Microsoft Word language assessment theory with practice

Learning outcomes
After finishing this chapter, readers will be able to: 
● Identify the features of formative speaking and writing assessment 
tasks that are in line with good practices. 
● Evaluate formative speaking and writing tests more critically. 
● Design formative speaking and writing test tasks. 
● Evaluate speaking and writing performances following formative 
assessment rating scales. 
Introduction 
This chapter will discuss the productive skills and how to assess them, 
then will identify the features of formative speaking and writing assessment 
tasks.
A. Productive Skills and Types of Assessment 
Language skills are often divided into receptive and productive skills. 
Reading and listening are placed in the first category, and here “meaning is 
extracted from the discourse” (Harmer, 2007, p. 265). That is, we receive 
the language, analyses the structures and decode their meaning to 
understand what we read and listen to. Speaking and writing are in the latter 
group, and, as the name suggests, learners are expected to put together all 
their knowledge in the foreign language to produce varied oral and written 
texts. It is often observed that both first and foreign language learners 
comprehend more than they produce (Brown, 2006).  
Since the introduction of the idea of “teaching language as a system of 
communication rather than as an object of study” (Bérešová, 2011, p. 12) 
productive skills, that were ignored in the past (Hatipoğlu, 2017a, 2017b, 
2017c, 2021), have moved to the centre of foreign language education. With 

---

Assessment of Language Skills: Productive Skills
167 
this increased level of importance came the greater demand for the creation 
of authentic, valid and reliable writing and speaking assessment practices 
and tools both in high-stakes exams and in language classes.  
The assessment of the productive skills can be done using summative 
and formative procedures. Bloom et al. (1971), in their now classic 
“Handbook of formative and summative evaluation of student learning” 
define summative evaluation as the “type of evaluation used at the end of a 
term, course, or program for purposes of grading, certification, evaluation of 
progress, or research on the effectiveness of a curriculum, course of study, 
or educational plan” (p. 117). That is, summative evaluation provides 
information using which the overall value of an educational programme can 
be judged (Scriven, 1967). With summative assessment, judgements are 
made about “the student, teacher, or curriculum with regard to the 
effectiveness of learning or instruction after the learning or instruction has 
taken place” (Bloom et al., 1971, p. 117). Therefore, the results of 
summative assessment tests are used to 
(i) award or deny a diploma, license, or credential; 
(ii) classify test takers according to defined performance categories 
(e.g., Beginner, Intermediate, Advances or A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, 
C2); 
(iii) assign grades (e.g., Pass/Fail; AA, BA, BB, BC, CC etc.); 
(iv) obtain a measurement of achievement to be used in decision 
making (Bennett, 2011). 
Summative tests are less suited, however, to “provide individual 
diagnostic information about students, to yield effective remediation 
recommendations, to identify specific areas for individualising instruction” 
(Cizek, 2010, p. 3). These are the areas that formative assessment is 
targeting. Formative assessment, differently from summative assessment, is 
student-focused (i.e., purposefully directed toward the students) and 
scrutinises how students receive the information presented by the teacher 
and how well they understand and apply it rather than describe how 
instructors deliver the teaching material (Bennett, 2011). Formative 
assessment is successfully embedded in lesson plans and learning activities, 

---

Language Assessment - Theory with Practice
168 
and it is administered midstream in the course of some unit of instruction. 
Its primary purpose usually is one or a combination of the following (Ayas 
et al., 2020; Fisher & Frey, 2007; Greenstain, 2010):
(i) identify the gap: identify each student’s strengths and 
weaknesses and compare them to the desired outcomes;
(ii) feedback: provide tailor-made feedback that is comprehensible 
and relevant to the students so that they can act on it (i.e., the 
feedback provided by the teachers has to be specific to each 
student, constructive and motivating); 
(iii) learning progress: help students to be aware of their 
development processes, aid them in guiding their own learning, 
revising their work, and gaining self-evaluation skills;
(iv) student involvement: since formative assessment is embedded 
in the learning process and students and teachers work together 
to achieve curriculum goals, teachers should ensure that 
students are given a voice in their assessment. Collaborative 
learning that informs instruction and guides students to the 
next stage of their development can be achieved by
(a) providing students with various assessment options and 
allowing them to choose the ones they feel most 
comfortable with (e.g., after reading a book, some might 
decide to summarise it by drawing a picture, others by 
creating a diagram, a three-D model or even a dress, 
while still others might choose to write a rap song); 
(b) giving students more responsibility toward their learning 
by making them a part of the planning conversations 
around classroom-based assessment (e.g., encourage 
students to be problem-solvers; help them do research 
about topics discussed in class and relate them to their 
strengths and weaknesses); 
(c) training students select, apply and later create scoring 
rubrics that will help them evaluate their work and the 
work of their peers; 

---

Assessment of Language Skills: Productive Skills
169 
(d) frequently employing self- and peer-evaluation in class. 
(v) adaptation of instruction: following the feedback received 
from the students, teachers decide what to do next: continue 
with the following topic or use the data collected from the 
students, to make responsive adjustments to their instruction 
(e.g., use new instruction methods, techniques and materials to 
explain the topic once more so that it meets the needs of a 
bigger number of students in your class); 
(vi) no student left behind: support the idea that every student can 
thrive if supported with appropriate instruction and feedback; 
(vii) parent-teacher cooperation: provide student families with 
information about the development of the student to improve 
collaboration between parents and teachers; 
In exam-oriented contexts (e.g., Greece, Korea, Turkey; see Choi, 
2008; Hatipoğlu, 2010, 2016; Lambourdi, 2014; Tsagari, 2011), large-scale 
summative assessment (e.g., LGS, OSS) is more visible to the public. 
However, formative classroom assessment is, arguably, the most important 
kind of assessment as it is the one that supports students’ learning and 
informs teachers’ teaching (Brookhart, 2012). Therefore, this chapter 
discusses formative assessment techniques for evaluating speaking and 
writing in English as a foreign language.