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Kassim Shaaban of English as a foreign language at the primary level in many countries (Rixon 1992). This trend has come at a time when the field of EFL/ESL is witnessing a notable shift from structural teaching approaches to communicative, humanistic, and learner-centered approaches. These new approaches in teaching EFL/ESL recognize that affective considerations are of vital importance for the acquisition of a foreign/second language; they suggest teaching methods and techniques that help learners acquire the language in an anxiety-reduced environment (Stevick 1990; Krashen 1982; Asher 1988). Consequently, the assessment of students’ progress and achievement in EFL/ESL classes should be carried out in a manner that does not cause anxiety in the students. As new EFL/ESL curricula have moved in the direction of devel- oping communicative skills through the integration of language and content as 34 VOLUME 43 NUMBER 1 2005 E N G L I S H T E A C H I N G F O R U M well as language skill integration, the tradi- Alternatives in assessment tional paper-and-pencil tests no longer cover The testing tools and procedures discussed the variety of activities and tasks that take in this article are characterized by a deliberate place in the elementary classroom. The sum- move from traditional formal assessment to a mative form of testing that permeated the tra- less formal, less quantitative framework. Pierce ditional curricula would not be fair to students and O’Malley define alternative assessment as whose studies are based on communicative “any method of finding out what a student activities. Fortunately, the field of evaluation knows or can do that is intended to show has witnessed a major shift from strictly sum- growth and inform instruction and is not a mative testing tools and procedures to a more standardized or traditional test” (1992:2). humanistic approach using informal assess- Specifically, alternative ways of assessing stu- ment techniques that stress formative evalua- dents take into account variation in students’ tion (O’Neil 1992). needs, interests, and learning styles; and they This article discusses alternative forms of attempt to integrate assessment and learning assessment, in particular, personal-response activities. Also, they indicate successful perfor- and performance-based assessment, which, in mance, highlight positive traits, and provide congruence with the learner-centered princi- formative rather than summative evaluation. ples of new methodological approaches, treat Until recently the assessment scene in assessment as an integral part of teaching cul- EFL/ESL classes has been dominated by sum- minating in formative evaluation. mative evaluation of learner achievement, focusing on mastery of discrete language Importance of assessment points and linguistic accuracy, rather than on In all academic settings, assessment is communicative competence, with test items viewed as closely related to instruction. typically consisting of matching or gap-filling. Assessment is needed to help teachers and ad- Communicative teaching methodology brings ministrators make decisions about students’ with it a considerable emphasis on formative linguistic abilities, their placement in appro- evaluation “with more use of descriptive priate levels, and their achievement. The suc- records of learner development in language cess of any assessment depends on the effective and learning which [track] language develop- selection and use of appropriate tools and pro- ment along with other curricular abilities” cedures as well as on the proper interpretation (Rea-Dickins and Rixon 1997:151). of students’ performance. Assessment tools and Therefore, assessment becomes a diagnostic procedures, in addition to being essential for tool that provides feedback to the learner and evaluating students’ progress and achievement, the teacher about the suitability of the cur- also help in evaluating the suitability and effec- riculum and instructional materials, the effec- tiveness of the curriculum, the teaching meth- tiveness of the teaching methods, and the odology, and the instructional materials. strengths and weaknesses of the students. Fur- In the past, assessment tools and proce- thermore, it helps demonstrate to young learn- dures were chosen at the level of the Ministry ers that they are making progress in their lin- of Education, school district, school adminis- guistic development, which can boost tration, or program coordinator. With the ad- motivation. This encourages students to do vent of learner-centered and communicative more and the teacher to work on refining the teaching methodologies, however, in many process of learning rather than its product. settings “control over the collection and inter- “Young learners are notoriously poor test- pretation of assessment information has shift- takers…. [T]he younger the child being eval- ed from centralized authority towards the class- uated, assessed, or