The Teacher’s Role in Classroom-based Language Assessment

Abstract

Different from large-scale language tests aiming to measure general proficiency and often administered in specific highly-controlled test settings, classroom-based language assessment is embedded in the teaching and learning cycle of a classroom and has multiple “identities” (Rea-Dickins, 2001, p. 451) due to its wide range of uses or purposes. Classroom-based language assessment is an integral part of language instruction where the teachers, as “agents” (Rea-Dickins, 2004), are the ones responsible for facilitating student learning and obtaining information about their progress and achievement, hence, also earning the name teacher assessment. From planning what to assess and how, through implementing assessment procedures and monitoring students’ performances to recording students’ attainment and progress, the teacher is constantly making decisions on how to keep track of students’ progress and attainment (Rea-Dickins, 2001). Either accomplished through a formal assessment procedure or through informal daily monitoring and observation, the teacher’s knowledge of the students guides him/her to make subsequent pedagogical decisions and push learning further.