Authentic assessment and tests

At USB, we use authentic assessment in the oral presentations and in the oral exams. There are also authentic activities throughout the course. However, these activities could probably be used to better advantage in the assessment of students, if teachers were better prepared to use rubrics or to record student performance.

The main advantage of authentic assessments is that they are a good reflection of the natural use of language in communication. The doing of the assessment is a real practice and is therefore not time taken away from class for testing. The disadvantage is that the training of teachers and students in the design and use of authentic assessment takes time.

The main advantage of testing is that most people are aware of tests and expect them, so they seem valid and are accepted—even when they could be improved. Other advantages are that you can test a large number of people at the same time and under very similar conditions. The results of tests are often reliable in that various test givers would come to the same conclusions about the performance of the test taker. One disadvantage is that the test can evaluate material in a very different way than it was taught, lowering validity. Also, tests tend to break language skills down to parts that are not reflective of communication.