Evaluation and assessment are
often two concepts which are linked together as one of the most important parts
of the teaching process. When many teachers and students hear the word
"assessment" they link the concept to the idea of a test, a difficult
task and, in a few words, anxiety and pressure. However, assessment can be a
good tool for teaching when used properly. The formal way of an assessment, the
test, sometimes shows its lack of justice and does not reflect the real
scenario on the classroom, what the teacher sees every day. Students are not
allowed to see their own development of the knowledge and sometimes the
self-assessment does not have place in most of the education systems around the
world. Tests transmit the idea that, in language teaching, the only thing that
matters is grammar. In that case, the communicative skills like hearing and
speaking are seen as not really necessary and a wasting of time. In this way,
the progress of the language acquisition is far from success and the grades are
now just the only thing that matters. Every student has his/her own problems
and ways of learning, and that can be applied to the classroom if the teacher
is well prepared to analyze his/her students and take in consideration their
differences to design an approach to language teaching specialized in the
subject and level of the students.
The assessment is the process of gathering the
information for the students and making sure that they are learning, also the
evaluation is seem as the proof of the knowledge obtained by judging with
different tests so this means that assessment and evaluation share the
same goal for the students to have a better understanding.
There is also different areas that are important for
the learning, the first one is for understanding what the students are doing
and if they are able to, the second one are the strategies and skills that the
students have to reach certain information and how to do it, and finally the
third one that tell us about the attitude of the students that say how so the
students fees about the work they are doing.
Other of the important things is monitoring how the
learning is going in case the teacher needs to do any intervention to
facilitate the knowledge that the students are receiving, in the middle of that
the teacher needs to ask the students if they know the meaning of learning and
what they can do to obtain it, for the evaluation the teacher need to check the
job the students did by making sure it is valid or not.
Teaching and testing are present at the same time
during a class, first we test then we teach and again we test to see the result
of the teaching part in our students. Activities can be used to test the
knowledge of the students or to teach them how to use a verb form.
In the book evaluation is seen as something bigger
than testing because evaluation is sometimes a set of rules in the perspective
of the teacher and assessment is seen as way to check if the students are
learning the four skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) and the language
correctly.
