ABSTRACT
Assessment is an ongoing process of gathering evidence to determine what students know, understand and can do. Teachers and schools place a lot of weight on the results students generate on assessment tasks. It is therefore essential to ensure that the tasks used are of good quality. Good assessment tasks assess what they claim to assess; they are valid. Validity will depend on whether the teacher makes a deliberate attempt to ensure that their tasks assess the intended learning from the formal curriculum documents. For English as Additional Language or Dialect learners, the characteristic of validity is critical. Some tasks cannot be ‘accessed’ due to language challenges; they often predominantly assess students’ reading or listening skills rather than the learning that they claim to assess. A major component of assessment validity however, is that it lines up with the intended learning.
