Ⅱ? Working Definition for Performance Assessment
What distinguishes performance assessment from other types of assessments? According to Cooper (1997), performance assessments are tasks which require children to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in response to authentic activities. So in performance assessment, it appears to be that students must perform tasks, and the tasks should be as authentic as possible. Success or failure in the outcome of the tasks, because they are performances, must usually be rated by qualified teachers. The teachers observe the behavior of the students or examine the product that is reflective of that behavior, and apply clearly articulated performance criteria in order to make a judgment regarding the level of proficiency demonstrated by the students (Pierce & O’Malley, 1992). What we use in performance assessments in English classrooms are posters, reports, tasks and projects, or the creation of plays (Cooper, 1997). By making English posters students demonstrate their creativity and imagination in language learning; English reports show students’ reading and writing skills; tasks and projects show students’ abilities to integrate content knowledge across subject areas (interdisciplinary skills and inquiry learning skills); and in the creation of plays students perform what they have learned. In performance assessments students plan, make decisions, apply (their content knowledge), communicate, and co-operate.
The key characteristics for consideration in designing second language performance assessments are (a) collaboration: Do students share in the learning process? (b) context: Are the objectives taught in meaningful tasks? (c) real-word tasks: Are they relevant to our students’ lives now and later? (d) authentic standards: Do they measure what we are really trying to measure?
Ⅲ. Performance assessment and Task-Based Approaches
Second language performance assessment and task-based approaches to language teaching and assessment share a great deal of theoretical and practical common ground. Performance assessments will typically be based on tasks, which will be judged by raters on the basis of some forms of rating scale. Student performance exists across tasks and content areas and observations must be made carefully and frequently by the teacher.
Tasking students perform should be based on needs analysis (including student input) in terms of rating criteria, content and contexts. They should be as authentic as possible with the goal of measuring real-world activities. Sometimes they have collaborative elements that stimulate communicative interactions. They should be contextual and complex. They involve integrated skills with content and are appropriate in terms of number, timing, and frequency of assessment. They are generally non-in-trusive aligned with the daily actions in the language classroom (Norris et al., 1998). Task raters should be appropriate in terms of number raters, overall expertise, and familiarity and training in use of the scale. The rating scale should be based on appropriate categories of language learning and development, breadth of information regarding learner performance abilities, and standards that are both authentic and clear to students. Tasks are to enhance the reliability; performance assessments should be combined with other methods for gathering information (for instance, self-assessments portfolios, conferences, classroom behaviors, and so forth).
Ⅳ. Definitions of Tasks
There are various definitions of tasks. Here we list a few:
1.Long (1985:89); A task is “a piece of work undertaken for oneself or for others, freely or for some reward. Thus, examples of tasks include painting a fence, dressing a child, filling out a form … , and helping someone across a road. In other words, by ‘task’ is meant the hundred and one things people do in everyday life, at work, at play, and in between.”
2.? Richards, Platt and Weber (1986:289): A task is “ an activity or action which is carried out as the result of processing or understanding language (i.e. as a response)” .
3. Nunan (1989:10): A communicative task is “ a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form. The task should also have a sense of completeness, being able to stand alone as a communicative act in its own right.”
4.Skehan (1995): A task is “an activity in which meaning is primary; there is some sort of relationship to the real world; task completion has some priority; and the assessment of task performance is in terms of task outcome.”
5.Foreign Language Teaching in Hong Kong’s School: The task-based approach aims at providing opportunities for the learners to experiment with and explore both spoken and written language through learning activities which are designed to engage learners in the authentic, practical and functional use of language for meaningful purposes.
Ⅴ.? Applying Performance Assessment in Task-based language teaching
In a performance Assessment and task-based language teaching, the teacher must create an environment which is conducive to collaborative learning. In this free environment, students perform their best, assess their own growth, feel that their opinions, ideas, and responses carry weight. This allows the teacher to see a more authentic performance and provides the teacher with a more realistic picture of the students’ capabilities (Glazer & Brown, 1993). It is the teacher’s responsibility to provide an appropriate setting in which performance or task can be demonstrated and scored. Depending on the nature of the performance or the work the students are undertaking, the teacher should observe the students; behavior as it naturally occurs in the classroom or in a particular setting created for a specific performance (Airasian, 1994). Students’ performances and other forms of work are often scored holistically or analytically or analytically. The performance and task accomplishment criteria are determined by both the teacher and students.
To implement performance assessment in task-based language teaching and learning, here’s a six-step plan for developing task-based assessment:
Step 1. Establish what are the teacher’s specific instructional goals. It is important that the chosen assessment task matches the instructional outcome it is designed to measure.
Step 2. Identify the specific, discipline-based content and skills that students are expected to attain and determine whether the task adequately represents or uses them.
Step 3. Ensure that the task is complete to allow students to demonstrate their progress and abilities.
Step 4. Ensure that the task is fair to compensate for a lack of prior knowledge, unequal? access to resource or materials, and so forth.
Step 5. Decide which of the three possible forms the tasks will take: a) authentic, real-world tasks; b) interdisciplinary tasks; c) multi-dimensional tasks.
Step 6. Describe the assessment task so that others can understand and use it in other settings. Such a description should detail the intended outcomes, the content covered, the work and roles in the task, the materials involved, the rating system, and so on. Other areas of consideration in selection include determining whether the task is teachable, credible, and meaningful.
In task-based language teaching/learning the basic and initial point of organization is the TASK: class work is organized as a sequenc4e of tasks, and it is tasks
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that generate the language to be used, not vice versa. So, in task-based language teaching/learning what teachers ask students is that they carry out a series of tasks, for which they will need to learn and recycle some specific items of language. The main focus id on the tasks to be done and language is seen as the instrument necessary to carry then out. Task-based language teaching/learning thus highlights the instrumental value of language.百度搜索“70edu”或“70教育网”即可找到本站免费阅读全部范文。收藏本站方便下次阅读，70教育网，提供经典经典范文体验学习在高中语文教学中的运用方法研究（推荐15篇）(4)在线全文阅读。
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