Effective Use of Performance-based Assessments to Identify English Knowledge and Skills of EFL Students in Ecuador

Abstract

Abstract-This paper seeks to understand how EFL teachers can effectively use performance-based assessments to determine the English knowledge and skills that EFL students have developed during the teaching-learning process. It also presents the advantages of this type of assessment as well as its challenges and the way these challenges can be overcome. Through this investigation, EFL teachers in Ecuador and around the world will be able to get valuable information that will guide their assessment practices in EFL classrooms.

Preparatory Work for Performance-Based Assessment in a Linguistics Course at Hai Phong University

“…The conspicuous impact of PBA is learners can be exposed to both others' performances and teachers' direct constructive remarks to improve their amount and quality of knowledge and the skills they have acquired from which a pathway for their future learning can be traced more effectively. Especially, PBA not only helps teachers build up their learner capacity, but offers them the self-reflection (Espinosa, 2015). Observing the performance of learners who come from different backgrounds and own different innate capacities can enable teachers to realize their own strengths and weaknesses.…”

“…Secondly, some teachers can ever experience the unsuccessful execution or the inconclusive results of PBA (Stiggins, 1994;Lai, 2011) because conducting PBA in classrooms requires a set of criteria such as students' knowledge, students' manner, and students' problem-solving skill, whereas traditional standardized tests measure the result conclusively, for instance just true or false. It is also a time-consuming assessment tool (Espinosa, 2015) in design, administration and assessment. To make the matter worse, the reliability and validity of PBA are questioned when scores and grades can change across the times and across the teachers (Espinosa, 2015).…”

“…It is also a time-consuming assessment tool (Espinosa, 2015) in design, administration and assessment. To make the matter worse, the reliability and validity of PBA are questioned when scores and grades can change across the times and across the teachers (Espinosa, 2015). Furthermore, there are irrelevant constructs like gender, ethnicity, race, linguistic background, and socioeconomic status which should be cared when PBA is conducted (Lam, 1995).…”

“…To be more specific, Brown (2003), Van Tessal Baskha (2013) and Espinosa (2015) have made further recommendations. Initially, the goal of the performance should be stated.…”

“…Many scholars disseminate the increasing significance of assessment for learning and assessment as learning, including performance-based assessment (PBA) in the circle of teaching, learning and assessment (Stiggins, 2002;Brown, 2003;Lai 2001;Đoàn, 2014;Lê, 2014;Espinosa, 2015;Dương, 2016). Regarding the education scenario of Vietnam, Vietnamese Ministry of Education (MOET) has set one of the primary realizations of the objective "holistically innovating the teaching and learning of foreign languages in Vietnam's national education system" as "innovating the methods implemented for assessment and evaluation in foreign language training" (the project "Teaching and Learning Foreign Languages in Vietnam's National Education System, period 2008-2020" signed on 30/9/2008).…”