Evaluación en la enseñanza del inglés como lengua extranjera
Maria Alejandra Colmenarez
C.I: V-25.771.824
How can a teacher tackle the problems that validity, reliability and
practicality may pose when assessing students?
The process of teaching languages comprehends a wide variety of paths
that need to be followed in order to achieve the goal of teaching and be able to
witness that students use what they learned in real life contexts. Validity,
reliability and practicality are concepts used to guarantee that the process of
assessing students gives a meaningful result. An extensive amount of
questions come up when assessing students. Therefore, the notions of these
concepts need to be as clear as possible, so the results of the assessments be
the most accurate as possible.
Dealing with assessment is not only to know if the student´s performance
has had an improvement or not, but also to check the teacher´s knowledge on
evaluating and assessing. Knowing the concepts that were previously
mentioned is ideal to detect problems and find solutions that might appear
when assessing and testing students.
Planning lessons is a crucial step for the upcoming phases of classes. Every
single teacher or instructor should have a record of their students’ progress.
This is vital because assessment and testing need to be lively present when
valuing scholars; measuring what it is supposed to be measured is decisive
when running an idyllic process of estimating abilities. In addition, some
problems might affect the validity of an assessment, such as, cultural or
educational background of pupils. One effective way of being assured of what
was taught is being evaluated and that some students don´t have a step
forward is to emphasize, review, and highlight only what was taught by
checking and creating the evaluation based on the lesson plans and records
that each teacher or professor has from the classes.
As it has been formerly stated validity allows teachers to create and evaluate
in the most accurate way what has been imparted, there is one more notion
that is required in the procedure of estimating in the teaching process.
Reliability, it can be explained as the results that were obtained from the
previous evaluation, one process is connected and follows the other. In one
hand, using them has usually an ideal result. However, problems will possibly
appear when receiving the assessments back. They can be physical and
psychological conditions the students and teachers, the administration of the
test and some more can affect a test and therefore the result of it. On the other
hand, these external factors that can make the score variate cannot be fully
controlled by the teacher, as long as teachers evaluate what they are supposed
to measure and to be as precise as much with the instructions and steps that
you explain, objectives can be achieved.
Several elements need to be taken into account when formerly assessing
students nevertheless three of the elements can be mentioned as the
obligatory ones, two of them have already been described. Likewise,
practicality is as important as the ones that were previously labelled.
Practicality, as the name suggests refers to how easy, in general terms, a test
can be. As it has steps that need to be emphasized when administering it, such
as, the price of the photocopy, how easy is to fill it and the time that will take to
correct it. It also has difficulties that can appear, such as, the limits that
generate when creating a practical test. Paying attention to all the factors as
money, teachers aids in the classrooms and more can be exhausting and time
demanding for teachers. Therefore, a deep evaluation and analysis obligatory
need to be run in order to evaluate according to the characteristics of each
group and student.
Decisions are made daily on language teaching assessment and testing.
The way to create the most precise assessment is by knowing and having an
undisturbed image of what are we teaching and who are we teaching. In
addition, problems may come daily, too. Solutions for these problemS need to
be taken into consideration when making decisions regarding to assessment
and students. External factors usually interrupt teachers and students in all
aspects, as teachers are the ones making the most important decisions in the
classroom, they need to have justifications and answers of why an assessment
has that specific form. Background, results and even the place where the
school or university is located has an effect on the assessment of the students.
Teachers will be able to create the ideal object to measure as long as they
know their students according to the information a teacher should have.