A Practical Guide to Assessing English Language Learners

By Licda. Latoya Murray H.
Assessing the Skills

Assessing the four skills can be difficult at times because sometimes teachers lead to put their feelings in the assessment process. How is this so? Well there are many kinds that really het to teachers in the way that they see them as role models and want to like them. This unable teacher to project the reality of these students

When creating our assessments we must make sure that these be valid and reliable and must important they should reflect the goals of the course.

Chapter 3

Assessing Reading

Reading is considered as an invisible skill, but isn’t something we can’t see invisible? Reading is the way people take in new information and the way they blend or complement that new information with their background knowledge. Therefore, reading is no longer invisible because teachers can acknowledge or see how troublesome it can be for students to decode, recognize and understand readings or even extracting the main point or ideas from a text.

The bottom line here is that there’s nothing invisible about reading but most importantly is that we must take it as an interactive skill.

How can we assess reading? To assess reading you must take into account the two reading sub-kills which are:

-Major skills         Deals with reading quickly and carefully.

-Minor skills         Deals with understanding.

Also bear in mind the specifications. These are aids that help teachers and test administrators establish a clear link between the overall objectives for the program and the design of particular assessment instruments. These are: 1. Content 2. Conditions 3. Grading Criteria

Taking all these ideas in mind and using them for the creation of your assessments, you will find yourself helping your students learn a lot better.