assessing language skill

Teaching and Assessment
Teaching can be seen from two sides, traditional and modern. Traditionally, Hamalik(2003) in Jihad, Asep, M.Pd., Drs.(2010) stated that teaching is a process of delivering or transferring knowledge from teacher at school. The main point is the teacher (Slameto(2003) in Jihad, Asep, M.Pd., Drs.(2010)), while the students are only listening to the teacher. It will make the students be silent and apathetic. In other hand, modernly teaching is the guidance of learning(Jihad, Asep, M.Pd., Drs.(2010)).
The term “assessment” is not a new term in teaching. They are related each other. Assessment is given to the students in the end of the teaching and learning process. It used to measure the students’ understanding of the material that given in the teaching learning process. There are passing grade that be the standard if the student pass or not. To measure the students’ understanding and ability, teacher should assess not in only once, but continuous, not only assessing subjectively, but also strengthen by objective assessment.

In teaching language, there are many skills and elements that have different way to assessed.  Each skill included elements has it own type of assessment to measure. But it can open any additional or suggestion to combine some type of assessment in assessing a language skill.
The English language skills assessment is a group of tests designed to measure English language proficiency of subjects. The test is designed for non-native speakers, with different levels of testing available from beginners to advance. The tests can be utilized to track progress among those studying English or to measure proficiency for employment or education where English language skills are required.   The test focuses on real-life, integrated English language that students will encounter at English-speaking tertiary institutions. It tests a person’s ability to understand and communicate in the real world.
The English assessment language skill is usually for:
1.    Individuals who:
o    Wish to provide potential employers with information as to their English language level
o    Wish to master the English language and monitor their own progress

2.    Employers who:
•    Use English within their company for communication
•    Need to establish the English language level of employees
•    Wish to identify English speaking staff for promotion and / or transfers
•    Wish to evaluate different English language training programs

3.    Universities and colleges that:
•    Need to establish the English language level of students to evaluate their ability to follow their chosen course of study
•    Wish to offer students a test which will provide them with internationally recognized certification of their English language competence

Not at all language tests are same kind. They differ with respect to how they are designed, and what they are for (language testing. Oxford university press. 2000. P: 5). There are some types of tests. They are applied in different situation of assessing language skill.
1.    Norm-referenced vs. Criterion-referenced tests
•    Norm-referenced tests are tests that measure individual’s understanding of single score. Which students will be equalized with others, rather than to an agreed criterion score.
•    Criterion-referenced tests are tests measure individual’s understanding of single score. Which students will be equalized with a referenced range or rubric, rather than to the scores of other students.
2.    Proficiency vs. Achievement tests
•    Proficiency tests are tests that ‘look for the future situation of language use without necessary any reference to the previous process of teaching’ (language testing. Oxford university press. 2000. P:7)
•    Achievement test are tests that associated after several time learned.
3.    Objective vs. Subjective tests
•    Objective tests are tests that have provided answer and there will be no other answers except the real answer. There are any kinds of objective test. They are multiple choice test items, true or false statement, matching, sentence re-arrangement, etc.
•    Subjective tests are tests that have vary answer for each student. There are some kinds of subjective test. They are: making dialogue, making sentence or paragraph, recognition test, oral test, completion test, etc.
4.    Integrative vs. Discrete-point tests
•    Integrative tests are tests that combine all skills in a test.
•    Discrete-point tests are tests that the language skill tested separately, individual points of knowledge.


Assessing Language Skill
If and when students have been exposed to language whose meaning and construction they understand, it makes sense for them to practice it under controlled conditions. This will allow them to check that they have got the explanation right.
•    Listening
Students cannot be successful in school if listening skills are not developed and honed. Teachers can assess students' listening skills by conducting a few simple activities. Record the results from the activities and develop an action plan addressing how to improve listening skills if needed.
How to assess listening
Teacher who wants to assess listening skill usually uses objective tests. Here some examples of giving students assessment of listening:
1.    Perform a listening/writing exercise. Provide each student with an activity sheet and either a pencil or pen. Read directions aloud and ask the students to write down exactly what you say. For example, ask them to place a dot on the letter "i." next ask them to write the word. The idea is to have the students write and structure their paper according to your verbal directions.
2.    Review and answer questions based on the activity. Ask students to show the class the answer for each verbal command to determine if directions were followed.
3.    Conduct a group listening activity where students can observe each other's listening skills. Divide the group into two teams. Have one team form an inner circle and the other team form an outer circle around team one. Ask the inner circle group to discuss a topic of your choice such as "animals" or an upcoming dance.
While the inner group is chatting, ask the outer group analyze the inner group's listening skills. The outer group must rate each member of the inner group's listening skills from one being the lowest, "does not listen to speaker; absorbed in own thoughts" to five being the best, "shows by comments that he or she understands the feelings behind others' comments." Rotate teams so the outer group becomes the inner group and the original inner group can do the rating. Assess this activity by measuring each student's involvement in the discussion. Use student-based ratings to assist you with your review

