Evaluating and selecting assessments.

Evaluating and selecting assessments.

English as a Second Language (ESL) students have diverse needs that require social-cultural strategies during the assessment. Over the years, there have been rises in the number of students enrolling in schools in the United States who use English as a second language. It has led to a need to adjust the curriculum to cater for the needs of these students. Using assessment as a way to reform the education system can have negative impacts on ESL learners. By use of the twelve checklist items that supplement the principles teachers use to improve assessments in the article, teachers can make evaluation more efficient. The two essential checklist items are reliability and feedback when evaluating assessments for the ELL students.

Feedback entails teachers giving pointers or instructions to students in their assignments to point out what is expected from them. Feedback can either be positive or negative, but the teacher should give positive feedback to students. It is because giving feedback is not only a way of assessment but has a psychological impact on the student. Feedback not only improves the performance but also creates a method of interaction between the students and the teachers. Teachers are able to put forward to students what is expected of them by engaging them in different assessments, activities and assignments. However, as much as feedback is valuable, teachers should be aware that some students will expect to be given more input than is allowed. Teachers should, therefore, be on the lookout for cases and know how to regulate the information.

Feedback is valuable because of both the student and teachers. Regular feedback through assignments and activities helps students revise their work and improve the quality of work they will present in the next tasks. It also allows teachers to present their expectations and understand the needs of their students. Quality feedback is vital in guiding the student on the next step expected of them. Examples of feedback include scores and reports from teachers. Providing feedback is not only significant at an individual level with students, but also giving instructions in class to all the students enables the student to understand the importance of the message. It encourages a student to realize that he not the only one with the issue.

Reliability is also crucial in the evaluation of assessments because it shows how dependable the evaluation is based on different judgments, tasks and time. For an assessment to be reliable, it has to provide consistent conditions for all the learners. Consistency includes making sure that all the students have the resources required to complete a particular assignment. Resources include materials and ample time to complete the tasks. However, this is still a challenge because students have different speeds of performance. Analyzing equal functions that assess the same topics or activities within a period of time ensures that you get reliable assessment methods

Reliability can, however, be challenged by several factors such as environmental conditions that distract the student, ability and student’s skill, health condition, motivation, language ambiguity, observer bias, among others. Making accommodations to help in overcoming some of the factors help the assessment process be reliable. These assessments include providing guidelines using similar models to the questions and providing rubrics that show the scoring guidelines. Eliminating distracters and providing solutions to some of these factors ensures reliability.

Among the twelve checklist items, I find the two things mentioned above to be the most important. This is because reliability and feedback ensure the efficiency of an assessment program by making it dependable and informative. A reliable assessment makes sure that all the factors that affect performance are analyzed in different situations. Feedback also ensures that the student and the teacher are in communication concerning the expected return.