TSL 3123: LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT

TASK C

Name : Hanif Hidayat bin Nor Muhamad
Unit : PISMP TESL 3 Semester 6
I/C Number : 920802-12-5625
Matric Number : 124733

Assessment is broader than testing and measurement because it includes all kinds of
ways to sample and observe students skills, knowledge, and abilities (Linn and Miller, 2005).
This should be the fundamental of all when we are about to assess our pupils. It is clear that
assessment is holistic and could include all the human capital needs. Assessment is not only
focuses on the paper-and pencil exercises, but it could be in informal way such as leadership in
group work and many more. Assessment is known as a yardstick for the teacher to measure
pupils performance from all views, either from the quantitative side or the qualitative side and
even both. In the New Standard Curriculum for primary school, the Ministry of education had
introduced the PT3 examination that really counts pupils performance as a whole. Pupils are
about to assess in many, co-curricular, curricular, human capital and many more in order to
produce a generation that is complete in all of it or most of it.
Teaching and learning process is a process where the pupils gain knowledge and
teacher, as the bridge of delivering knowledge could assess pupils understanding of the
knowledge in formal and informal ways of assessing. Therefore, teacher should provide enough
assessment to the pupils in order to make the learning process a meaningful and could last for a
long term. Maybe the pupils could not see this benefits and all they do are complaining, telling
how they are burden with so many homework and all. On the bright side, it really helps learning
to be an on-going process, as stated in the National Curriculum Philosophy. Teacher should
TSL 3123: LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT
TASK C

consider of all the possibilities that pupils might not be able to finish their work if the teacher give
them homework.
Thus, an alternative way which is the on-going assessment is used. That is the beauty of
KSSR. The pupils are not burdened to do school work at home but teacher will only assess the
pupils understanding throughout the lesson. It is not a must for the teacher to not giving their
pupils homework. It is just a suggestion given by the Ministry of Education. It will also ease the
teacher whereby the teacher could easily monitor the process of learning through the
assessment done right after the teaching process is done by the teacher.
That is the idea my partner and I had in mind. We only assess pupils throughout the
lesson and not giving them homework to do at home. We had implemented our teaching and
learning process to pupils from standard 5 Gigih. As for us, assessment and would only be a lot
easier if the assessment takes it place right after the teaching process is done. It will also
enhance their memory from turning short term memory into a longer term memory. It enables us
to diagnose the problem occurred during learning process and we could act early before the
pupils digest and make their knowledge to be permanent in their mind.
When implementing the assessment to the pupils from that class, I could reflect that the
pupils could really apply and practice it during the assessment process. The pupils were able to
answers the questions given, although there were some pupils who had problems to apply their
understanding and change it in the form of words during writing and oral. We facilitate pupils
with the vocabulary they need and this had eventually motivates pupils to speak and write. We
had focused on reading as the main skills and integrated it with speaking and writing.
Reading could not be assessed by using formal test. Hence, we had nurtured this skill by
letting them answering the worksheet provided by us. The pupils were given opportunity to refer
to the text shown by the teacher. Within this range, we had integrated the reading skill and the
TSL 3123: LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT
TASK C

writing skill together for the pupils to collect information and transfer it into the spaces given. It
will indirectly assess their reading skill in finding information, link it with the questions and
transfer it into the worksheet. This kind of activity was also been implemented by Madam
Kamala whereas she ask her pupils to read and then orally asked the pupils to give answer
based from the pupils understanding.
The principle involved in this activity is validity. If we could specified it, it is connected
with the content validity, a type of validity used in assessment. Content validity makes us
wonder whether the assessment content really covers what the teacher want. We could agree
here that the worksheet provided by the teacher covered all the content that the teacher needed
the pupils to understand and know. It is obvious that valid assessment should have a good and
wide coverage of the topic, which in our lesson; it is all about Thomas Edison.
The assessment should not be assessed by the pupils by pencil and paper exercises
only, but also should be varied and transform to a more creative and innovative ways. Maybe
some of us had heard of the term authentic classroom assessments but few had practice it.
Authentic assessment asks students perform. The performances may be thinking performances,
physical performances, creative performances, or other forms. So performance assessment is
any form of assessment that requires students to carry out an activity or produce a product in
order to demonstrate learning (Airasian, 2005). It may seem odd as this authentic classroom
assessment could jeopardize the teacher capability of controlling and managing the class well. It
is down to the teacher on how well the class is managed. In the KSSR syllabus, performances
such as jazz chants, creative artwork, singing, action song and so on are now being
emphasized in order to build pupils that are capable of interpersonal and also intrapersonal.
Teacher should accept the challenge to teach this sorts of assessment to the pupils rather the
old and traditional way where pupils being focused only with reading and writing. The pupils
TSL 3123: LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT
TASK C

need to be motivated with fun and enjoyable activities and at the same time, the learning
process is on-going and success.
In Malaysian educational field, the education system is only about exam. It is known as
the exam oriented situation as pupils focus more on scoring the written test rather than getting
the knowledge itself. Therefore, the knowledge is not long lasting and after the pupils had
finished the exam, they would abandon the knowledge and did not apply it in the real world. This
type of assessing is not suitable nowadays. True knowledge were ought to be taught and
teacher were only focus on the UPSR, PMR and SPM. Learning is everywhere and we as
teacher, should motivate our pupils to learn and learn and never stop learning. Assessing them
in a more creative way will enhance learning towards the real meaning of getting knowledge and
not the other way around.