tested, the more errors are rooms where assessment occurs on a regular made…[and] the greater the risk of assigning basis” (Fradd and Hudelson 1995:5). This false labels to them” (Katz 1997:1). Tradition- shift gives the classroom teacher a decisive role al classroom testing procedures can cause chil- in assessing students and makes it necessary dren a great deal of anxiety that affects their for the teacher to look for new assessment language learning as well as their self-image techniques to evaluate students’ achievement (Smith 1996). Therefore, children need to and progress. learn and be evaluated in an anxiety-reduced, E N G L I S H T E A C H I N G F O R U M VOLUME 43 NUMBER 1 2005 35 if not anxiety-free, environment. This can be Types of student responses achieved if children perceive assessment as an Brown and Hudson (1998) identified these integral component of the learning/teaching three types of responses required in most class- process rather than an independent process room assessment: selected-response (true-false, whose purpose is to pass judgment on their matching, multiple choice), constructed abilities in relation to their classmates. response (fill-in, short answer, performance), Using formative assessment can help and personal-response (conferences, portfo- decrease the level of anxiety generated by con- lios, self and peer assessment). At the primary centration on linguistic accuracy and increase level, assessment should begin with the use of students’ comfort zone and feeling of success personal response. As students’ proficiency lev- by stressing communicative fluency. Some els increase, teachers can move gradually into teachers and researchers call for allowing stu- constructed response assessment and later into dents to have a say not only in deciding the selected-response assessment. format of the test but also in deciding its con- Many techniques of alternative assessment tent and the way it is administered. Thus, were developed in line with the taxonomy of Mayerhof (1992) suggests allowing students to student response types identified by Krashen discuss questions during the test quietly as and Terrell (1983) and adapted by Olsen long as each writes his own answers; of course, (1992), which suggests that there are four she is referring to subjective types of questions. stages of language development in FL/SL Friel (1989) recommends involving students learners. The first stage is preproduction, in in suggesting topics for the test or in generat- which learners have a silent period and their ing some questions. performance indicators are mostly kinesthetic Murphey (1994/95) ventures beyond this in nature. During instruction and assessment, concept to recommend that students make teachers may ask students to point, act out, their own tests. He considers that student- choose, mark, gesture, and follow instructions. made tests are an effective “way to mine stu- The second stage is early speech,in which per- dents’ different perceptions and use them, formance indicators are kinesthetic responses building upon what a group knows as a whole and one- or two-word utterances. During and getting them to collaborate in their learn- instruction and assessment, teachers ask stu- ing” Murphey (1994/1995:12). He suggests dents to name, number, list, and group words the following process: students choose the or phrases. The third stage is speech emergence, questions that will go into the test under the in which the performance indicators are one- guidance of the teacher; a few days later, work- and two-word utterances, plus phrases and ing in pairs, they ask each other questions dur- simple sentences. During instruction and ing class; later on, the questions are asked assessment, students are asked to describe, again with a new partner to reinforce what is define, recall, retell, summarize, compare, and being learned. Students are graded by their contrast. The fourth stage is fluency emergence, partners or by the teacher for the correctness in which performance indicators are words, of their answers and for the appropriateness phrases, and complete sentences. Students are and correctness of their English. asked to justify, create, give opinions, debate, A final characteristic of alternative assess- defend, analyze, and evaluate (Krashen and ment techniques for young learners is that they Terrell 1983). are performance-based, requiring students to Another assessment procedure that is com- perform authentic tasks using oral and/or writ- patible with communicative approaches to ten communication skills. These techniques FL/SL language teaching is the 3Rs: recognition, can include traditional classroom activities, replication, and reorganization (Olsen 1996). such as giving oral reports and writing essays, These three types of responses mirror the four but they may also involve nontraditional tasks, stages of language acquisition of Krashen and such as cooperative group work and problem Terrell. Thus, recognition requires simple solving. Teachers