•    Speaking
Teachers are often asked to evaluate learner progress during courses, maybe by preparing progress tests. They often feel unsure as to the best way to do this.  It can seem straightforward enough to test grammar or vocabulary with pen and paper tests – but if our students’ work includes speaking – then it also seems necessary to assess their speaking skills. Teachers often feel unsure as to how they could do this. To assess speaking skill, teacher uses some subjective tests and uses rubric to give point of students’ performance. Here are some ideas how to assess speaking:
1.    Criteria rather than marks
A progress test is used to give encouragement that something is being done well - or to point out areas where a learner’s not achieving as much as they could. With this kind of aim, giving 'marks' may not be the most effective way to assess. To prepare a criteria list think of about ten kinds of speaking that students have worked on over the course and turn them into criteria.
2.    Speaking tasks
What are possible speaking tasks for assessment? Well, almost anything you do in normal class work – e.g. narrating a picture story; role-plays; pair work information gap exchanges; discussions etc. If you have a smaller class and enough time then a “three learners with one teacher” activity is a very good way to assess, i.e. setting a task that gets the three learners to interact together while you watch and evaluate.
3.    Self-assessment
Although fear of bad marks can sometimes be motivating, it’s surprising to find the amount of power that students feel when assessing themselves. It can be a real awareness-raising activity. Distribute a list of criteria and ask students to first write a short line comparing themselves against each criterion (in English or in their own language) – a reflective view rather than just a 'yes' or 'no'. Encourage 'guilt-free' honest reflection. After the writing stage, learners can meet up in small groups and talk through their thoughts, explaining why they wrote what they did.
4.    Work in pair
One has a number of elements (e.g. pictures) arranged in certain way. The other students have the same elements, but loose, and have to arrange them in the same way by talking to his/her partner without looking at the partner’s picture/plan.
5.    Make a list
Students make a list of the kind of things that people like or do (e.g. go jogging, brush teeth, etc.). They have to go round the class to find someone who does, did, likes, etc. those thing.

•    Reading
There are many reasons why getting students to read English text is an important part of the teacher’s job. In the first place, many of them want to be able to read texts in English either for careers, for study, or simply for pleasure. Reading ability is very difficult to assess accurately. In the communicative competence model, a student's reading level is the level at which that student is able to use reading to accomplish communication goals. This means that assessment of reading ability needs to be correlated with purposes for reading.
How to assess reading
As one of the most important aspects of learning language, reading comprehension is indispensable to guide students of all ages toward academic success. Reading comprehension tests are the most common techniques of testing reading skills, as they are designed to reveal what the reader has taken away from various written materials and to gauge their overall reading level. While there are a multitude of assessment methods used today, the below steps should help you get started in providing accurate measures of reading comprehension
1.    Before getting started, make sure that you have some idea of the student's reading level or projected abilities. For example, if a student is in fifth grade, prepare standard fifth grade reading assessment materials.
2.    Have the student read a passage from a book, a poem or an article that is written at her projected reading level. Next, decide which type of assessment will best fit the reading material and the student. This could be a question and answer test asking about what happened in the text or inferential questions about what was implied in the reading material. Other common assessments include exercises where words are left out of the passage, and the pupil must fill in the blanks with fitting words. For younger children, you might try having them read simple instructions such as "raise your hand" or "stand up" to test comprehension.
3.    Once the student has finished reading administer the reading assessment, giving him a set amount of time to finish the test and answer any questions that he may have.
4.    Read over the work after the student has handed it in. You may assess her comprehension by giving scores in four different categories--poor, adequate, good or excellent, depending on how well she was able to summarize the ideas in the text and reflect on what she had read.
There are also some other ways that teachers can be used in assess reading, such as:
1.    Reading aloud
A student's performance when reading aloud is not a reliable indicator of that student's reading ability. A student who is perfectly capable of understanding a given text when reading it silently may stumble when asked to combine comprehension with word recognition and speaking ability in the way that reading aloud requires.
In addition, reading aloud is a task that students will rarely, if ever, need to do outside of the classroom. As a method of assessment, therefore, it is not authentic: it does not test a student's ability to use reading to accomplish a purpose or goal.
However, reading aloud can help a teacher assess whether a student is "seeing" word endings and other grammatical features when reading. To use reading aloud for this purpose, adopt the "read and look up" approach: ask the student to read a sentence silently one or more times, until comfortable with the content, then look up and tell you what it says. This procedure allows the student to process the text, and lets you see the results of that processing and know what elements, if any, the student is missing.
2.    Comprehension questions
Instructors often use comprehension questions to test whether students have understood what they have read. In order to test comprehension appropriately, these questions need to be coordinated with the purpose for reading. If the purpose is to find specific information, comprehension questions should focus on that information. If the purpose is to understand an opinion and the arguments that support it, comprehension questions should ask about those points.
In everyday reading situations, readers have a purpose for reading before they start. That is, they know what comprehension questions they are going to need to answer before they begin reading. To make reading assessment in the language classroom more like reading outside of the classroom, therefore, allow students to review the comprehension questions before they begin to read the test passage.
Finally, when the purpose for reading is enjoyment, comprehension questions are beside the point. As a more authentic form of assessment, have students talk or write about why they found the text enjoyable and interesting (or not).

