Assessment is a fundamental aspect of teaching that can help teachers determine students' language proficiency and identify strengths and weaknesses. Teachers need ongoing assessment to understand how well students are comprehending material. Assessment relates to individual learning while evaluation refers to assessing an entire course or program. Reasons to assess include diagnosing student abilities, informing future lessons, providing feedback, and assigning grades. Formative assessment occurs during teaching to improve outcomes while summative assessment happens at the end to measure achievement. Common forms of assessment include classroom tests, elicitation, observation, journals, portfolios, error analysis, and questionnaires. Grammar tests can be discrete, assessing individual items, or integrative, evaluating a range of skills.

1. By Julio Vangel Pérez

2. Assessment is another fundamental aspect of teaching. Assessment can help you determine a student's proficiency in a language. Using assessment can help to identify the strengths and weaknesses a learner has. Teachers also need to use constant assessment to determine how well students are comprehending the material that has been covered or how much information they picked up from a specific course.

3. Assessment and evaluation are not the same yet they are closely related. Assessment relates to individual student learning. It is “the act of collecting information and making judgments on a language learner’s knowledge of language and ability to use it” (Chapelle and Brindley, 2002, p.267). Evaluation refers to a broader term concerning a collection and interpretation of information relating to the value of an entire course or program for the reach of specific functions or goals.

4. Reasons to assess: Diagnosing students strengths and weaknesses. Deciding what to and what not to teach next. Giving students feedback. Seeing students progress. Handing students a final grade.

5. Formative assessment and Summative assessment Formative assessment occurs anytime during the course of teaching, when it is intended or necessary with the purpose of improving the learner’s outcome. Formative assessment is usually informal. Summative assessment happens at the end of a teaching process and is carried out in order to judge what students have achieved during the course. Summative assessment is often formally designed and administered.

6. Classroom tests Elicitation Observation Student Journals Portfolios Error analysis Checklists Questionnaires

7. We have two types of grammar tests: Discrete point which assess individual grammar items, these contrast with integrative tests that attempt to evaluate a range of skills and abilities.