score the task performances physical responses and short verbal responses. holistically (Shohamy 1995; Wiggins 1989). Replication corresponds to early speech and Student performance should be measured fluency emergence. The last step, reorgani- against standards previously discussed in class. zation, “can accommodate various levels of 36 VOLUME 43 NUMBER 1 2005 E N G L I S H T E A C H I N G F O R U M language proficiency from ‘silent’ and ‘speech can be an enjoyable way of informal assess- emergence’ through ‘fluent’ stages of Krashen ment that could be used effectively within a and Terrell’s taxonomy as well as articulate, content-based curriculum. For example, he rec- highly verbal responses” (Olsen 1996:16). It ommends the use of role play to express math- requires students to demonstrate the ability to ematical concepts such as fractions, to demon- take given information and reorganize it into strate basic concepts in science such as the life different formats. Reorganization usually in- cycle, and to represent historical events or lit- cludes tasks that lend themselves to group work, erary characters. such as creating a time line, an outline, or a Written Narratives:Assessment of the written semantic map; problem solving; analyzing and communicative abilities of children could be reporting the results of a questionnaire; writing achieved through purposeful, authentic tasks, up the text of an oral interview; and rewriting such as writing letters to friends, writing letters a narrative as a dialogue. to favorite television program characters, and writing and responding to invitations. Young Classroom assessment techniques learners enjoy story telling and are usually moti- The following assessment techniques can be vated to listen to stories as well as to tell them. used for effective and practical measurements Teachers can take advantage of this interest in of students’ abilities, progress, and achievement stories and have their students write narratives in a variety of educational settings. that relate to personal experiences, retell or mod- Nonverbal Responses: At the early stages of ify nursery stories and fairy tales, or retell histor- learning, before the emergence of speech, chil- ical events from different perspectives. dren should be instructed and assessed largely Oller (1987) suggests the use of a narra- through the use of physical performance tive development technique in an integrated responses and pictorial products (Tannen- process of teaching and assessment. The first baum 1996). These tasks require simple direc- step in the process is to check on how well tions to carry out. As an assessment technique, learners are following the story line. To estab- this type of response may help lower the level lish the basic facts, the teachers asks yes-no of anxiety normally associated with evalua- questions, then the teacher moves on to infor- tion, as students see it as a natural extension of mation questions. learning activities. At a later stage, students Presentations:Presentations are important for may perform hands-on tasks. For example, assessment because they can provide a com- they may be asked to “produce and manipu- prehensive record of students’ abilities in both late drawings, dioramas, models, graphs, and oral and written performance. Furthermore, charts” (Tannenbaum 1996:1). This technique presentations give the teacher some insights fits very well within the Total Physical into student’s interests, work habits, and orga- Response methodology for early language nizational abilities. Presentations cover a wide development (Asher 1988). range of meaningful activities, including poet- Oral Interview: Pierce and O’Malley (1992) ry readings, plays, role-plays, dramatizations, suggest using visual cues in oral interviews at and interviews. the early stages of acquisition. Thus a student Classroom presentations are nowadays may be asked to choose pictures to talk about, becoming more sophisticated as a result of and the teacher’s role is to guide the student by increasing access to educational technology. In asking questions that require the use of related many parts of the world, students are becom- vocabulary. This technique works well during ing more aware of the power of multimedia for the early speech and speech emergence stages. communicating information, and they enjoy keeping audio, video, and electronic records of Role-play:This informal assessment technique their involvement in class presentations. combines oral performance and physical activ- ity. Children of all ages, when assessed through Student-Teacher Conferences: Student-teacher this technique, feel comfortable and motivat- conferences, including structured interviews, ed, especially when the activity lends itself to can be an effective informal way of assessing a cooperative learning and is seen as a fun way of student’s progress in language learning. Con- learning. Kelner (1993) believes that role-play ferences and interviews provide opportunities E