What am I Assessing?

Resources

Books

Alderson, J.C. (2000). Assessing reading. NY: Cambridge University Press.

Buck, G. (2001). Assessing listening. NY: Cambridge University Press.

McKay, P. (2006). Assessing young language learners. NY: Cambridge University Press.

Articles

Rubenstein, G. (2008). Discusses how "old-school accountability tests are crude measurements of student learning." and "The solution: Build a better test."

Reinventing the Big Test: The Challenge of Authentic Assessment. Edutopia.

Online Resources

Specification Grids – These grids are taken from the ACTFL guidelines and are useful for choosing appropriate tasks and text types when constructing assessments targeting specific proficiency levels for the four skills.

Novice	Intermediate	Advanced	Superior
Reading Listening Writing Speaking	Reading Listening Writing Speaking	Reading Listening Writing Speaking	Reading Listening Writing Speaking
Note: All grids are in PDF format (requires Acrobat Reader).

An example of how the specification grids are used in developing a classroom assessment can be seen in the Miniguide for Assessment Development (PDF) which contains a framework to help teachers create speaking and writing tasks and tests that are directly linked to classroom practice. It includes tools and worksheets that can be tailored to a variety of classroom contexts and a range of students' needs, using a model based on extensive research and piloting done by the Minnesota Articulation Project members and the Assessment Team at CARLA.

Assessment Systems, Inc. – Vendor of testing and statistical software packages.

DiscoverySchool.com – Tools to create quizzes, puzzles, worksheets, and exercises.

English-Forum.com – Exercises for ESL/EFL students.

Hot Potatoes™ – software for educational purposes from the Humanities Computing and Media Centre at the University of Victoria includes six applications, that enables you to create interactive multiple-choice, short-answer, jumbled-sentence, crossword, matching/ordering and gap-fill exercises for the World Wide Web. Hot Potatoes is free of charge for non-profit educational users who make their pages available on the web. Other users must pay for a licence. Information on purchasing a license for non-educational use is available on the Hot Potatoes™ site.

Quia offers the most extensive collection of educational tools and templates. Quia allows teachers to create tests, quizzes for students to take online. Tests are scored and the information is saved on Quia’s server. A 30-day free trial period is available. Individual subscriptions are $49. per year. Reduced rates for groups of teachers from the same school.

Quizlab.com is a resource for teachers to develop online quizzes, reports for parents and students with features that allow  automatic scoring and recording, secure student data, student progress tracking and collaboration with colleagues. A 30-day free trial period is available. Individaul accounts are $29.95 per year. Reduced rates for groups of teachers from the same school.

QuizStar – a free web-based program that teachers can access from work or home to create quizzes that students can take and review online, including multi-lingual quizzes and review their quiz scores.

Spellmaster.Com – allows teachers to create Flash vocabulary exercises.

Webauthor from the Language Resource and Research Center (LaRRC) at the University of Pennsylvania allows you to create online activities and exercises.

General Assessment Resources