AMIRA SHAHIRAH BINTI

LOKMAN
[PART 2A]
WRITTEN REPORT ON CLASSROOM OBSERVATION
1.0 Introduction
Brown (2003) claims that assessment is an integral part of the teaching and learning
process and without the assessment, the achievement of the learning objectives could not be
determined. In constructing an assessment for pupils, teacher should consider several
aspects especially the student and the aim of the assessment. It is said that assessment
integrated with relevant instruction is an extremely powerful teaching tool. (Linking
Classroom Assessment with Student Learning, 2002). Therefore, it is important for the
teacher to ensure that the test items of the assessment are well-engaged with the pupils by
considering the principles of language assessment such as practicality, authenticity, validity
and also reliability.

2.0 Observation
On 18th August 2015, I was given an opportunity to observe an hour English lesson
which was carried out by my cooperating teacher in SK Seri Banai. The class taught was 3
Arif which happened to be one of the classes that I taught for my practicum. This class
consists of 22 pupils with level of proficiency in English range from intermediate to advance
level. The topic of the lesson was on Unit 13: I See Numbers where the language content
was basically focusing on numbers around the pupils. The focused language skill of the
lesson was on writing with an integrated skill of reading. The content standard and learning
standard chosen by the teacher were as follow:

TSL 3123 LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT

AMIRA SHAHIRAH BINTI

LOKMAN
3.1 Pupils will be able to form letters and

3.1.2 able to write numerals in neat legible

words in neat legible print including cursive

print with correct spelling:

writing.

(a) numeral form

(b) word form

During this lesson, two assessments were employed by the teacher to assess the
pupils writing skill as well as their understanding on numbers. In the first assessment, the
pupils were asked to match the numbers with their correct spelling in the worksheet provided.
As for the second assessment, the pupils were asked to write the correct spelling of the
numbers given in the worksheet. Thus, based on this observation, I had evaluated the
effectiveness of these two assessments with regards to the appropriate basic principles of
language assessment which include authenticity, practicality, validity and reliability.

2.1 Strengths of the Assessment

After evaluating all the assessments, I found that the content of the assessments was
authentic and engaged well to the pupils surrounding. According to (Brown, 2007),
authenticity can be presented in a way where the topics are meaningful for the learner and
the items of the content are contextualized rather than isolated. As in the presentation stage,
teacher used a picture of a room that portrayed several items or things that related to the
pupils real life such as books and coloured pencils to represent certain amount of numbers.
It was meaningful for the pupils as most of the items were very familiar to them which
eventually enabled the pupils to recognise and spell the numbers in an easier way.

TSL 3123 LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT

AMIRA SHAHIRAH BINTI

LOKMAN
Besides that, I also discovered that the assessments had established one of the basic
principles of language assessment which is validity. (Brown, 2007) stated that face validity is
achieved where the pupils encountered the assessments that constructed in a familiar
structure. Pupils were familiar with the assessment structure such as matching or
sequencing. As in the assessments given by the teacher, pupils were required to match the
numbers with their correct spelling. This familiarity of the assessment structure helped the
pupils to complete the task in a shorter time.
In the aspect of practicality, the assessments done by the teacher was also practical
due to several reasons. (Brown, 2007) claimed that a test that is within the means of financial
limitations, time constraints, ease of administration and scoring can be considered as
practical. The costs of assessments were all within the budgeted limit since all the
assessments carried out by the teacher were only required paper and pencil method.
Furthermore, the instruction given by the teacher on the assessments was also simple and
clear and this helped the pupils to understand the requirement of the assessment very well.
Thus, the assessments prepared could be avoided from any administrative issues such as
inaccurate instructions in carrying out the assessments.

