ABSTRACT
The focus of this chapter is on the Monitoring and Assessing component of language curriculum design. Many language teachers around the world are in a situation where the way in which their students are assessed is strongly influenced, if not completely determined, by external authorities such as the Ministry of Education, an examinations board or the administrators of their school. This can lead to the phenomenon of washback, where teaching and learning activities in the classroom concentrate on what the students need to do to pass a major external test or examination, rather than on the full range of learning objectives set out in the curriculum (Nation and Macalister, 2010, pp. 116–117). However, university teachers in countries like New Zealand have more freedom to plan the assessment of their courses in keeping with the principles of good curriculum design being exemplified in this book. Ideally, course assessment should be an integral component of curriculum planning, so that there is a direct relationship between the goals of the course and the criteria by which each student's achievement in the course is judged. Assessment has a significant role not just in the final result but also in monitoring learner progress during the course.
