Understanding Evaluation, Assessment, and Testing

Teaching a language is a very complex process that involves different factors which need to be taken into account to be successful at it. For instance, teachers need to consider the students, the materials, the environment, the students’ families etc., in order to establish plans that contribute to have a better teaching-learning process. One of the aspects of teaching that is strongly influenced by the aspects mentioned before is the evaluation. Regarding this, there are many misconceptions in relation to what is evaluation, what is assessment, what is testing and the differences among them. As Loannou and Pavlou pointed out: “The terms evaluation, assessment, and testing are often confused and used interchangeably. They do not however, mean the same thing.”(Loannou and Pavlou, 2003, P 4) As a result, teachers are not using and selecting the most appropriate tools to assess and evaluate the learning process of students.  For this reason we believe it is necessary for teachers to have clear each of these concepts, the differences among them and how they are related in order to have clearer criteria in the selection and implementation of instruments that allow them assess students and evaluate the teaching-learning process.

There are many authors defining evaluation. Here two points of view about evaluation will be presented. According to David Nunan (1999), “Evaluation is the collection and interpretation of information about aspects of the curriculum…for decision making purposes” (Nunan, 1999, p85).   Loannou and Pavlou (2003), give a similar definition of evaluation. They state that: “Evaluation is the process of gathering information in order to determine the extent to which a language program meets its goals.” (p.4) As it can be seen evaluation is the part of the teaching process that allows gather and understand information about it, which will be useful not only for teachers but for all the people being part of the teaching process, to make changes, innovate in case something is not working well, confirm if things are going well, strength part of the teaching-learning process and determine if the aims proposed at the beginning of the process are being achieved.

In this sense, the evaluation have been classified according to its purpose. Thus, we will find three different types of evaluation: formative evaluation (the evaluation is carried out as part of the process to see what is working well and what is not), Illuminative evaluation (seeks to find out how different aspects of the program are being implemented), and Summative evaluation (seeks to make decisions about the value of different aspects of the curriculum). (Nunan, 1999,p288-292) For achieving all that, evaluators can make use of tests, questionnaires, observations etc. Also, It is important to bear in mind  that this process should be developed through the course and not only at the end as many people believe. It is necessary to determine how things are working while the process is taking place to make the necessary changes not waiting until the end for doing that.