N G L I S H T E A C H I N G F O R U M VOLUME 43 NUMBER 1 2005 37 for one-on-one interactions where the teacher Learning logs: A learning log is a record of the can learn about a student’s communicative students’ experiences with the use of the Eng- abilities, emotional and social well-being, lish language outside the classroom, including attention span, attitudes, pace of learning, and the when and the where of language use and strengths and weaknesses (Smith 1996; Aller- why certain experiences were successful and son and Grabe 1986). others weren’t. Students may also use logs to Conferences can be most effective when comment on what they have studied in class they follow focused observations. Observa- and to record what they have understood and tions could be done in class, for example, in what they haven’t (Brown 1998). An advan- cooperative learning groups, or out of class, tage of learning logs is that they can contribute for example, on the playground. Gomez, Park- to the teacher’s understanding of the students’ er, Lara-Alecio, Ochoa, and Gomez, Jr. (1996) use of metacognitive learning strategies. have developed an observational instrument Dialogue Journals:These journals are interac- for assessing learners’ oral performance in nat- tive in nature; they take the form of an ongo- uralistic language settings, which focuses on ing written dialogue between teacher and stu- these seven language abilities: understanding dent. Dialogue journals have proven effective by others, providing information needed by and enjoyable for students regardless of their the listener, absence of hesitations, willingness level of proficiency. They are informal and to participate in conversations, self-initiated provide a means of free, uncensored expres- utterances, accuracy (in grammar, usage, and sion, enabling students to write without wor- vocabulary), and topic development. rying about being corrected (Peyton and Reed Tambini (1999) also recommends the use of 1990). Teachers can also use journals “to col- conferences to assess the oral and written abili- lect information on students’ views, beliefs, ties of children. He, too, favors conferences that attitudes, and motivation related to a class or follow observations and concentrate directly on program or to the process involved in learning the learning processes and strategies employed various language skills” (Brown 1998:4). As an by the student. For assessing oral skills, he sug- assessment technique, dialogue journals can gests that children be evaluated primarily on help the teacher assess students’ writing ability their ability to understand and communicate and improvement over time. with teachers and classmates. In assessment of Peer and Group Assessment: Recent trends in writing tasks, conferences could be used to dis- EFL/ESL teaching methodology have stressed cuss drafts of essays and evaluate progress. the need to develop students’ ability to work Self-Assessment: Young learners may also par- cooperatively with others in groups. For ticipate in self-assessment. Although self- assessment, for example, students can write assessment may seem inappropriate at first, it evaluative, encouraging notes for each mem- can yield accurate judgments of students’ lin- ber of their team emphasizing their positive guistic abilities, weaknesses and strengths, and contribution to team work. The role of the improvement (McNamara and Deane 1995). teacher would be to provide guidance, to Self-assessment could be done using one of the explain to the students what they have to eval- following two techniques: uate in one another’s work, and to help them K-W-L charts:With this type of chart, individ- identify and apply properly the evaluation cri- ual students provide examples of what they teria. At the end of group tasks, if necessary, know, what they wonder, what they have the teacher can give each student a test to learned. K-W-L charts are especially effective check their individual performance. Propo- when used at the beginning and at the end of nents of cooperative learning suggest the a period of study. At the start of a course, the teacher should give a group grade to help rein- completed charts can help the teacher learn force the merits of group work. about students’ background knowledge and Student Portfolios: The concept of portfolio interests. At the end of a course, the charts can was borrowed from the field of fine arts where help the students reflect on what they have portfolios are used to display the best samples of learned as well as gain awareness of their an artist’s work (Brown 1998). The purpose of improvements (Tannenbaum 1996). a portfolio in the context of language teaching 38 VOLUME 43 NUMBER 1 2005 E N G L I S H T E A C H I N G F O R U M is to demonstrate the extent of a student’s com- Conclusion municative competence in the target language This article has emphasized the need for through samples of oral and written work (Wolf teachers to use a variety of types of alternative 1989). Student