Assessment in English as a Foreign Language EFL Classes
14 demonstrate learners full range of intuitions and knowledge, sufficiency with
first-draft work, and exclusion of development” Wolf, 1989 as cited in Alimemaj and Ahmetaj, 2010.
Moreover, “testing situation itself often produces anxiety within the student such that they are unable to think clearly” Huerta-Macias, 1995. They
add “the student may also be facing extenuating circumstances e.g., personal problems or illness at the time shehe is being tested; this also hampers the
student’s performance on the test”. Students may be failed in a test not because they do not study before the exam but because they are stressful, nervous, andor
sick during the test that makes them cannot do the test well. Knowing that traditional assessment has some disadvantages, we cannot
deny that it also has some advantages. Lianghuo as cited in Lee, P. Y. 2006: 346- 347 mentions some advantages of traditional assessment which are it is easy to
design, it is easy to administer, it can have good coverage in content, it is good for testing factual knowledge and specific skills, it is easy to mark and grade, it is
more objective, it is easy to analyze and report, it is well established, and it is also well accepted. Considering its advantages, it is clear that teachers can still apply
traditional paper-and-pencil test. Paper-and-pencil test can still play an important role in assessing writing but teachers have to find a new way of assessment to
cover the limitations of traditional assessment and to compensate what traditional assessment cannot achieve.
We as a teacher, in order to find the most effective and appropriate assessment method in assessing writing, should find alternative assessments
15 instead of applying the traditional one. The following Table 2.1 shows the features
of traditional concept and new concept of assessment stated by Fan Lianghuo from The National Institute of Education as cited in Lee, P. Y. 2006: 344 that
teachers have to consider in choosing the appropriate alternative assessment.
Table 2.1 The Difference between Traditional Concept and New Concept of Assessment
Student assessment
Traditional concept New concept
What to be assessed
Cognitive domain mainly knowledge and skill and
the result of learning Both cognitive and affective
domains knowledge, skill, ability and disposition and
both the result and process of learning
Where it is conducted
Within classroom Within andor outside
classroom When students
work on the tasks During in-class time
During andor after class time
How it is conducted
Conventional way paper- and pencil or written test
Both conventional and alternative ways
How long the process takes
A block of time e.g., one or two class periods
It depends on the tasks. It could be days, weeks,
months, or even years What purposes it
usually serves Single most important:
grading and reporting students’ learning results
Multiple most important: improving teaching and
learning
The alternative assessment that we choose should be able to measure both cognitive and affective domain, measure both the result and the process of
learning, be conducted whithin andor outside classroom, be conducted both conventional and alternative ways, have multiple purposes, take some times to
finish, and be done by the students during andor after class time.