preview

Formative And Summative Assessment On Foreign Language Education

Satisfactory Essays

Formative and Summative Assessment in Foreign Language Education Assessment has progressed from traditional testing to an alternative (authentic) performance assessment, following an interactive, learning-based pedagogy. Assessment is, in its formative and summative forms, one of the most important element to consider seriously when planning a unit. It carries within it different meaning to teachers as well as learners. It plays an important role as feedback to the student and teacher. It shows the students where they stand and where they should put more effort in, to reach mastery. It provides teachers with information on the actual level of development the students are at, so that lessons are developed accordingly. “The aim of assessment is primarily to educate and improve student performance, not merely to audit it” (Wiggins, 1998, p. 7). Formative and summative assessments could be informal or formal depending on the way the teacher prepares the student for the task and the initial goal behind the assessment. For example a portfolio could be used for formative (informal or formal) assessment as well as summative (informal or formal). Formative Assessment Formative assessment and why it needs to be used. Colby-Kelly and Turner (2007) define formative assessment as “the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for making substantively grounded decisions or judgments about the product of a learning task”. In our school, formative assessment, in both its formal and

Get Access