Abstract
BackgroundAssessment is an essential part of any learning process; however, it is often disliked by most students. A wealth of research is available on issues on assessment, such as washback effect and test anxiety, and yet we know little about what students conceive of assessment. The objective of this case study was to explore a group of postgraduate students’ conception of language assessment.MethodsThe participants of this qualitative study were an intact group of postgraduate students (n = 21) who completed two tasks. The first task was creating a metaphor by completing the sentence “A world without assessment is…” and then explaining the metaphor. To fulfil the second task, the participants wrote a short story each related to language assessment. The collected data were analyzed thematically.ResultsInteresting metaphors emerged. The metaphors covered four purposes of assessment, including “to guide,” “to motivate,” “to empower,” and “to control” with frequencies of 9, 6, 3, and 3, respectively. For example, assessment was viewed as a map (guide), reward (motivation), driver’s license (empowerment), and iron fist (control). In the short stories, the most frequent themes that recurred were “cheating,” “test anxiety,” and “motivation tool” with frequencies of four each. The themes which were the least frequent were “fair assessment,” “promoting learner collaboration,” “teaching to the test,” and “biased assessment” each occurring only once.ConclusionThe results show that collectively students are well aware of the purposes of assessment but their experiences with assessment illustrate cases of language assessment which indicate room for improvement in the way assessment is understood and administered.
Highlights
Assessment is an inseparable part of English language learning-teaching
The results indicated that lower reading achievement scores were predicted for non-majority ethnicity students, male students, those who conceived of assessment as a measure of school accountability, those who ignored assessment, and those who conceived of assessment as fun
Razavipour and Rezagah (2018) found that teachers appeared to be unclear about what and why they assessed; the teachers found it difficult to align their assessment practices with principles of communicative language teaching method. These findings indicate the need for developing language teachers’ language assessment literacy to ensure that they comprehend the idea of language assessment reform and adjust the way they assess
Summary
Assessment is an inseparable part of English language learning-teaching. It is defined as “any act of interpreting information about student performance, collected through any of a multitude of means” Language educators need to depend on assessment for several reasons. Most importantly, they should assess their learners to check their learning uptake and to revise their teaching methods or materials if necessary. As an inseparable component of the learning-teaching process, assessment should help the learner and the teacher to ensure that learning is taking place. Assessment is an essential part of any learning process; it is often disliked by most students. The objective of this case study was to explore a group of postgraduate students’ conception of language assessment
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