This document discusses various types of monitoring and assessment used in language teaching. It describes placement assessment, which determines a learner's starting level, and observation of learning, which provides feedback on teaching activities without directly assessing learners. Short-term achievement assessment evaluates weekly progress, while diagnostic assessment identifies gaps to address. Achievement tests measure learning over time and proficiency tests assess language skills independent of any particular course. All assessment should consider reliability, validity, and practicality to ensure they serve their intended purpose.

1. Monitoring and
Assessment
H.Zarei

2. Content &
sequencing
principles
Principles
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Goal
Monitorin
g and
assessing
Environment

3. Monitoring and assessment must take account of the
environment in which
the course will be used,
the needs of the learners,
And…
principles of teaching and learning.

4. Monitoring and Assessment
can provide a teacher and learners with
information about…
the learners’ present knowledge
and progress,
and it can also be a means of
encouraging involvement and participation.

5. Purpose of monitoring
To make sure that the learner will get the most benefit from the
course.
This involves;
 Carefully observing the learners & the course
 Suggesting changes to the course and the way it is run

6. Types of monitoring and assessment
•
•
•
•
•
•
Placement assessment
Observation of learning
Short term achievement assessment
Diagnostic assessment
Achievement assessment
Proficiency assessment

7. Types of monitoring and assessment
•
•
•
•
•
•
Placement assessment
Observation of learning
Short term achievement assessment
Diagnostic assessment
Achievement assessment
Proficiency assessment

8. Placement assessment
• is used to decide what level of the course a learner
should enter
• usually occurs under environment constraints
• It often has to be done just before a course begins
• The learners may not perform their best
• The Learners are unfamiliar with some of the test
formats
• assessment may be the learners’ first meeting with the
teachers and course and could affect their attitudes to
the course.

9. Placement assessment should be…
• Familiar, friendly and relaxed
• Reasonably brief and easy to mark
• Focused on gathering the most relevant
information

10. Placement tests focus on…
• Knowledge of language items
rather than
skill in language use.

11. Tests which focus on language items include…
• Pronunciation
• Vocabulary
• Grammar test

12. Test which focus on language use include…
•
•
•
•
•
Interviews
Role play
Listening tests(message-focused)
Reading passage (message-focused)
Composition writing

13. Why we don’t use tests with language use focus
for placement?
• Difficult to interpret
• Difficult to score
• Time consuming to set
• May not meet many of the requirements for an
effective placement test

14. Types of monitoring and assessment
•
•
•
•
•
•
Placement assessment
Observation of learning
Short term achievement assessment
Diagnostic assessment
Achievement assessment
Proficiency assessment

15. Observation of learning
• Occur at the level of learning activity
• does not assess the learners but is directed towards the
tasks that they do
The purpose;
• to see if it is necessary to make changes to the learning
activities in order to encourage learning

16. Questions that should be asked when
observing learning activities…
• What’s the learning goal of the activity?
• What are the learning conditions that would lead to
the achievement of this goal?
• What are the observable signs that these learning
conditions are occurring?
• What are the design features of the activity that set
up the learning conditions or that need to be
changed to set up the learning conditions?

17. Monitoring can occur in different
ways…
• Learner diaries
• Logbooks written for the teachers
• Learners talking in small groups

18. Types of monitoring and assessment
•
•
•
•
•
•
Placement assessment
Observation of learning
Short term achievement assessment
Diagnostic assessment
Achievement assessment
Proficiency assessment

19. Short-Term Achievement Assessment
• looks at the product of activities or a small set of
activities
The purpose
• to see if the learners are making progress on a
daily or weekly basis

20. Short-term assessment
can also have motivational purposes…
Why?
to make learners do required work and to give
them feelings of achievement through success on
the tests

21. Short-term achievement is more easily assessed if
there are clear performance objectives for some of
the learning goals. A performance objective is a
statement consisting of five parts;
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
the subject
The performance
The conditions
The measure
The criterion

22. According to Brown…
• curriculum designers should write performance
objectives for some of the goals of the course,
particularly
where
there
might
be
misunderstanding of what is to be learned and
where focused repeated practice is needed to
reach the goals.

23. Good short-term achievement assessment
should …
• Provide a clear record of progress that is easily
to interpreted
• In a form to motivate learners to keep working
toward the course goals
• Not occupy too much class time
• Be a regular expected of class activity

24. Types of monitoring and assessment
•
•
•
•
•
•
Placement assessment
Observation of learning
Short term achievement assessment
Diagnostic assessment
Achievement assessment
Proficiency assessment

25. Diagnostic assessment
• used to find the gaps and weaknesses in learners’
knowledge so that something can be done about
them
• used to find what learners know well so that time
is not wasted on teaching that

26. Diagnostic assessment
• The findings of diagnostic assessment are used
to determine what goes into a course
• good diagnostic assessment is accurate and easy
to interpret in terms of what should be done as a
result

27. The Vocabulary levels test
• This test helps a teacher decide whether learners should
be focusing on high-frequency vocabulary, academic
vocabulary or low-frequency vocabulary.
Why it is important?
• because high-frequency vocabulary and low-frequency
vocabulary require quite different teaching strategies.

