Classroom assessment

assessment was given in report form at the end of the first term in grades 1-4 and at the end of the school year in grades 1-3. This regulation was abolished in 2010.

The two main dimensions of classroom assessment are formative and summative assessment. Summative assessment (named also as assessment of learning) summarizes students’ attainment typically at the end of a period of time, a unit, a topic or a piece of homework and the achievement is usually expressed in forms of scores or marks (McKay, 2006). Formative assessment (called as assessment for learning) is “more like a thread weaving its way through the planning/teaching/evaluation cycle, binding the different elements and tailoring them to pupils’ needs (Brooks, 2004, p. 115). The information gained through formative assessment aims to highlight children’s strengths and weaknesses which can give useful feedback to both the students and the teachers and to contribute to further decisions about the process of teaching.

Knausz (2008) criticizes severely the present system of assessment in Hungarian schools as it hardly involves any forms of formative assessment or assessment for learning, in other words, the methods of marking applied regularly have a punitive effect which was found to be particularly detrimental on the motivation of weaker students. Classroom assessment does not seem to serve purposes of improving performance, rather purposes of penal control.

The observed classes and the interviews gave valuable and multifaceted insight into assessment practices of language education. In English language classes, teachers usually assessed children in different oral and written tasks and in a variety of tests attempting to give a continual assessment of pupils’ progress. Assessment criteria were decided on by the individual teachers. The interviews with the head teachers emphasized that in the schools under study, no specifics about the format or frequency of assessment were prescribed, nor were there school-based marking criteria

established. In School S1, language teachers agreed on the standards of the pass level (mark 2), but the standards of other marks were determined by the individual teachers.

Teachers’ interviews revealed that the main tool of assessment was marking.

However, Csapó and Korom (1998), concluding a large-scale research study into the knowledge gained in Hungarian public schools argue that marks are not objective measures but only inaccurate reflections of students’ knowledge, consequently, they are inadequate to be the main factors of formal assessment at school. Marks and school performance show weak correlation, in particular, in humanities where assessment is based on more subjective criteria due to the lack of standardized norms. Moreover, labelling resulting from marks may have a negative effect on for future learning.

The responses of language teachers and children reinforced the assumption that the most frequently used method of assessment was the paper and pencil test.

Classroom observations involved relatively few testing incidents, however, during the breaks children were willing to show the researcher their previous classroom tests.

Children often wrote short vocabulary quizzes, mainly after having learnt a new unit in the course book. Language teachers appeared to share the view that frequent vocabulary tests promote children’s vocabulary learning, which was also observed by Orosz (2009) in her study investigating young learners’ English vocabulary acquisition. Orosz warns that these tests reflect only immediate vocabulary recall, and long-term vocabulary retention is not assessed.

More complex tests were usually written when having completed a separate unit of the course book or finished practising a discrete element of grammatical structure.

These tests mainly included tasks related to vocabulary and grammar. Reading comprehension or writing tasks were few. Translation exercises were often involved in tests, even in Grade 5 or 6. Some tests also assessed children’s knowledge of grammar

rules. The following question is quoted from a test written in Grade 6, School S2:

“When you use Present Simple?” where the teacher expected the children to recite the memorized grammar rule. Interestingly, the teacher herself made a grammatical mistake in the question, which was corrected afterwards.

The majority of the tests, especially in Grades 7 and 9 can be characterized by features of classical testing in contrast to classroom-based assessment (Hamp-Lyons, 2007), which are summarized in Table 10.

Table 10

Main Characteristics of Assessment Cultures (Hamp-Lyons, 2007, p.494)

Classroom-based assessment Classical testing

Fluency-focused Accuracy-focused

Individual-focused Group- or 'norm'-focused Achievement/progress-focused Proficiency-focused

Learner-focused Language-focused

Process-focused Product-focused

Teachers'/students' voices Rule-makers' voices Leads to assessment of learning Leads to 'teaching to the test'

These features of observed assessment methods are connected to the Grammar-Translation method of language teaching, which was described as characteristic of the majority of the language classes in Section 4.2.2. The findings are in accord with the conclusions of a research study by Hild and Nikolov (2011), which investigated assessment practices of teachers of English in the first six grades of primary schools in Hungary. They found that teachers focused on errors and accuracy and “what students cannot do as opposed to what they can” (Hild and Nikolov, 2010, p.59). In addition, feedback was limited to rewarding high-performing students without giving any

With regard to assessing oral performance, several children (N=10) stated that their oral performance was never assessed, some children (N=7) claimed that they regularly got marks for oral reporting when they had to recite texts and/or answer teacher’s question. Three children reported that their reading proficiency was assessed by reading aloud. However, they agreed that written work was assessed more frequently with the exception of two children from Grade 4.

The language groups in the study consisted of children with various abilities and the number of special needs children (especially dyslexic children) was relatively high.

