Assessing Young Learners

Importance of Assessment

 Assessment is needed to help teachers and administrators make decisions about students' linguistic abilities, their placement in appropriate levels, and their achievement. The success of any assessment depends on the effective selection and use of appropriate tools and procedures as well as on the proper interpretation of students' performance. Assessment tools and procedures, in addition to being essential for evaluating students' progress and achievement, also help in evaluating the suitability and effectiveness of the curriculum, the teaching methodology, and the instructional materials.

This causes that the teachers remain in constant motion and in search of new assesment techniques.

Alternatives in assessment

Types of Students Responses

Many techniques of alternative assessment were developed in line with the taxonomy of student response types identified by Krashen and Terrell (1983) and adapted by Olsen (1992), which suggests that there are four stages of language development in FL/SL learners. The first stage is preproduction, in which learners have a silent period and their performance indicators are mostly kinesthetic in nature. During instruction and assessment, teachers may ask students to point, act out, choose, mark, gesture, and follow instructions. The second stage is early speech, in which performance indicators are kinesthetic responses and one- or two-word utterances. During instruction and assessment, teachers ask students to name, number, list, and group words or phrases. The third stage is speech emergence, in which the performance indicators are one and two-word utterances, plus phrases and simple sentences. During instruction and assessment, students are asked to describe, define, recall, retell, summarize, compare, and contrast. The fourth stage is fluency emergence, in which performance indicators are words, phrases, and complete sentences. Students are asked to justify, create, give opinions, debate, defend, analyze, and evaluate (Krashen and Terrell 1983). Another assessment procedure that is compatible with communicative approaches to FL/SL language teaching is the 3Rs: recognition, replication, and reorganization (Olsen 1996). These three types of responses mirror the four stages of language acquisition of Krashen and Terrell. 

Classroom Assessment Techniques

The following assessment techniques can be used for effective and practical measurements of students' abilities, progress, and achievement in a variety of educational settings. 

Nonverbal responses : At the early stages of learning, before the emergence of speech, children should be instructed and assessed largely through the use of physical performance responses and pictorial products  These tasks require simple directions to carry out. This type of response may help lower the level of anxiety normally associated with evaluation, as students see it as a natural extension of learning activities.

 Oral Interview:  using visual cues in oral interviews at the early stages of acquisition. Thus a student may be asked to choose pictures to talk about, and the teacher's role is to guide the student by asking questions that require the use of related vocabulary. This technique works well during the early speech and speech emergence stages. ( flashcards )

Role-play:💀 This informal assessment technique combines oral performance and physical activity. (must of the kids will enjoy roleplays but grown up people not that much)



Written Narratives: Assessment of the written communicative abilities of children could be achieved through purposeful, authentic tasks, such as writing letters to friends, writing letters to favorite television program characters, and writing and responding to invitations. Young learners enjoy story telling and are usually motivated to listen to stories as well as to tell them.

Presentations: Presentations are important for assessment because they can provide a comprehensive record of students' abilities in both oral and written performance.

Student-Teacher Conferences:  Conferences and interviews provide opportunities for one-on-one interactions where the teacher can learn about a student's communicative abilities, emotional and social well-being, attention span, attitudes, pace of learning, and strengths and weaknesses.

Self-Assessment: Self-assessment could be done using one of the following two techniques:

1. K-W-L charts: With this type of chart, individual students provide examples of what they know, what they wonder, what they have learned. K-W-L charts are especially effective when used at the beginning and at the end of a period of study.
2. Learning logs: A learning log is a record of the students' experiences with the use of the English language outside the classroom, including the when and the where of language use and why certain experiences were successful and others weren't.

Dialogue Journals: These journals are interactive in nature; they take the form of an ongoing written dialogue between teacher and student. Dialogue journals have proven effective and enjoyable for students regardless of their level of proficiency.

Peer and Group Assessment: The role of the teacher would be to provide guidance, to explain to the students what they have to evaluate in one another's work, and to help them identify and apply properly the evaluation criteria.

Student Portfolios: The concept of portfolio was borrowed from the field of fine arts. Student portfolios may be defined as "the use of records of a student's work over time and in a variety of modes to show the depth, breadth, and development of the student's abilities".

slides ⇊⇊⇊⇊⇊⇊⇊⇊⇊⇊⇊⇊⇊⇊😕

https://www.slideshare.net/putrikakuhito/assessing-young-learner

1. Which are the 3 types of responces identified by Brown and Hudson?

2. Which are the two main alternatives in assessment?

3. Formative assessment can help decrease the level of anxiety why?

4. Name the techniques of alternative assesment developed in the line with the taxonomy of student response types identified by Krashen and Terrell and adapted by Olsen , which suggests that there are four stages of language development in FL/SL learners.

5. which is another assessment procedure that is compatible with comunicative approaches to fl/sl teaching?

Reflection 

Teaching is more than stay in front of a classroom talking and talking, it is give all of us to our students. Teachers have the ability to teach and care for a group of minds and their learning. This project has given us the opportunity to familiarize with the variety of types of “assessment of young learners”, that emphasized the needs for teachers to use differents teaching methods and techniques that help learners acquiere the language in a manner that does not cause anxiety in the environment. In that way we as a teachers will use appropriate tools to help students in linguistic abilities, to evaluate needs, weaknesses and the progress of the students, in a dynamic way.

References 

Brown, J. D. and T. Hudson. 1998. The alternatives in language assessment. TESOL 
Quarterly, 32, 4, pp. 653-675.

 Krashen, S. D. and T. Terrell. 1983. The natural approach: Language acquisition in the classroom. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Alemany Press.

Olsen, R.E. W-B. 1996. . Handouts given at the American University of Beirut ESL Workshop held in Larnaca, Cyprus. ---. 1992. . In Cooperative language learning: A teacher's resource book, ed. C. Kessler. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall Regents. Classroom questioning, classroom talk Cooperative learning and social studie