ABSTRACT
One of the most difficult parts of English teaching is ascertaining how much each student has learnt by a particular stage of the lesson. Inexperienced teachers find that this is the ‘holy grail’ of teaching as experienced teachers seem to know who is learning in their classroom and they know when and how to assess the learning too. I don’t think there is any ‘magic bullet’ to explain how assessment can be used in an English classroom as there are too many variables such as size of the class; ability range within the class; topic being studied; nature and type of assessment used within the English department and the list goes on. This chapter is going to focus on assessment strategies that can be used in the English classroom and how they will help you to work out who has made progress in your lessons and who has not. At this point, it is probably useful to clarify the various assessment strategies that could be used and their Assessment for Learning (Af L), assessment as learning and assessment of learning. Assessment for Learning is formative assessment. This means that various strategies are put in place in the classroom for students and teachers to engage in a dialogue about the students’ knowledge and learning. The information that the teacher receives about the level of learning is meant to affect the subsequent teaching of a future lesson or of the very next activity within a lesson. Af L should provide the teacher with information about what the students have learned and then the teacher should adjust their teaching accordingly. For example, repeat an idea or a concept in a different way as a number of students don’t understand it or move on quickly to a new idea as the teacher realises that many of the students have been taught an idea before so already know it. Af L was a key concept introduced by Black and Wiliam (1998) and is an integral part of school improvement.
