English language assessment: unfolding school students’ and parents’ views

Abstract

The current study analyzes Chilean students’ and parents’ perceptions of English language assessment. 352 Chilean 10 th graders were surveyed using the Perceptions of the Assessment Tasks Inventory, the Perceived Classroom Assessment Environment Scale, and the Test Anxiety Scale in order to measure their perceptions of English language assessment. A semi-structured interview was also conducted to capture the perceptions of 74 parents about English and the way their children are assessed in the English subject. The quantitative data was analyzed using the Pearson Correlation Coefficient to measure how strong the relationship of the scores was in the three scales, and qualitative data was categorized using content and frequency analysis. The findings suggest that the subscales of the three surveys hold statistically significant relationships and students feel that a Learning-oriented assessment environment benefits them more than a Performance-oriented one. The former is a kind of environment that favors students’ learning and mastery of subject materials, whereas the latter is a type of environment that aligns with classroom assessment practices that emphasize the importance of grades over learning. The qualitative results also suggest that parents have a positive perception of the English language and believe it is useful for their children’s life even though they themselves might find it difficult to learn the language.

Attitudes of Greek Foreign Language Teachers Regarding the Role of Authentic Assessment in Foreign Language Teaching

“…The relevant theories (Bourguignon, 2003;Jopp et al, 2022;Perrenoud, 2006) of the assessment incorporate the aforementioned dimension of learning linked to the complexity of the process and dispense with the emphasis on precise measurement that has dominated education until recently. This shift in the focus of assessment has brought to the surface two important theoretical issues related to the educational assessment process: on the one hand, the notion of validity has emerged, which relates to the appropriateness of the evaluative choices that function as indicators of desired learning outputs and the appropriateness of the ways of interpreting the results as indicators of learning; on the other hand, the need has emerged for learning and assessment of learning that is meaningful to students, that is, meaningful to them and that takes place within in a familiar context (Harland, 2005;Larenas et al, 2021).…”