What is Assessment?

Assessment is a common word used in classroom environments. However, it is wrongly related to giving the students a  test and grade it; as said by Scanlan (2012) "this conception of assessment is not only limited, but also limiting. it fails to take into account both the utility of assessment and its importance in the teaching/learning process". It is more about "making a judgment or measurement of worth of an entity" and "grading could be considered a component of assessment".

Genesee and Upshur (1996) use some situations to illustrate the necessity of assessment in ESL learning process. Those are common situations that second language teachers and school directors have to deal with frequently: placement of students in particular levels of instruction; planning new units instruction and revising units that have been used before; determining which textbook is the appropriate one for a group of students, etc.

It is important to know that assessment not only takes into account student achievement, as said by Genesee and Upshur (1996), there are other aspects involved in teaching and learning such as "behaviour in class, attitude towards school or themselves, their goals and needs concerning the outcomes of SL learning, and their works habits, learning styles, and strategies". But, what should teachers assess students in their learning process? What is the purpose of assess students?

The main purpose of assessment is not to decide whether the student passes or fails a subject, but to make decisions about what is next or what to change or improve, or in other words to help teachers enhance their students learning. Educational assessment, as Scanlan (2012) asserts, is designed for different purposes such as motivating and directing learning, providing feedback to students on their performance; on instruction and/or the curriculum, ensuring standards of progression, and so on.

Scanlan (2012) also makes a classification or distintion between the different types and approaches to assessment. Comparing one type of assessment with  the opposite one and making a distinction between their characteristics. For instance, formative vs summative assessment. The first one consists in "providing feedback to the learner to identify strenghts and weakness and hence improve future performance". On the other hand, summative assessment is "used primarily to make decisions for grading or determine readiness for progression.

Other types of assessment are mentioned by Scanlan (2012). Informal assessment, in which "judgment are integrated with other tasks", are compared with formal assessment, that "occurs when students are aware that the task that they are doing is for assessment purposes. There is annother classification of assessment according to when it takes place; if it takes place throughout a learning process it is called continuous, and if it takes place only at the end of a learning activity is called final.

According to the approach, assessment could process-oriented, which focuses on the steps or procedures, or product oriented, which focuses on evaluating the result or outcome of a process. Also, there is another classification for assessment: divergent, that "are those for which a range of answers or solutions might be considered correct. While in convergent assessment there is only one correct response.

To conclude, what assessment is related to is the way teachers can improve their students learning, taking into account all the aspects that can influence a learning process. It is important for teachers to achieve good evaluation skills in order to enhance students learning; the better evaluation skills a teacher has, the best learning students will have.