Reflection.

For my language assessment TSL3112 subject, I was given a coursework. In the

task, I need to observe my partner, Khairul Hafizds teaching in class and pay special
attention to the test type employed by Khairul Hafizd to assess any language skill(s) or
language content. Take note of the test employed and evaluate it with regards to four
basic principles of language assessment. Then, I need to write a report of my
observation and comment on the strengths & weaknesses of the test and suggest
improvements to make it more effective. In part two of the task, I need to identify one
language skill or language content area I wish to teach. I need to come out with a
lesson plan. Design a test or an assessment task that can be used to assess the
language skill or content area identified. After completing those tasks, I managed to
learn many things regarding designing, constructing and using a test or an assessment
task in the ESL primary classroom.
After completing the first task, I managed to see the importance of language
assessment principles. Throughout my observation, I only focused on practicality,
reliability, validity, and authenticity of the assessment. First, I learned that practicality
refers to the logistical, down-to-earth, administrative issues involved in making, and
giving and scoring an assessment instrument. These include cost, ease of scoring, and
the amount of time it takes to construct and to administer and ease of interpreting the
result. A test that fails to meet such criteria is impractical (Mousavi, 2009, p.518). From
my observation, Khairul Hafizd which was my practicum partner, managed to follow this
principles and the result was effective. As for reliability principle, I learned that a reliable
test is consistent and dependable. If you give the same test to the same student or
matched student on two different occasions, the test should yield similar results. Again
from my observation, I learned that a teacher needs to consider a number of factors that
can contribute to unreliable assessment and the examples of factors include the
students, the scoring, and the test itself. The careful specification of an analytical
scoring instrument however can increase both inter- and intra-rater reliability (J.D.
Brown, 1991). Based on that, in my opinion, to create a reliable assessment, a teacher

needs to master the environment of the class and need to imagine as if he or she is the
test-takers.
From all the principle that I managed to observe in my observation task, I
designed an assessment that can be used in a lesson to assess language skills. There
is some new knowledge I have gained in designing, constructing and using a test or an
assessment task in the ESL primary classroom. I only focused on the principles of
language assessment to complete this task.
The first thing that I did before designing my assessment for my lesson was doing some
research on the topic and the level of the target group. For my lesson, I choose year
four as my target group and the topic that I chose was invention. This is because; I want
to create an assessment that can provide useful information yet attractive for my pupils.
I chose this topic because pupils in year four were always interested in airplanes. I
think that using invention as the main topic will definitely attract pupils interest and
make my assessment more authentic. Furthermore, according to Chun (2006), many
test types fail to stimulate real world tasks. I want the pupils to be inspired by those
airplanes and create more useful invention in the future.
To begin my assessment, I think that I should carefully look at everything that I
think my students should know or be able to do. In my lesson, I wanted my pupils to be
able to answer questions based on text. Then, my assessment should make the
students to read the text and answer the objectives questions. The instruction of the
assessment is important for my pupils to completely understand on how to complete the
task given. I have created a simple paper fighting jet to be shown to the pupils. The
reason I created the jet was to let pupils create their own paper jet. I wanted to create
an authentic assessment and gain pupils interest in the assessment.
Besides that, I manage to learn on drawing up test specifications. I learnt that test
specifications for classroom use can be an outline of my test. I need to think of my test
specifications as a blueprint of the test that include a description of its content, item
types, tasks, skills to be included, and how the test will be scored. According to
Davidson and Lynch (2002), the specs are my guiding plan for designing an instrument

that effectively fulfills my desired principles, especially validity. Based on that, I choose a
picture description text for my students. I choose to show pictures together with the text
because it can help my pupils to understand better about what is the text was about.
Other than that, I learnt that to administering the test, I need to help students to achieve
optimal performance. When I create and selecting method for my assessment, I learnt
that administering my assessment need teacher and students collaboration. In my view,
student did not know what they should achieve during the end of the lesson. As the
teacher need to make my assessment driven toward the lesson objectives. So, my
instructions toward my students need to be clear and easily understood by the pupils.
The assessment need to be done by their own or with guidance. I cannot expect all of
my pupils fully understand on completing the assessment correctly.
Assessment is appraising or estimating the level or magnitude of some attribute
of a person (Mousavi, 2009, p. 36). In educational practice, assessment is an ongoing
process that encompasses a wide range of methodological techniques. Based on that, I
need to be aware that creating an assessment require a strategy and a good planning
that involve various aspect. As I experienced in completing this task, objectives of the
lesson should be the guideline of the assessment. So, my assessment need to provide
a good indicator on how effectives were my lesson based on students understanding.
I believed that writing a good reflection can really help me to reflect back all the
process that I had been gone through throughout completing this coursework. The
reflection that I wrote can also be used to review backs all my weaknesses. By doing
so, I can prevent myself from keep repeating the same mistakes over and over. Thus, I
will be able to be a better person and also better teacher in the future. As a conclusion,
the process of completing the TSL 3112 coursework was really an eye-opening
experience to me. I hope that by learning this subject I will be able to gain more new
knowledge and experience in order to prepare myself to be a good teacher of English in
the future.