A short presentation with information about alternatives in assessment: (a) performance-based assessment, (b) portfolios, (c) journals, (d) conferences and interviews, (e) observations, and (f) self & peer assessment.

1. BEYOND TEST : ALTERNATIVES IN
ASSESSMENT
Source:
Brown, D. (2004). Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom
Practices. New York: Pearson Longman.
Yamith J. Fandiño
La Salle University
Bogotá, Colombia

2. Introduction
• An important distinction needs to be made between testing
and assessing.
• Tests are formal procedures, usually administered within
strict time limitations, to sample the performance of a test-
taker in a specified domain.
• Assessment connotes a much broader concept in that most
of the time when teachers are teaching, they are also
assessing. Assessment includes all occasions from informal
impromptu observations up to and including feedback and
reflective notes.

3. Alternative assessment
Early in the decade of the 1990s, in a culture of rebellion
against the notion that all people and all skills could be
measured by traditional tests, a novel concept emerged
that began to be labeled "alternative" assessment.
That concept was to assemble additional measures
of students—portfolios, journals, observations, self-
assessments, peer-assessments, and the like—in an
effort to triangulate data about students.

4. The characteristics of alternatives in
assessment
1. They require students to perform, create,
produce or do something.
2. They use real-word context or simulations.
3. They are part of the day to day classroom
activities.
4. They use tasks chat are meaningful
instructional activities.
5. They focus on processes as well as products.
6. They tap into higher-level thinking and
problem solving skills.

5. PERFORMANCED-BASED ASSESSMENT

6. Performance-based assessment
Performance-based assessment implies productive,
observable skills, such as speaking and writing, of content-
valid tasks. Such performance usually, but not always,
brings with it an air of authenticity—real-world tasks that
students have had time to develop. It often implies an
integration of language skills, perhaps all four skills in the
case of project work.
The characteristics of performance assesment :
1. Students make a constructed response
2. They engage in higher- order thinking , with open –
ended tasks
3. Tasks are meaningful , engaging, and authenthic
4. Tasks call for the integration of language skills
5. Both process and product are assesed
6. Depth of a student’s mastery is emphasized over
breadth

7. Portofolios

8. Portofolios
A portopolio is a purposeful collection of students work
that demonstrates students’ efforts, progress, and
achievements in given areas (Genesee and Upshur,
1996).
Portfolios include materials such as
• essays and compositions in draft and final forms;
• reports, project outlines;
• audio and/or video recordings of presentations,
demonstrations, etc.;
• journals, diaries, and other personal reflections;
• tests, test scores, and written homework exercises;
• self- and peer-assessments--comments, evaluations,
and checklists.

9. Steps and guidelines
• State objectives clearly
• Give guidelines on what materials to include
• Communicate assesment criteria to students
• Designate time within the curriculum for portfolio development.
• Establish periodic schedules for review and conferencing.
• Designate an accessible place to keep portfolios.
• Provide positive washback when giving final assessments.
It is inappropriate to reduce the personalized and creative process of
compiling a portfolio to a number or letter grade. Instead, teachers
should offer a qualitative evaluation such a final appraisal of the
work, with questions for self-assessment of a project, and a
narrative evaluation of perceived strengths and weakness.

10. Journals

11. Journals
• A journal is a log of one’s thought ,
feelings, reactions, assessments, ideas, or
progress, toward goals, usually written
with little attention to structure , form, o
correctness.
• Journals obviously serve important
pedagogical purposes : practice in the
mechanics of writing , using writing as a
thinking process, individualization , and
communications with the teacher .

12. Steps for journals
1. Sensitively introduce students to the concept of journal writing.
2. State the objective(s) of the journal: Language-learning logs,
Grammar journals, Responses to readings, strategies-based
learning logs, Self-assessment reflections, etc.
3. Give guidelines on what kinds of topics to include.
4. Carefully specify the criteria for assessing or grading journals.
Effort as exhibited in the thoroughness of students' entries will
no doubt be important. Also, the extent to which entries reflect
the processing of course content might be considered.
5. Provide optimal feedback in your responses: cheerleading
feedback, instructional feedback, or reality-check feedback.
6. Designate appropriate time frames and schedules for review.
7. Provide formative, washback-giving final comments.

13. Conferences and interviews

14. Conferences and interviews
• Conferences are not limited to drafts of written work. It
must assume that the teacher plays the role of a facilitator
and guide , not of an administrator of a formal assesment.
• A number of generic question that may be usefull to pose
in conference are
1. What did you like about this work?
2. What do you think you did well?
3. How does it show improvement from previous work?
Can you show me the improvement?
4. What did you do when you did not know a word that
you want to write/say? (Genesee and Upshur, 1996).

15. Observations

16. Observations
• Observation is a systematic, planned procedure for real-time, almost
furtive recording of student verbal and nonverbal behavior. One of the
objectives of such observation is to assess students without their
awareness (and possible consequent anxiety) of the observation so
that the naturalness of their linguistic performance is maximized.
• Potential observation foci
- sentence-level oral production skills.
- pronunciation of target sounds, intonation, etc.
- grammatical features (verb tenses, question formation, etc.
- discourse-level skills (conversation rules, turn-taking, and other
macroskills)
- interaction with classmates (cooperation, frequency of oral
production)
- frequency of student-initiated responses (whole class, group work)

17. Self and peer assesment

18. Self and peer assesment
• Self –assesment derives its theoritical justification from a
number of well established principles of second language
acquisition. The principle of autonomy is vital. It consists of the
ability to set one's own goals both within and beyond the
structure of a classroom curriculum, to pursue them without
the presence of an external push, and to independently
monitor that pursuit. Developing intrinsic motivation that
comes from a self-propelled desire to excel is at the top of the
list of successful acquisition of any set of skills.
• Peer-assesment appeals to similar principles , the most obvious
of which is cooperative learning. Many people go through a
whole regimen of education from kindergaten up through a
graduate degree and never come to appreciate the value of
collaboration in learning.
• Peer assesment is simply one arm of a plethora of tasks and
procedures within the domain of learner-centered and
collaboration education.

19. Types of self and peer
assessments
1. Assessment of a specific
performance
2. Indirect assesment of general
competence
3. Metacognitive assesment for
setting goals
4. Socioaffective assesment
5. Student generated test