ABSTRACT
Louis Porcher refers to assessment as the “key” to understanding the process of teaching and learning, because aside from its “ordinary” function of assessing learners’ knowledge and performances, it also reflects program and course goals and objectives. Classroom-based assessment practices and perspectives reveal, more than any other educational instrument, how various cultures and societies view and put to practice the objectives and processes of language teaching and learning. In addition, assessment procedures in language classes reflect specific sociocultural, political, and economic demands and needs of learning the language in a given culture and society. In the context of English as a foreign language in Iran, students’ use of English is mostly for consulting English resources related to their fields of study available in English. Assessment is a social construct, created by individuals or institutions within specific cultures, societies, and contexts for meeting specific classes’, instructors’, or institutions’ goals and objectives for language teaching and learning.
