Assessments for the English Language Learner - Research Paper Example

“The present culture of testing has placed an increased amount of emphasis on the development of state standards, high-stakes testing, and the use of rigid curricular programs” (Brantley, 2007, p. 28). Therefore, an educational assessment is mandatory in today’s highly competitive world. There are three types of assessments; formal, alternative and informal. The purpose of implementing a classroom assessment system is to improve instruction and student achievement. The English language learners are rapidly growing in the population of the U.

S classroom. As such, considerate amount of thoughts and training need to be implemented when designing and administering educational assessments. There are many factors that need to be kept in mind while selecting educational assessments for students. Language barriers and educational background factors are the main factors. In the first factors, language barrier factors, different issue like different linguistics background, Levels of proficiency in English, and levels of proficiency of native languages are the three main barriers that should be addressed in the assessment.

In the educational background factors issues such as degrees of formal schooling in native languages, degrees of formal schoolings in English language, and exposure to standardized testing should be addressed in the assessment. While administering an educational assessment, it crucial for the classroom teacher to provide the English Language Learning students with fair and appropriate assessments while keeping in mind the various factors that could hamper their academic growth. It is pivotal for the teachers to be knowledgeable about the different assessment types as to provide adequate and fair assess of their students’ progress as well as achievements in the class.

As mentioned before, there are three types of assessments; formal, alternative and informal. The formal assessment is mainly based in the results of the standardized tests and other formal exams regulated under the test- taking guidelines. In Formal assessment students are assessed on the basis of their written document, test, quiz or essays. The student’s progress is determined based on the data collected on the student’s performance on the tests. Formal Tests are usually used to assess the overall achievement of the student and compare his/ her intelligence with other students as well as to find a student’s strength or weaknesses in a particular topic.

The formal assessment test has its own purposes, advantages and disadvantages. Formal assessment is a good assessment to be implemented to the student to determine their strength and weaknesses. It also evaluates the student’s achievement by comparing their progress with other students. It is appropriate to use the formal assessment to indentify the student’s special needs and it can also improve learning at an individual level for young English language learners. Formal assessments are categorized into separate groups such as norm referenced tests and criterion referenced tests.

The Norm references tests are characterized by strict rules and implementations. These types of tests are mainly used to compare one student to another, one group of students to another group as well as schools. When implementing a norm reference test teachers should implement the test under specific and similar circumstances.