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circle. Thus, monitoring and assessment must take account of the environ-
ment in which the course will be used, the needs of the learners, and prin-
ciples of teaching and learning. Table 7.1 lists some of the factors to consider.
Guidelines for Monitoring and Assessment
In Table 7.1, we can see that monitoring and assessment can have both
informational and affective goals. That is, monitoring and assessment can
provide a teacher and learners with information about the learners present
knowledge and progress, and it can also be a means of encouraging involve-
ment and participation.
Types of Monitoring and Assessment
The purpose of the monitoring and assessment part of curriculum design is
to make sure that the learners will get the most benefit from the course. This
involves carefully observing the learners and the course, and suggesting
changes to the course and the way it is run. Assessment may also simply be
expected to be a normal part of curriculum design. The person designing
the course may also be expected to design the assessment for the course. Let
us look at the major types of monitoring and assessment that can occur as
part of a course.
1 Placement assessment The learners are assessed at the beginning of
a course to see what level of the course they should be in. The aim of
this testing is to ensure that the course is not going to be too easy or too
difficult for the learner.
2 Observation of learning While the course is running, the activities
that the learners do are carefully monitored to see if each particular
108 Monitoring and Assessment
Table 7.1 Monitoring and assessment guidelines
ENVIRONMENT Learners The learners should feel good about their
progress.
Teachers The teacher should be able to assess and correct
the outcomes to the activities.
The teacher should have time to assess and
correct the outcomes to the activities.
Situation The assessment should be economical.
The assessment may need to match with the
external testing set by the education department,
a government ministry or testing agency.
NEEDS Lacks The course should show that the learners are
increasing their knowledge of the language.
Wants The course should show the learners that they
are learning to do what they want to do.
Necessities The course should show that the learners are
getting better at tasks they will need to do after
the course.
PRINCIPLES Two of the principles described in Chapter 4 have particular
relevance to monitoring and assessment.
" As much as possible, the learners should be interested and
excited about learning the language and they should come to
value this learning.
" Learners should receive helpful feedback which will allow
them to improve the quality of their language use.
activity is likely to achieve its learning goal. This involves technique
analysis and classroom observation.
3 Short-term achievement assessment At regular intervals during
the course, the learners may be monitored to see what they are learning
from the course. These pieces of monitoring may take the form of
weekly tests, the keeping of achievement records such as graphs of read-
ing speed, charts of writing improvement and self-assessment records.
This short-term assessment can occur on a daily or weekly basis. It is
called achievement assessment because it examines items and skills
drawn from the course.
4 Diagnostic assessment In order to plan a programme, it is useful to
know where learners strengths and weaknesses lie and where there are
gaps in their knowledge. Diagnostic assessment tries to diagnose or
locate areas of need. It can be done through interpreting the results of
placement tests, achievement testing and proficiency testing, through
observing the learners in learning tasks and language use tasks, inter-
viewing learners and learner self-assessment, and through the use of
Monitoring and Assessment 109
diagnostic tests. The aim of diagnostic assessment is to find the gaps and
weaknesses and provide a remedy for them.
5 Achievement assessment Usually at the end of a course, and perhaps
at one or two other points during the course, the learners are assessed on
what they have learned from the course. This may have the purpose of
examining the effectiveness of the course as much as testing the learners.
6 Proficiency assessment Proficiency assessment is based on items
drawn from the language as a whole rather than from the content of a
particular course. It tries to measure a learner s language knowledge in
relation to other learners who may have studied different courses, or in
relation to areas of language knowledge that are based upon an analysis
of the language. Proficiency assessment has the goal of seeing where
learners have reached in their knowledge of the language. Some of the
better-known proficiency tests include the TOEFL test (the Test of
English as a Foreign Language) and the IELTS test (the International
English Language Testing System). These tests are offered for a fee on a
regular basis throughout the world. They are often used to help decide if
international students can be admitted to an English-medium university.
The Vocabulary Size Test (Nation and Beglar, 2007) is a proficiency
measure of vocabulary size. Teachers can make their own proficiency
tests, however, and proficiency can be assessed through scales and
checklists.
Let us now look at each of these six kinds of assessment in more detail and
see the range of assessment options available for each of them. While doing
this we will look briefly at important considerations in assessment such as
criterion-referenced and norm-referenced tests, tests of language knowledge
and language use, performance objectives, and determining the reliability,
validity and practicality of assessment instruments. These are all issues of
considerable importance in assessment but can only be touched on here.
They are all worth following up in more detail in more specialised texts on
language testing.
Monitoring and assessment is an important part of the wider field of
course evaluation which is taken up in the next chapter.
Placement Assessment
Placement assessment is used to decide what level of the course a learner
should enter, what class the learner should join, and whether the learner
should join the course at all.
Placement assessment usually occurs under environment constraints. It
often has to be done just before a course begins. The results have to be
available quickly. The learners are largely unknown and may be confused
about the course they wish to do. The learners may not perform their best
110 Monitoring and Assessment
on a placement test because they are unfamiliar with some of the test
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