“Tenemos el examen mañana" el profesor dice y el cambio de caras en el estudiante cambia de felicidad, indiferencia o aburrimiento a caras llenas de angustia, ansiedad y todos los síntomas que caracterizan a una persona angustiada. Una evaluación puede dañar la relación afectiva estudiante - profesor, profesor - estudiante; " el profesor " quien ha pasado un tiempo considerable reforzando esta clase de afecto ahora tiene que tratar de evitar que sus estudiantes copien en las evaluaciones. El nuevo sistema de enseñanza por competencias implica acentuar la cooperación y que los profesores sean capaces de fomentar en sus estudiantes a trabajar por pares o pequeños grupos, pero cuando la época de evaluación viene… el trabajar en pequeños grupos se convierte en la acción de copiar, ¿entonces? Los profesores deben estar preparados para afrontar esta clase de situación y en general estar informado y tomar nuevas estrategias para llevar a sus estudiantes por un buen camino y conseguir las mejores técnicas para evaluarlos sin que ellos se den cuenta como tal. Podemos evaluar el conocimiento con ejercicios simples o complejos en clase, según el tema y no mencionar la palabra “examen" si no hasta que ya fueron evaluados.
Palabras clave: Evaluación, evaluar, logro, preguntas abiertas o cerradas, habilidades, objetivos, técnicas, mezcla de, subjetivo, objetivo, enfrentar, prueba de aprovechamiento.
“We have exam tomorrow” the teacher says and the student’s faces change from happiness, indifference or boredom to faces full of anguish, anxiety and all the symptoms which characterize a stressed person. An evaluation can damage the affective relationship student- teacher, teacher- student; “the teacher” who has spent a good time reinforcing this kind of affect now has to try to avoid his students copy. The new system of teaching based on competences implies to emphasize cooperation and teachers proudly ask their students work in pairs or in small groups, but when testing time comes… working in pairs becomes copying, so? Teachers must be prepared to face this kind of situation and overall be informed and take new roles to carry students in a good way and get the best techniques to assess them without notifying. We can evaluate knowledge with simple or complex exercises in class according to the topic without mentioning the word “exam” until it has been done.
Keywords: Assessment, evaluation, achievement, open- ended questions, skills, aims, techniques, jumble, subjective, objective, face, achievement test
An achievement test is something available for the teacher and student similar to assessing progress. It is the aim and content of an achievement test that distinguishes it from other kind of tests.
An achievement test aims to find out how much a student, and the class as a whole have learned and what has been taught, then provide feedback on students’ progress to both teacher and student show effectively what the teacher has taught and to diagnose those areas which have not been well learned by students.
Achievement tests look back over the syllabus that has been covered and look forward that they may indicate directions for future remedial work in class, group or individual level.
The content of an achievement test is indicated by its purpose: it must test what has been taught. This would seem self-evident, but there are reasons why this goal is not always easy to attain. Firstly, some items are more “assessed” than others, so there is a temptation to test what is easier to test rather than what received greater emphasis in class.
Communication or speaking, for example have problems to be tested although rubrics for skills evaluation exist in the new model based on competences. There is an available option to divide the group in two parts and they show to the class their performance through the continuous assessment according to the testing rubrics.
Many techniques are available to evaluate languages and skills, most of them are already familiar to teachers as teaching techniques, but it is important that they also be known by the students, otherwise, the student may make mistakes not so much because of difficulties with the language skill but because of a lack of understanding about what the task requires.
Below there is a table that highlights the use of techniques to the teaching of English in a subjective or objective form in their four skills. It would be useful to be aware of this range because some items let themselves more naturally to be assessed in certain ways, some methods of assessing are better adapted to assess certain aspects of language learning and some techniques are more suitable to certain age groups and ways of thinking.
| Testing focus | Subjective methods | Objective methods |
| Listening | Open- ended questions and answer Note taking Interviews |
Fill in the blanks Information transfer Multiple choice questions Note taking |
| Speaking | Open- ended questions and answers. Interview Role play Express personal and people information |
Fill in the blanks Information transfer True/ false questions Jumbled paragraphs Cloze tests |
| Writing | Guided writing Letter completion Re- writing, information- transfer Free writing Compositions, essays E-mails, tweets, facebook post Biographies |
Black- filling Sentence- joining Jumbled |
| Reading | Open- ended sentence Completion Re- writing Give appropriate responses Comprehension of texts |
Expansion exercises Scrambled exercises Transformation exercises Multiple choice questions Matching Odd- word- out Cloze tests |
Escuela Normal Superior del Estado de Hidalgo, S.C, Testing tesis, Palacios Reyes Sandra Janet, Diciembre 1998.
[a] Escuela Preparatoria Número 2, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Hidalgo, janet_reyes15@hotmail.com