Students Perceptions of Homework as a Formal Assessment Method

Abstract

Whether it is formative or summative, an assessment which is explained in Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (2015) as "an opinion or judgement about sb/sth that has been thought about" (p.75) plays a significant role in completing the language education process because of its ability to provide feedback. Choosing the right assessment method is crucial for language teachers since most classical assignments create anxiety and make the process problematic for the students. Whether the classical assignments evaluate the students' knowledge, or they understand that their grammar level for a definite time is another discrepancy to clarify. By taking into consideration those, this qualitative study focuses on the problems of classical exams and tries to reveal how beneficial and desirable can a difficult homework be as a formal assessment method. An unstructured interview form was used to collect data from 40 prep-class students who were selected using a convenience sampling method to understand their perceptions about homework as a formal assessment method. Results showed that although 32 of those students had difficulties while preparing the homework, most of them liked the process as well and think that this kind of homework is more beneficial than classical exams. Moreover, more than half of the participants' desire to have such homework instead of classical exams despite homework's difficulties, and they also express that this homework increased their language knowledge.