Assessment

Assessment

For this activity, I selected a diagnostic test, which is applied to every new student the first day of classes at Little Big Students Academy. The diagnostic test is about all the basic vocabulary in English for beginners, such as animals, colors, family members and so on.

The elements that I assessed with this test are pronunciation (because the diagnostic test is answered orally) and vocabulary about easy topics in English.

I am assessing the speaking part, so what I ask them to do, is to name 10 things in English. For example: Name 10 animals. If the student answers the 10 animals, he/she will get 4 points. But, if he/she doesn't answer anything, he/she will get only 1 point.

In my diagnostic test, 4 is the highest and 1 the lowest rating. So that turns the diagnostic test into a rubric itself. Here you have the sample.

The application stage of this diagnostic test was very easy. It was applied individually to each new student. He/she was in front of the teacher and then, I began to encourage him/her to answer the questions. Actually, they are not real questions. They are like orders that students should follow as much as they now. For example: name 10 animals in English.

Something that I had to take into account is that some of the children were scared because of the test. They think it was a big evaluation and became a little bit nervous, so I tried to keep them relaxed and explain to them that I did that only to check if they know too much English or nothing about the language. The rest of the test was developed successfully. By the end of it, me as teacher had to read the results again and determine which were the topics that the child failed in order to begin his/her learning process from that lesson on. If a child gets three topics with a rate of 2 or 1, I must teach those three topics first and then, the ones with rates of 4 or 3. That makes me be more organized according to the order of the lessons of each kid.

All the results I had obtained from the entire diagnostics test I had applied were good and not so good. As we know, every student is totally different from other students and I remember some of them that answered all the questions with a rate of 4 (more than perfect), but some of them, answered with a rate of 1. It means that the child was a huge blank space ready to be filled in with the help of the teacher.    

I personally believe that diagnostic tests of this kind are very useful for the teacher and also for the students. Is a very good tool to know the level of English of your students and it is easy to create.