Interviews revealed that teachers strived for objective assessment and for separating children’s achievement form the context of their disadvantaged status:

Assessment has to be identical for all, children can’t get worse or better marks just because they are disadvantaged. [S1TE1]

The most important problems of teachers of disadvantaged children was how to choose the reference level of assessment as teachers often believed that marks should reflect a student’s performance in relation to their peers. In norm-referenced tests, the score of a test is interpreted in relation to a mean (average score) or median (middle score) (Brown, 2004). However, when children are grouped based on their performance, it is hard to compare the performance to an average level group:

Since it is a very weak class, I have to consider the optimum-minimum ratio, I can’t divert from it too much. The level of mark five, I mean.

Mark five here wouldn’t necessarily be a five elsewhere, there aren’t any real fives in this class. [S4TG2]

In evaluation practices, the two extreme approaches were present. On the one hand, some teachers compared weaker students to the average and gave them lower marks:

I’m usually very strict, so the marks are worse exactly because I’m trying

On the other hand, other teachers modified their system of marking in the groups with a high ratio of disadvantaged children and gave better marks on weaker performance:

They often get better marks than they would deserve. I give them plenty of marks because it allows even weaker students to feel a sense of success. [S4TE2]

I don’t know whether it’s correct, but when they have an oral test, weaker students can perform worse and still deserve praise, even for small things. [S5TG1]

Praising irrespective of the quality of the performance or excessive praise might also have negative effects and may be counter-productive. Hall and Burke (2003) warn that too much praise may “take away some of the intrinsic motivation for learning; they tend to reduce persistence and undermine resilience; and they remove independence and undermine self-esteem” (p. 134).

It has been argued in several international (Lambert and Lines, 2000; Ross, 2005) and Hungarian studies (Brassói, Hunya and Vass, 2005; Radó, 2006) that formative assessment based on individual progress should be given more priority in the classroom. The greatest advantage of formative assessment is that the criteria of assessment go beyond than subject knowledge, they also “include the amount of effort (apparently) put into the work, the student’s past performance, the need to encourage and so on; in other words it will depend on the context of the work as much as the content” (Lambert and Lines, 2000, p.14). When teaching children with special needs, this way of assessment can also provide important diagnostic information on the progress of the child. Individual development is seen as a reference point in the following comment:

The basis for me is how much they improve relative to themselves.

that everybody has to achieve. The minimum requirements apply to all, regardless of who is disadvantaged and who is not. [S1TE1]

This kind of assessment is also referred to as ipsative or self-referenced assessment (Headington, 2004). This approach puts the child in the focus of the assessment and the teacher’s role is to monitor how individual learning objectives have been fulfilled and which personal targets should be developed. Ipsative assessment relates to the idea of zone of proximal development by Vygotsky (see details in Section 2.1) as within this zone, the assessor and the child “collaborate to produce the best performance rather than withholding such help to produce a typical performance” (Hall and Burke, 2003, p. 20).

These features of ipsative assessment make it particularly appropriate for a group of learners of mixed-abilities or with special needs. This approach also involves that teachers should give children supplementary support whenever they need it during testing to help them do their best, which was not the frequent practice of the observed teachers.

The same teacher was not convinced of the necessity of the tradition method of assessing with marks, however, children’s and parents’ expectations made it necessary as this form of assessment could give them clear feedback:

I don’t really like giving marks, but the children are used to them, so they don’t understand notes like wonderful or well done, they expect marks.

And so do parents, although I’m not really fond of marks. Children should experience success as often as possible. I don’t usually give ones or twos. If a test is a failure, then I make the student retake it as many times as is necessary for him/her to perform better. Twenty times, if needed. [S1TE2]

This view is also supported by Papadopoulou (2007) asserting that marks and formal assessment procedures should be excluded in language education in primary schools

and alternative approaches to assessment should be preferred. No forms of alternative assessment such as process oriented portfolios, self-assessment, peer-assessment, group projects, or co-operative learning tasks (Ross, 2005) were observed in language classes or accounted for in the interviews. The use of self-assessment and peer-assessment activities could enhance children’s understanding of learning goals and becoming aware of learning targets, however, they were rarely used in the observed language classes.

Children’s interviews made it clear that they were sensitive to issues of assessment. First of all, they expected fair assessment from their language teachers and they were very sensitive to the feeling of injustice. Children remembered clearly when they believed they were not assessed fairly:

I had to beg the teacher of German to give me a five because I knew all the words, but she said I had made some spelling mistakes, so I would get only a four. [S5CH3] But I also had mistakes, and I got a five.

[S5CH1] It wasn’t fair! [S5CH3]

They were often not aware of the exact criteria of assessment, they did not know why they got worse marks than they had expected. Two children did not know the basis on which their oral performance was judged:

We have oral reports every week. I had to talk about my family, and I got a three, I don’t know why. [S1CH2]

These findings reinforce the importance of meaningful feedback because “feedback is the point at which the teacher models and shapes appropriate performance and teaches the learner how to self-assess (Hamp-Lyons, 2007, p.491).