Evaluation and assessment involve collecting data on the learner’s studying and the effectiveness of the teaching methods mainly to make decisions. Assessment that includes English-language learners, ELL students must acknowledge the linguistic diversity of those students and cater to individual needs ( Wind & Peterson, 2018 ). Assessment should be comprehensive and multidimensional and tailored to the needs of the child being assessed. Thus, the evaluation should include both formal and informal testing and adopt the concepts, policies, and important items as described in the table “Principles and Practices of Sociocultural Assessment” by Smith, Teemant, and Pinnegar (2004) . In this table, feedback and participation expectations are crucial the testing and evaluation of ELL students.
To begin with, feedback is vital to the teacher in finding out the performance of the students and the effort he or she has put in teaching. Feedback is a way of finding loopholes in the education system and the learning process and using it to come up with ideas that can best mend those loopholes ( Smith, Teemant, & Pinnegar, 2004 ). Based on the feedback, the teacher can classify the learners according to their needs and capabilities. Assessment for ELL students should emphasize and support the diverse needs of the students and provide them with an opportunity to study, revise, and give actionable feedback that will improve the teaching and learning of the students.
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Additionally, feedback plays a significant part in decision making concerning the students work and learning. The concept is not only crucial to the teacher but all the other stakeholders, including the student. Therefore, when assessing students, assessors must ensure that the feedback is useful to all the stakeholders. For example, the school administration will decide whether or not to hire more personnel to cater to the diverse needs of the students based on the feedback ( Wind & Peterson, 2018 ). Feedback helps the teacher and students in deciding the best course of action to take to improve the student’s performance. Also, it can help the parent choose the best additional resources for the ELL student. Therefore, the primary goal of assessment is to get feedback concerning the quality of teaching, and learning students have received, and this makes it essential.
On the other hand, participation is essential when it comes to assessment because it provides equal opportunities for students to take part in the process. Assessment for ELL should be appropriate by fairly accommodating the students’ diverse social, cultutural, linguistic and development needs ( Smith, Teemant, & Pinnegar, 2004 ). The assessment needs to provide every student an equal probability of success by offering assistance according to individual needs and an appropriate opportunity for the student to show their capabilities. Therefore, assessment should include both formal and informal testing, which consists of the use of standardized tests, observations, and interviews or gestures ( Wind & Peterson, 2018 ). Using informal testing for ELL students provides them with an opportunity to comprehend and provide feedback concerning the quality of their learning.
Participation is also essential as it allows all the interested stakeholders to take part in the process. Participation should be open by avoiding secrecy in assessment and making it a social process. To achieve openness in testing, teachers should invite parents and students and make them understand the procedure that will be used in the assessment and what is expected of the students ( Darling-Hammond, 2015 ). Other stakeholders should be invited to make the process more social and open. By doing this, the students feel empowered, and because they are aware of what is expected of them, they are likely to perform well in the assessment. Openness ensures that assessment is appropriate for the students by providing content and tasks that are meaningful to the students.
References
Darling-Hammond, L. (2015). Can value added add value to teacher evaluation?. Educational Researcher , 44 (2), 132-137.
Smith, M. E., Teemant, A., & Pinnegar, S. (2004). Principles and practices of sociocultural assessment: Foundations for effective strategies for linguistically diverse classrooms. Multicultural perspectives , 6 (2), 38-46.
Wind, S. A., & Peterson, M. E. (2018). A systematic review of methods for evaluating rating quality in language assessment. Language Testing , 35 (2), 161-192.
