The purpose of this assignment is twofold: (a) to apply language assessment concepts and principles learned in this course to design and develop a classroom language assessment, and (b) to demonstrate the knowledge of theory and research that informs your design and development of the proposed language assessment. For this assignment, you will need to design and develop an assessment instrument for a language class that you might be teaching in the future. You may choose any type of assessment and focus on any language skill and level. The scope of your assessment may vary from a 10-minute quiz to an hour-long final exam.
This assignment consists of three main parts: specifications for a classroom language assessment (Part 1), the actual assessment instrument (Part 2), and a research-informed commentary explaining your design choices and decisions (Part 3).
Part 1: Specifications for a classroom language assessment
The specifications for your assessment should include the following information (see Chapter 3 in the textbook for more detail):
- the context of your assessment (e.g., a beginning-level ESL reading class, an advanced-level academic writing class, etc.);
- the type of assessment (e.g., achievement or diagnostic, formative or summative, paper-based or computer-based, etc.);
- a clearly defined construct(s) (i.e., skills/abilities) measured by the assessment;
- a brief description of the tasks, stimuli, and/or item types (e.g., type and number of items, duration of assessment, etc.);
- procedures for administering the assessment (i.e., who will administer the assessment, where, and how);
- procedures for scoring the assessment and reporting the results to learners, including an explanation of what the total score will comprise and how it will be calculated, as well as a scoring rubric (if applicable).
The length of Part 1 should be around 300-500 words depending on the scope of your assessment.
Part 2: Language assessment instrument
This part should contain the actual language assessment instrument that you will need to develop on the basis of the specifications outlined in Part 1. The assessment instrument should contain the following components:
- the instructions for learners on how to complete the assessment;
- the task(s), including all the stimuli (if applicable) with questions or items, that learners need to complete.
Important: You do not have to create the stimuli for your assessment (e.g., a video for a listening assessment task or a text for a reading task). Instead, you may use authentic stimuli (e.g., a YouTube video, a picture from the Internet, or a text from a news article) as long as you cite the original source. Please note that borrowing or even modifying stimuli from existing language tests, activities, or language learning materials (either printed or online) is not allowed. Similarly, the tasks, questions/items, and/or rubrics for your assessment instrument cannot be taken from existing language tests, activities, or language learning materials. While you are encouraged to look at other examples, your assessment instrument must be created by you. Using existing tasks, questions/items, or rubrics in your assessment instrument will constitute plagiarism.
The length of this part will vary depending on the scope of your assessment.
Part 3: Research-informed commentary
In this final part, you will need to write a commentary to provide a rationale for your choices and decisions that you made when designing and developing your classroom language assessment. In particular, you will need to explain your decision-making process regarding the design of your specifications (e.g., the choice of the assessment type, tasks, stimuli, item types, delivery format, and scoring method) and the development of your actual assessment instrument. When explaining your decisions and choices, you should refer to the principles of practicality, reliability, validity, authenticity, and/or washback, and indicate how these principles apply to your assessment.
In your commentary, you should also demonstrate how your design choices and decisions are informed by research and theory. For instance, if your assessment uses video-based rather than audio-only stimuli for evaluating academic listening skills, you may support your choice of video by citing empirical evidence from research studies that found the benefits of using video in listening assessments. Please note that all the evidence must come from credible sources (e.g., top-tier journals, books, or research reports) rather than from unverified sources (e.g., personal webpages, blogs, Wikipedia, or low-quality/bogus journals) that can be rife with specious arguments and spurious claims.
The length of your research-informed commentary should be approximately 1,000 words (excluding references). The assignment, including all in-text citations and the list of references, must be formatted according to the 7th edition of APA style.