Activity 2 Assessment

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.