe that assessment should reflect what I intended to assess, while

having students experience real-world tasks. So, I attempt to design assessments that are based

on validity, authenticity, and practicality, that is to say, measuring the exact knowledge that

learners have learned, using authentic materials, taking reasonable among of time to assess, and

assessing learners in both formative and summative approaches.

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References:

Brown, H. D., & Abeywickrama, P. (2010). Language assessment: Principles and classroom

practices. White Plains, NY: Pearson Education.

Mousavi, S. A. (2009). An encyclopedic dictionary of language testing (4th ed.). Tehran:

Rahnama Publications.