Task-based Performance Assessment for Teachers: Key Issues to Consider

Abstract

In the last two decades or so, the tenets of communicative language teaching with their strong emphasis on students’ ability to use language in real-life situations have taken hold in foreign and second language classrooms. Accordingly, task-based language instruction that employs communicative tasks as the basic unit of analysis for motivating syllabus design and L2 classroom activities has received increasing recognition. As the primary goal in language instruction is shifted from an object of study to a system of communication, the need to assess students’ ability to use the language communicatively has been raised, and performance assessment, including task-based assessment, has become more and more popular.