portfolios may be defined as assessment, especially non-threatening infor- “the use of records of a student’s work over time mal techniques, with young EFL/ESL learn- and in a variety of modes to show the depth, ers. However, there is no claim that these types breadth, and development of the student’s abil- of assessment are without shortcomings. ities” (Pierce and O’Malley 1992:2). Arter and Brown and Hudson point out that “perfor- Spandel argue that portfolios must include “stu- mance assessments are relatively difficult to dent participation in selection of portfolio con- produce and relatively time-consuming to tent; the guidelines for selection; the criteria for administer…. Reliability may be problematic judging merit; and evidence of student reflec- because of rater inconsistencies, limited number tion” (1992:36). As a systematic collection of a of observations, [and] subjectivity in the scoring student’s work, which may be shown to parents, process” (1998: 662). For example, in self-assess- peers, other teachers, and outside observers, a ment, accuracy of perceptions varies from one portfolio requires close cooperation between student to another and is usually affected by the teacher and the student in identifying the language proficiency (Blanche 1988). samples of that student’s work to be included. Other objections could be raised about Since portfolios trace a student’s progress over informal assessment. However, teachers should time, it is imperative that revisions and drafts be not be expected to use techniques of alternative included and that all samples be dated. assessment exclusively. Teachers should strive to As for the contents of portfolios, they should familiarize their students with all forms of be multi-sourced and include a variety of the assessment because each form has its merits and written and oral work that illustrates students’ uses, as well as its problems and shortcomings. efforts, progress, achievements, and even con- In most academic settings, it is necessary to cerns. Therefore, the portfolio of a young test students, sometimes even young ones, in EFL/ESL learner might include the following: the traditional way with paper-and-pencil tests audiotaped or videotaped recordings, writing (e.g., true-false, matching, multiple choice, samples (such as entries made in journals, logs, and cloze). In many cases, decisions will be and book reports), conference or observation made about students based on their perfor- notes, and artwork (such as drawings, charts, mance on such tests, for example, in compar- and graphs). The portfolio could also include isons with students in other schools. One self-assessment checklists (such as K-W-L major argument for using alternative tech- charts) and anecdotal records. Finally, the niques with young learners, however, is that portfolio could include samples of the tests official or standardized proficiency examina- and quizzes that are periodically used by teach- tions usually cannot adequately determine ers as part of assessing the achievement and their performance levels. Alternative assess- overall performance of their students in rela- tion to others or to standards. ment techniques present a dynamic rather than If portfolios are implemented clearly and static picture of their linguistic development. systematically as an alternative means of assess- Many of the assessment techniques dis- ment, they have several advantages over tradi- cussed in this article can be integrated into tional forms of assessment (Pierce and O’Mal- daily classroom activities and give a compre- ley 1992; Brown and Hudson 1998; Moya hensive picture of the students’ abilities, and O’Malley 1994). First, they provide the progress, and achievement. Unlike traditional teacher with a detailed picture of a student’s tests that only provide a numerical description language performance in a variety of different of students, these techniques of alternative tasks. Second, they can enhance students’ self- assessment can document “a story for every image as they participate in the decisions student—and what is the ultimate goal of about content and can help them identify evaluation but to give us the knowledge to be their strengths and weakness in the target lan- able to reflect upon, discuss, and assist a stu- guage. Finally, they integrate teaching and dent’s journey through the learning process” assessment in a continuous process. (Huerta-Macias 1995:10). E N G L I S H T E A C H I N G F O R U M VOLUME 43 NUMBER 1 2005 39 References Oller, J. W, Jr. 1987. Practical ideas for language Allerson, G. and W. Grabe. 1986. Reading assess- teachers from a quarter century of language ment. In Teaching second language reading for testing. English Teaching Forum, 25, 4, pp. academic purposes,eds. F. Dubin, D. Eskey, and 42–46, 55. W. Grabe. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Olsen, R.E. W-B. 1996. Classroom questioning, Arter, J. A. and V. Spandel. 1992. 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