2.2 Weaknesses of the Assessment

Besides analysing the strengths of the assessments carried out by the teacher, I had
also acknowledged several weaknesses of the assessments in relation to the basic principles
of language assessments. The most obvious aspect that I noticed was the content validity.
According to (Brown, 2007), content validity of the classroom test is demonstrated when the
assessment requires students to perform tasks that were included in the previous classroom
lessons. Based on my observation, as far as I concerned, the teaching content presented by
the teacher in the presentation stage was solely on how to write and spell the numbers in
number form and word form correctly. However, during the production stage, the operation of
TSL 3123 LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT

AMIRA SHAHIRAH BINTI

LOKMAN
addition and subtraction were suddenly being included in the test items of the assessment.
During the observation, I noticed that there were a few of the pupils tend to get confused and
face a problem in completing the task since the teacher did not teach addition or subtraction
in the earlier stage. Thus, the test items of assessment was lacking in the aspect of content
validity as it did not assessed on what had being taught by the teacher in the previous stage.
Apart from that, during the practice stage, I also noticed that most of the pupils
managed to complete the task earlier than the allotted time. This caused them to feel bored
as they need to wait for a few of their friends who required more time to finish the task. This
issue was viewed as less practical since the test items was not well constructed according
to the pupils level of proficiency and estimated time.
Throughout my observation, I had come to realize that the lack of content validity and
practicality in the assessments had hugely affected the reliability of the assessments. There
were several factors that influenced the reliability of the assessments prepared by the
teacher. One of the factors was on the test administration. The test items of the assessment
constructed in production stage was not coherent to the teaching content in the earlier stage.
It is claimed that the difficulty of the assessment should appropriate for the students who take
them (Linking Classroom Assessment with Student Learning, 2002). In my opinion, the
teaching content and the test items on numbers prepared by the teacher were too easy for
the pupils with average to advance level of proficiency. It was because most of the pupils
already knew on the spelling of the numbers since they had learnt in the previous year. The
structure and test items were also too simple and not well constructed as well as did not
stimulate the pupils higher order thinking skills. Therefore, the reliability of the test could be
affected. However, it could be reliable if the assessment during the practice stage was used
for weak pupils.

TSL 3123 LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT

AMIRA SHAHIRAH BINTI

LOKMAN
3.0 Suggestions for Improvements
There are several improvements that can be done by my cooperating teacher in order
to make the assessments on numbers and writing skill more effective and even better. Firstly,
the teacher could improve her assessment by enhancing the content validity of the
assessments. The teacher should take into account the level of proficiency of the pupils
which range from average to advance by preparing more challenging teaching content in the
presentation stage. In order to make the assessment more effective, the teacher could
increase the level of difficulty of the assessments appropriate to the pupils level. The teacher
could include the operation of addition and subtraction of numbers as the pupils have learnt
these operations in their Mathematics subject with a condition this teaching content has been
introduced earlier.
By enhancing the validity of the assessment, the reliability of the assessment could
also be achieved successfully. The teacher could improvise the reliability of the assessment
in term of the test administration. It would be better if the teacher strives in ensuring the test
items constructed are coherent with the teaching content of the lesson. The teacher could
also construct the test items that really emphasize on the learning standard of the lesson
where by the end of the lesson, pupils will be able to write and spell the numbers both in
number form and word form. Therefore, the matching structure of the assessment could be
improvised to a more challenging structure which requires the pupils to write the numbers
both in numeral and word form. Overall, the written assessments established by the teacher
had basically achieved several basic principles of the language assessment. Nevertheless,
the assessments could have been better.

TSL 3123 LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT

AMIRA SHAHIRAH BINTI

LOKMAN
References

Brown, H. D. (2007). Assessing Language Skills. In Teaching by Principles - An Interactive

Approach to Language Pedagogy (pp. 450 - 451). New York: Pearson Education,
Inc.
Linking Classroom Assessment with Student Learning. (2002). Retrieved August 28, 2015,
from

Educational

Testing

Service:

https://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/TOEFL_

Institutional_ Testing_Program/ELLM2002.pdf
Rudner, L., & Schafer, W. (2002). What Teachers Need To Know About Assessment.
Washington: National Education Association.

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