This document discusses assessment and testing in language education. It describes interviews conducted with a mentor teacher who administers one formative evaluation per trimester to assess student progress without defining the final grade. The teacher designs and grades tests and allows students who fail to do make-up work. The document also prefers continuous assessment with feedback over summative final exams. Finally, it analyzes assessment activities for young learners that evaluate skills like writing, recognition, and matching at an individual item level.

1. PRACTICAL 15: TESTING, ASSESSMENT, EVALUATION.
Subject:​​ Practice II, Didactics of ELT.
Members:​​ Paola Nieto and Lucrecia Corral.
Deadline:​​ 16/10/18.
88) Assessment and testing
2) Interview to our mentor teacher, Joana Herrán.
❏ How many tests their students do in a semester/year.
The teacher takes one formal evaluation per trimester to close the topic or
unit. That formative evaluation (in which we test students so that we can help
them to do better next time) rather than summative does not define the final
grade. Previously, she takes one or two practice papers so that students can
be ready to sit for the test.
If she taught two topics in the trimester, she would assess students twice, but
it generally does not happen because of school events, strikes, absence to
classes or rainy days in which students do not assist to classes.
❏ Who sets the tests and who grades them.
She designs the tests and grades her students.
❏ What happens to students if they fail the test.
If students fail in an exam, she gives them the possibility of doing a make up,
trying not to lose a class. It depends on the amount of students who have not
passed the exam. Normally, to those students who failed, she gives them a
kind of “practice paper” to be solved while she continues giving the lesson to
those who had a passing mark.
3) In our case, we prefer continuous or formative assessments where we can have
the possibility of receiving feedback from our teachers when we have to do

2. PRACTICAL 15: TESTING, ASSESSMENT, EVALUATION.
homework, or solve practicals or mini-tests to be ready to sit for final exams. Here at
university, we have a “promotion” instance which is very useful for us because we
keep on learning during the whole year and giving our best to avoid sitting for a final
exam, which is considered a “all or nothing” test.
101) Assessing young learners
2) All the activities in the test correspond to “discrete-point” assessment or “indirect
test items” because this kind of exam examines the candidate’s knowledge of
individual items of language. In activites 1 and 2, there are filling blanks activities in
which writing skills are evaluated. The purpose of this activity is that students
produce rather than recognise. The functions emphasized are writing the number (1)
and completing the blanks with the present simple as well as continuous forms (2).
In activity 3, students should recognise the word that fits best. In this case, children
have to read and identify which adjective is correct according to the picture.
In activity 4, there is a matching exercise where students should recognise the
possible answer to the question given. This kind of activity is rather complex for
learners because of the lack of clues to identify the best option. In some occasions,
both answers can be possible.
3) We believe that it is necessary to evaluate students after finishing a unit or topic,
so that we can record everything that students have learnt as well as evaluate the
student’s work to help them to improve over the semester or year. We, as teachers
should be neither too insistent nor too retiring to our children. It is also very important
not to “over test” learners because we also need time to teach them.