•    Writing
Like many other skill of English, the type of writing we get students to do will depend on their age, interests, and level. We can get beginner to write simple poems, but we probably will not give them an extended report on town planning to do. When we set tasks for elementary students, we will make sure that the students have or can get enough language to complete the tasks. Such students can write a simple story but they are not equipped to create a complex-narrative.
However, in general we will try to get students writing in a number of common everyday styles. We may also want to have students write such type of text. 
Whether you're assessing writing to determine whether a student passes a class or assignment or are deciding student writing placement, you will have to assess student writing levels many times throughout your career. Both teachers and students have difficulty with assessments, often because of the high stakes involved. However, a well-planned, well-executed assessment can make the process easier. Here are some steps how to assess students in writing skill.
1.    List what writing traits the assessment measure. These traits will differ depending on the situation. If you are assessing students to place them in the appropriate course level, for instance, you will test the traits that will be taught in the various courses they might take. Next to each trait on your list, write a description of what constitutes a well and poorly executed trait.
2.    Clearly define each writing level. If you are giving students grades, explain what grades "a" through "f" means. For example, a student with a "b" might have an excellent understanding of the subject matter but mediocre grammar skills. If you are assigning students into classes or groups, explain what writing traits or difficulties students in these groups have in common. For example, students in level three might have somewhat rhetorically effective prose but with many minor grammar errors.
3.    Create an assessment designed to test the traits you chose in step 1. For example, if you are testing composition skills, ask students to write an essay in which they defend an argument. According to the national council of teachers of English (NCTE), an ideal assessment would include multiple pieces of a student's writing collected over a long time period.
4.    Tell students about the assessment. The note notes that students should not only understand that they are being assessed, but they also should know why they are being assessed. Tell students about the assessment and its purposes. Provide them with the list of traits being assessed from step 1, as well as the writing levels from step 2. Answer questions about the assessment.
5.    Give the assessment in a positive environment and grade it objectively. Give students handouts on how to prepare for the assessment and show them examples of successfully completed assessments from the past. Make sure students understand time and word limitations. After collecting the assessment, grade it objectively using a rubric that corresponds to the well-executed and poorly executed traits explained in step 1



Conclusion

The term of teaching, learning, and assessing are can not be separated in process of teaching language specifically. They are have their own objective and they are needed each other.
A teaching process is can not be succeed if the teacher does not do assessment. Meanwhile, an assessment will be not reliable if there are no explanation before given to. The purpose of assessment is to measure teacher if their students already understood the material given before or not.
Teachers have to make sure if the assessments reliable or not, valid or not, and or practical or not. Those make the assessment are acceptable or not.
There are many ways to assess language skill. They can measured by some types of test. Sometimes every single skill has its way to be constructed and it is different with other skills. In other hand, teacher also can use same type of assessment to assess students’ ability of language skill.
 
References

-    Oxford University Press.  2000. Language Testing. New York
-    Harmer, Jeremy. How to Teach English. Cambridge: Longman
-    Australian Council for Educational Research. 2011. The English Language Skills Assessment Retrieved from http://www.acer.edu.au/tests/els/ downloaded December 22th 2011.
-    The National Capital Language Resource Center. 2003, 2004. Assessing Reading Proficiency retrieved from http://www.nclrc.org/essentials/reading/assessread.htm
-    Jihad, Asep, M.pd, and Haris, Abdul, M.Sc. 2008. Evaluasi Pembelajaran. Jakarta: Multi Press