Assessment of English Language Learners

Standardized assessments are beneficial for ELL in terms of placement, process, and existing ELL programs because it tells us about the student’s background and what they already know and also what they still need to know. Assessment strategies are incorporated as a component of this theoretical overview on the grounds that teachers should make adjustments to their teaching strategies on the knowledge they have of their students' developing skills (Herrell, A.L., & Jordan, M., 2016). Teachers are able to use assessments to “identify students’ English language development levels, strengths, and learning levels and use those results to identify areas to be addressed by differentiated instruction and possible approaches to use” (Herrell, A.L.,

Assessments are integral parts of instruction, they determine whether classroom goals have been achieved, and help teachers know what areas they should focus on and maybe reteach. They are great tools for developing lesson plans and answer questions such as; “do my students possess full understanding of the material?” There are many ways of assessing students’ learning, one of which I have personal experience with are on-the-spot assessments.

The five peer-reviewed articles, in this paper, investigate how changes in language acquisition are measured and how new regulations, in the United States academic standards, affect test practices and test development. New educational ideals have been developed and put in place to help teachers accomplish the task of content evaluation during final exams. English learners are the first to acknowledge that they face a lot of challenges and many of them are due to the inability of language teachers to comprehend their cultural and unique difficulties that arise from the very different approaches in teaching that western educators employ.

Beginning in the 1960’s Dade County Public Schools became one of the first school districts in the country to have a fully bilingual education program due to influx of Spanish students. In1990, The Florida Consent Decree (META) was established in order for English Language Learners to receive free and appropriate public education. The Decree includes Identification and Assessment of ELLs, Equal Access to Appropriate Programming, Equal Access to Other Programming, Personnel, Monitoring, and Outcome Measures. More recently, the Florida State School Board has established six steps to identify and assess English Language Learners (ELL) before they can receive benefits.

They will be given a list of questions about the topic that will be the questions for the speaking test. All studied tenses will be used.

There are many forms of both formal and informal assessment tools and approaches that help teachers evaluate the language development and the progress performance of their students. Assessment approaches are the way teachers assess their students and assessment tools referred to the instruments that utilize to measure each method. Some of those tools includes: Tests, quizzes, projects, classroom performances, tasks, observations, portfolios and standardize tests. Tests and quizzes are given periodically to ensure students comprehend the subject contents. Performance tasks and projects are used to measure students’ accumulated skills and knowledge in problem-solving and critical thinking whereas observations and portfolios are evidences to show students performance and achievement over the period of time. Each of these forms of assessment is very effective when utilized and conducted at an appropriate time.

Britz & Batalova, (2013), reported that the United States (U.S.) has seen an increase in the number of immigrants between 2013 and 2014 by 1 million, or 2.5%. According to the American Community Survey (ACS) data, there are 42.4 million, or 13.3% immigrant living in the U.S. as of 2014. In the same report it was noted that 63.2 million of U.S. households speak a language other than English at home. The U.S. public school system has the challenge to educate this large number of non-English speakers with high standards of learning and quality instruction. Meanwhile, English Language Learners’ (ELLs) students in American public schools are left facing with a multitude of challenges and inequality. One of those challenges

In the article Classroom and Formative Assessment in Second/Foreign Language Teaching and Learning written by Ketabi and Ketabi states the importance of utilizing formative assessments to drive instruction (2014). “Teachers should continuously assess their students in order to help teaching and learning progress” (Ketabi and Ketabi, 2014, p. 435). The article gives a brief overview of different forms of assessments. Ketabi and Ketabi go on to explain the difference between formal and informal assessments. Formal assessments thoroughly planned and developed to acquire evidence about a student’s success in prearranged times while informal assessments are “occasional and unplanned comments and feedback” (Ketabi and Ketabi, 2014, p.436). The article continues to

Elijah is a 2nd grade student who has been classified as an English Language Learner by the Comprehensive English Language Learning Assessment (CELLA) at the school. However, he is not fluent in his native language, which is Spanish. According to Elijah, he does not speak Spanish at home or study it even though his parents speak the language. He could comprehend in Spanish but can only speak a little of the language. Most of the times, he responds to his mother in English. Elijah has one older sister who is married and lives in Georgia, where his family used to live before they moved to Florida, and a younger brother in Kindergarten.

“An assessment activity can help learning if it provides information to be used as feedback, by teachers, and by their [students] in assessing themselves

After completing a lesson, it is important to evaluate the scores to see how successful the learning plan was. It is important to use the appropriate form of evaluation to help determine the overall results. In using instructional content and curricular content, decisions can be made on modifications to the learning plan for this English lesson. The summative assessment consists of ten multiple choice questions and a section where students are to write three sets of sentences using figurative language.

I learned that informal assessments are important to use with students to truly know where the students are in all different aspects of reading and writing, giving great details and information on what the child needs help on and what they are great at. Informal assessments also help the student know that they aren’t being graded

Teaching students with English as their second language comes with its own set of challenges. To effectively teach I first need to understand what the students already know. Through my class Assessment for Learning I was taught not all assessments yield the same information. Formative assessment guides instruction because it is a quick snapshot which identifies what the student has mastered or still needs to work on. Summative assessments are what we stereotypically think of as a test, they are graded and measured to let us know if a student has met a benchmark or standard. When I first started teaching, I corrected homework and did exit slips not realizing how important they were. Now they drive and guide my teaching. These formative assessments are the foundation of the next lesson or small group work.

Another way we accommodate for this student is performance based assessments. Guler (2013, p. 128) looked into assessing English language learners. The researcher felt standard tests are not they best way to assess progress. I have another student who struggles with written exams and does better when he can demonstrate his knowledge verbally or in a smaller setting.

The investigators’ purpose for this investigative study was to align the framework and instruction in high-stakes in testing of English as a Second Language courses. The questions measured the effect of how teachers employ grading rubrics and if instructor participation in the grading training programs offers real benefits to teaching, learning, and measuring students’ progress. The authors pointed out that in Quebec, testing final grades were influenced by up to 50% by grades on final exams. They stated that the remaining 50% of student grades were completely based on in-class activity assessments.