Part 1 (b)

In about 900 words, write a report of your observation and comment on the

strengths & weaknesses of the test and suggest improvements to make it

more effective. Support your views and opinions with related literature.

On 8th September 2014, I have observed our teacher advisor at Sekolah

Kebangsaan Batu Bertangkup for class 2 Mulia. This class is an average-proficiency

class. The lesson for that day was phonemic awareness which she focused on

listening and speaking skill. There were several assessments that she used for the

teaching and learning which include oral and written assessments. Based on my

observation, there are many strengths and weaknesses during her assessment.

The first strength that can be seen is when she utilized the story book

for story telling session. This is one of suitable test to assess listening and

speaking skill. She is able to assess the pupils’ speaking skill especially during the

‘q’ and ‘a’ session for that particular activity. Through this assessment, I can see one

of the basic principle of language assessment used that is reliability Clearly, test

administration reliability can be achieved by making sure that all pupils received the

same quality of input. Part of achieving test reliability depends on the physical

context-making sure, for example, that every pupils has a cleanly photocopied test

sheet, sound amplification is clearly audible to everyone in the room, video input is

equally visible to all, lightning, temperature, and other classroom conditions are

equal for all pupils. The test can be seen as consistent and dependable. For

example, she tried to elicit the respond from the pupils based on the pictures before

telling the story to them. This will help to gear up the pupils’ participation as well their

schemata. However, one of the weakness of this assessment is the teaching

aids used was not really accurate in term of practicality. The story book used

was a bit small which could not help to attract the attention of all pupils in the class

as well as distract the view of the pupils. She should use a bigger story book for the

story telling session.

The next one is teacher was able to identify the individual differences

among the pupils. During the oral test, she called out several names to

demonstrate their speaking skill. Based on my observation, these pupils are from the

low-achievement group. Thus, the teacher aimed to give more focus to these pupils.

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She was able to imply the principle of practicality which determines the effectiveness

of the test. For example, the assessment is not excessively expensive because she

used the audio-lingual method. It was also able to stay within appropriate time

constraint. A too long test will make the pupils fatigue and will not be able to focus on

the lesson well. The weakness is there were several pupils that will be left out.

This is because the teacher focused too much on the weak pupils which resulted in

the less participation of the pupils in the classroom.

Besides that, she also used the written assessment which was integrated with

listening skill. The activity was ‘bingo’ game. During this assessment, I can

observe that it was a good practice for assessing listening skill among the

pupils. For example, the teacher will speak one word from the bingo paper and the

pupils will circle the word and the will continue playing the game until the bingo is

solved. This activity is really helpful in term of assessing listening skill of the pupils.

This assessment gives attention to the principle of authenticity. Authenticity is the

degree of correspondence of the characteristics of a given language test task to the

features of a target language task. It also means a task that is likely to contextualized

with their lives. Authenticity can be presented by using a natural language,

contextualizing the test item and giving meaningful (relevant, interesting) topics for

the learners. For example, the teacher used the vocabularies that are recognizable

for them. She also introduced the phonemes that are appropriate for their language

level. Nevertheless, the weakness for this test is it has no specific and precise

proof of assessment. What can be understand from here is that the teacher could

not be able to explain and show how it has been achieved during the teaching and

learning session. For example, the bingo game is too casual for assessing listening

skill. This game can still be used but the teacher needs to prepare a checklist to

record the pupils’ performances.

As a consequence, there are several suggestion for improvements that I

would like to highlight here. The first one is the teaching aids for story telling

session that is used to assess speaking skill. She should use a big book the

story telling session. She also needs to give attention to the size of the fonts, colour

of the fonts and also the illustrations of the book. All of these features are very

important keys in delivering an effective story telling session as a groundwork for

assessing listening and speaking skill. She may repeat the same story book but

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access it in different ways. She should take the consideration of authenticity. Stiggins

(2006) define authenticity as "the degree of correspondence of the characteristics of

a given language test task to the features of a target language task" (p. 14) and then

suggested an agenda for identifying those target language tasks and for

transforming them into valid test items. The second one is the variability of the

assessing tools used in the classroom. From my observation, she needs to give

thought about the assessment tools which include more realistic worksheet to prove

that the test has been carried out. For example, she may needs to prolong the

activity after the bingo game. The bingo game can be introduced as a warm up

activity, then it should be continued with another activity. This is the stage where she

can provide a prove that the pupils had gone their assessment of speaking and

listening skill. Back to authenticity, when I make a claim for authenticity in a test task,

I am saying that this task is likely to be enacted in the real world. Many test item

types fail to simulate real-world tasks. One does not have to look very long to find

reading comprehension passages in proficiency tests that do not reflect a real-world

passage (Brown, 2004). Other improvement that can be carried out during the

assessment is by referring to the basic principle of language assessment that

is washback. According to Brown (2014), means the beneficial information that

washback to the students in the form of useful diagnoses of strengths and

weaknesses. The teacher also used the aid of song for teaching phonemic

awareness. This could be related to suggestopedia method which emphasising the

quality than the quantity of learning as well as provide a meaningful confidence to

the pupils. One way to enhance washback is to comment generously and specifically

on test performance. Grades and scores alone, without comments and other

feedback, reduce the linguistic and cognitive performance data available to student

to almost nothing. Furthermore, the test should be held at the comfortable place like

in the hall for example to ensure that conditions of the place are equal to all pupils as

the hall is usually provided with the air-conditioner.

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