Five Golden Rules for Successful Classroom Assessment Based on What We Have Learnt from JD Brown

Abstract

Classroom language assessment aims to gather various types of information related to student language learning and use and use it to inform a range of formative-summative decisions, including how to provide feedback to help students improve their learning efficacy, what teaching adjustments are needed, and whether students have demonstrated their learning attainment defined by a given syllabus (Turner, 2012). This article presents five golden rules based on the contributions of JD Brown. These golden rules address a need for a practical and accessible assessment approach that helps language teachers effectively assess students’ learning achievement in the language classroom. This article is, therefore, written for language teachers and pre-service TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) students. The five golden rules presented in this article are: (1) choose the suitable types of language assessment tasks; (2) recognise the two types of assessment interpretations; (3) consider and apply basic classical test theory for analysis of the assessment of learning; (4) develop well-defined assessment criteria and rubrics for judging students’ performance; and (5) use assessment of language learning as a source of feedback to improve assessment tasks and student learning.