This is an article by Claire as we continue to take the new Authentic Assessment roadster that we just found in the back of our PLC garage out for what have been some wonderful test drives over the past few days:
Authentic Assessment in CI Classrooms
Since the early 90s, the phrase “authentic assessment” has been used to describe a type of assessment that is very beneficial in academic and communicative language classrooms.
Authentic assessment is holistic and highly relevant to instruction and real-life communication.
Authentic assessment is collected in a similar manner or even from the same independent activities used during instruction.
But authentic assessment is more easily identified by what it is not: a test.
Authentic assessment is not testing the retention of isolated facts, points of grammar, or skills. Authentic assessment is not routinely quizzing students in a manner unrelated to the communicative language we teach. Authentic assessment defies the notion that students must produce language during a silent period and that language must be from pre-prescribed vocabulary word lists.
Authentic assessment is also not the norm. We teach in unprecedented climate of one-time, high-stakes tests. There is great pressure to adopt top-down, discrete-answer assessments that are easier to norm-reference, standardize, administer and measure students against students, teachers against teachers.
Some argue that more demonstrable measures of growth from traditional, discrete-answer tests and quizzes (true/false, multiple choice, etc.) take the “guess work” out of assessment. There are appropriate uses for shared common assessments, such as making programming or placement decisions or establishing baseline data. However, more traditional tests are not effective at giving meaningful feedback and improving day-to-day instruction through ad hoc, formative assessment.
Traditional tests give an overly-simplistic view of achievement as the ability to reproduce individual points of grammar or words. Giving into the norm of using tests is tempting for busy teachers, but this can create a disconnect between assessment and instruction in CI classes. Instruction in TPRS casts a wide “net” of comprehensible language that focuses on communicating messages, not rote memory of individual points of language typically found in discrete-answer tests. Sandra Sauvignon advocates “global, qualitative evaluation of learner achievement as opposed to quantitative assessment of discrete linguistic features.” Avoiding testing “discrete linguistic features” is even more important when target structures are not the focus of a TPRS lesson.
Also, the practice of administering weekly or daily tests or quizzes reinforces the dichotomy of teachers as a givers and students as recipients of information. By contrast, authentic assessment asks language learners to use novel or creative expressions to demonstrate more holistic understandings of language. Only authentic
assessment allows students to problem solve, create, express opinions or ideas with a unique voice.
I propose language teachers never waste time again writing or administering a traditional “test” for formative assessment. Insisting assessments be both didactic and evaluative, TPRS teachers should collect, assess, and offer feedback using what kids are already creating and communicating in class. Evaluate students in groups or as individuals; allow students to self-assess and collect peer-feedback opportunities; collect written retells, drawings, or rubrics. The possibilities are limitless if teachers think outside the “testing” box.
In lieu of traditional tests, teachers can take a whole group written story retell and turn it into a traditional or modified Cloze assessment. Teachers can collect student written retells to evaluate with an appropriate rubric. Advanced student written retells can be turned into a Listen and Draw activity for beginning students, which can also be assessed with a rubric. As a general rule, the more text and language used from instructional activities during assessment, the more authentic the assessment.