Language Assessment Literacy Level of EFL Teachers: A Focus on Writing and Speaking Assessment Knowledge of the Teachers

Abstract

This study aims to explore Language Assessment Knowledge (LAK) level of high school EFL teachers in terms of assessment of writing and speaking. In addition, another purpose of this study is to investigate whether there is any significant effect of some demographic variables (years of teaching experience, type of undergraduate degree, attending a training course) on teachers' assessment of writing and speaking knowledge. The previous studies focus on university or primary school context in Turkey; however, there is no study which gave place to the high school context. The study was conducted among 58 high school EFL teachers in Turkey. A demographic questionnaire with 8 questions was used for collecting certain demographic information about the teachers. Language Assessment Knowledge Scale (LAKS) which is comprised of 30 items and 2 dimensions (writing and speaking) was used for gathering the data. The data was analysed through Two-Way Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA). The results demonstrated that the teachers have high literacy knowledge in one of the sub-component fields while they have low literacy knowledge in the other field.

Exploring Language Assessment Knowledge of In-Service English Language Teachers in K-12 Context

“…These results are in line with Ölmezer-Öztürk and Aydın (2019). Similarly, Genç et al (2020) investigated the LAK level of high school EFL teachers in assessing writing and speaking and found that teachers were knowledgeable in assessing speaking, whereas their knowledge in assessing writing was significantly low. Thus, it can be interpreted that the EFL teachers in the primary, middle, and high schools in Türkiye are more knowledgeable in reading and speaking assessment, while their knowledge is in writing and listening assessment even though they demonstrated a higher degree of LAK in general.…”

“…It is also seen that research on LAL in Türkiye has lately become a subject of interest since most of the studies have been conducted in recent years. In the studies, knowledge (Genç et al, 2020;Ölmezer-Öztürk & Aydın, 2019), perceptions and practices (Arslan & Üçok-Atasoy, 2020;Büyükkarcı, 2014;Işık, 2021;Kırkgöz et al, 2017;Önalan & Gürsoy, 2020;Öz & Atay, 2017;Tanyer & Susoy, 2018), training needs (Ballıdağ & İnan-Karagül, 2021;Mede & Atay, 2017), and problems (Büyükkarcı, 2014;Tuzcu-Eken, 2016) as well as the impact of demographic and contextual factors (Büyükkarcı, 2016;İnan-Karagül et al, 2017) on language assessment have been analyzed. Higher educational context was mainly preferred by the researchers in Türkiye whereas the research regarding K-12 context is limited.…”

“…Concerned with the K-12 context, Ballıdağ and İnan-Karagül (2021) put forth that teachers needed further training due to their insufficient LAL. Finally, aiming to determine EFL teachers' knowledge level in assessing writing and speaking in the K-12 context, the findings of a study by Genç et al (2020) showed that teachers had significantly lower scores in assessing writing while they had higher knowledge level when it comes to assessment of speaking skills. Additionally, no impact was observed on their LAK in terms of their level of experience, type of the BA program and taking additional trainings.…”

Assessing EFL Students Speaking in the classroom from Kurdish Instructors’ perspectives

“…There is an internal reason for the growing popularity of language assessments in English language teaching, which has to do with teachers' understanding of the importance of assessment in the language learning process. (Genc et al, 2020) In Assessing Speaking, the personality of the test taker (teacher) has a significant effect on the examinee, the result of the test and the flow of the task. Sullivan (2000) classifies a number of qualities in the examiners.…”

Investigating Teachers’ Language Assessment Literacy in The Implementation of the Merdeka Belajar (Freedom of Learning) Curriculum

“…Hence it is essential to understand how language teachers respond to this new demand and how they possess the competencies expected to face this challenge. In addition to that, most studies reported low to moderate levels of teachers' assessment literacy (Kılıç, 2022;Massey et al, 2020;Genç, et al, 2020;Umam & Indah, 2020;Al-bahlani, 2019), the underdeveloped teachers' assessment literacy to lack of pre-service language assessment training (Bustamante, 2022;Puspawati, 2022;DeLuca & Johnson, 2017;Lam, 2015), and weak assessment knowledge results to the measures used in assessment literacy studies (Gotch & French, 2014). These aforementioned studies mostly used a survey to assess competence, practices, and knowledge.…”