Perceptions and Beliefs of EFL Students Regarding Classroom Assessment at a Colombian University

Abstract

The higher education institution, where the present study is conducted, proposes in its school handbook that a formative and democratic learning assessment approach should prevail in all academic activities. In the English as a Foreign Language TeacherEducation Program at this university, eighty percent of students’ grades come from summative testing, and the teachers are the ones who regularly make the decisions regarding any assessment criteria. That is, the formative and democratic componentsare not present in the process. To delve deeper into these aspects, we have inquired students on their perceptions and beliefs concerning classroom assessment and suggestions to improve the process. A small-scale qualitative research study wasconducted with 49 participants. The data collected through questionnaires, focus-group interviews, and narratives allowed us to organize the findings according to three emerging categories: students’ perceptions of assessment as Assessment of Learning (aol), Assessment for Learning (afl), and suggestions for improving the overall language evaluation process. The different concepts provided by the participants go from believing that classroom evaluation constitutes a procedure to elicit rote reproduction to that of perceiving it as an opportunity to enhance students’ formation. Actions for improving assessmentgo from particular procedural aspects to those related to a more general approach.

English Language Learners’ Perception and Motivation Towards Exam Format: A Qualitative Study

“…Short-answer questions are typically composed of a brief prompt that demands a written answer that varies in length from one or two words to a few sentences. This type of question format aligns with a common student perception of assessment, which emphasizes rote memorization (Mosquera & Meléndez, 2021). " They also have a simple, straightforward structure (Cunningham, 1998).…”

The Impact of Student Teachers’ Pre-Existing Conceptions of Assessment on the Development of Language Assessment Literacy within an LTA Course

“…According to Brown (2008), students conceive assessment in four ways, i.e., the assessment makes students accountable, is irrelevant because it is bad or unfair, improves the quality of learning, and is enjoyable. The methodology to research the CoA has been employed multiple times by researchers (Brown and Remesal 2012;Brown et al 2014;Opre 2015;Yetkin 2018;Lutovac and Flores 2021;Herrera Mosquera and Meléndez 2021). However, the purpose of contextualizing student CoA, pursued in this study, calls for a finer adjustment to a particular teaching/learning environment (the course curriculum, characteristics of the cohort of students, pedagogical professionalization), and a specification of CoA relevant for this particular context.…”