28. Learner self-assessment
• Self-assessment usually involves learners working with
checklists or scales to indicate their perceived areas of
strength and weakness.
What’s the problem?
• It is often difficult to separate the learners’ subjective
concerns from objective judgment.

29. Types of monitoring and assessment
•
•
•
•
•
•
Placement assessment
Observation of learning
Short term achievement assessment
Diagnostic assessment
Achievement assessment
Proficiency assessment

30. Achievement test
• measures both the achievement of learners during a
course and the effectiveness of the course.
• The tests part of the way through a course may have the
purpose of picking up learners who are not achieving, so
that something can be done to help them learn.

31. Characteristics of achievement test
1. They are based on material taught in the
course.
2. Learners usually know what kinds of questions
will be asked and what material will be covered.
3. They are criterion referenced.

32. Mastery test
 a high criterion is set
 Achievement tests may be mastery tests
• Mastery achievement tests usually focus on a
small area of knowledge so that learners are
clear about what has to be learned and so that
they can set themselves a series of short-term
goals to eventually cover the area of knowledge.

33. The thinking behind masteryittest be
1. if something is to be learned, should
learned well
2. every learner is capable of achieving mastery,
some may require more time to do so than
others
3. The teacher’s responsibility is to the students
and to learning and thus every learner should
have the chance to learn well
4. mastery of an area is rewarding and motivating
for both teacher and learners.

34. Opposing views
1. the teacher’s responsibility is to the subject matter and
not to the students.
1. one role of courses is to indicate to employers and
those responsible for admission to further education
that some learners are more capable than others.
2. learners are responsible for their learning and the
management of their learning.

35. Types of monitoring and assessment
•
•
•
•
•
•
Placement assessment
Observation of learning
Short term achievement assessment
Diagnostic assessment
Achievement assessment
Proficiency assessment

36. Proficiency assessment
• draws items for the test not from the course that the learners are
studying, but from the language itself, independent of any course
Purpose
• To show how much the learners know of the language or a particular
part of the language

37. The difference between proficiency test and achievement
test …
• The proficiency test is likely to cover a larger
range of items and skills.

38. TOEFL & IELTS
• This test may be working as a criterion-referenced test to
determine whether a learner goes into an Englishmedium university or not.
• Sometimes the test may simply act as a norm-referenced
test which shows learners at which percentile of
proficiency they are in relation to others.

39. TOEFL washback
• A proficiency test like TOEFL which is used as a
criterion-referenced test can have a profound washback
effect on a language course that precedes the sitting of
the test.
• It can be a major environmental factor affecting the
course.
• It can have the effect of encouraging learners to drop out
of the course if the course does not clearly and directly
address the requirements of the test.

40. It can have the effect of
• encouraging learners to drop out of the course if
the course does not clearly and address the
requirements of the test. Courses which copy the
format of the test in their learning activities are
in effect trying to make the proficiency test be
like an achievement test(that instead of the test
drawing items from the course, the course is
drawing items from old tests. )

41. All assessment needs to be checked to
see that it’s doing its job properly …
Reliability
Validity
Practicality

42. Reliability
A test is more reliable if
1. it is always given under the same conditions
2. it is consistently marked
3. it has a large number of points of assessment
4. its questions and instructions are clear and
unambiguous

43. validity
• A valid test measures what it is supposed to
measure.
Face validity
• if the test is called a reading test, does it look like a
reading test?
• is important because it reflects how the learners and
perhaps their parents, and other teachers will react
to the test.

44. Content Validity
• the decision-making about validity is not made
by looking at the test’s “face”, but by analysing
the test and comparing it to what it is supposed
to test.

45. How we can see that we have content
validity in the test?
• look at the part of the course that was being tested and
list the items and skills taught. Then we would have to
look at the test and list the items and skills tested. If
these two lists matched each other quite closely, or if the
test involved a representative sample of the course list.

46. practicality
Examined by looking at…
1. the cost involved in administering and scoring the
test
2. the time taken to administer and sit the test
3. the time taken to mark the test
4. the number of people needed to administer and
mark the test
5. the ease in interpreting and applying the results of
the test

47. SOME POINTS
• The requirements of practicality and reliability and
validity do not always agree with each other, for example
short tests are practical but not very reliable or valid.
• Where possible, reliability and validity should be
preferred over practicality, but usually compromise is
necessary.

48. Thank you