ASSESSMENT
Assessment is also a primary focus for me. There are many studies and ideas of what a perfect language assessment should look like; however, I tend to focus on speaking skills, since students are learning the language in order to communicate. Assessments normally focus on facts and the students' ability to recall those facts. The assessments that I write focus more on communication, pronunciation, and grammar. In other words, students are expected to learn the language (vocabulary, grammar, etc.) enough to be able to use that language to communicate with me. My assessments within the language classroom are much more practical, which also gives me an idea of how well my students are learning the language and where they might be struggling.
At Michigan State University we were able to take a class specifically designed to teach us more about assessment and how we can enhance and develop our assessments in the target language. Some of these enhancements included different ways to test students, such as reading, listening, speaking, and presenting. I developed a video that gave an example of a test that could be given that would focus mostly on speaking and presenting. This test was given twice, once at the beginning of the year and once at the end of the year to see how far they progressed in their pronunciation and speaking skills in the target language. The students wouldn't simply have to spew facts back at me about rules that they learn about the language. Instead, they are able to use what they have learned to speak and have conversations in the target language. There is a time and place for teaching them the rules and quizzing them on those, but students more often need to be tested on their proficiency in the language itself. These kind of tests also take some of the pressure off of the students , giving them more opportunity to focus on the language instead of the rules of the language. They also will be developing their reading skills at the same time, so this kind of assessment focuses on three of the four factors mentioned earlier. The teacher should also add in small parts of the test where the students will be tested on their listening so that they hit all four points.