9.Assessment and Evaluation

In learning process, teachers have to help students to understand different topics. They may use strategies to do so. One way to see if students are learning and acquiring knowledge is to ask questions. For example, in an English class,  a teacher teaches the simple present, and he or she asks questions such as When do we use the simple present?, What is the structure of the simple present?, and so on. That teacher will see if the students have understood by those questions. Another way is that teacher can give feedbacks when students have doubts, so teachers would know how students` performance is. All this process is called assessment. On the other hand, teachers always make tests to see the bad or good performance of students, but there is a difference here because it is based on grades. This is called evaluation. It is important to mention that assessment and evaluation are not the same even if both look for the good performance of students.

What is assessment and evaluation?

According to www.itlal.org, Assessment is the process of objectively understanding the state or condition of a thing, by observation and measurement. Assessment of teaching means taking a measure of its effectiveness. Formative assessment is measurement for improving it. On the other hand, summative assessment is what we normally call “evaluation.” We can see here that assessment is useful to see that the learning process goes well. Assessment is about the improvement of the students. With assessment, teachers look for the quality. It means that they prepared students to be better every day. Teachers can use feedbacks to make students improve. Also, teachers can make the following such as asking questions, assigning practices, trial and error activities and evaluations with no grades to see how students can be better.

According to www.itlal.org too, Evaluation is the process of observing and measuring a thing for judging it and of determining its “value,” either by comparison to similar things, or to a standard. Evaluation of teaching means passing judgment on it as part of an administrative process. So, evaluation is the process to see how much students learn. Teachers use criteria to evaluate student’s performance. The difference is that evaluation is based on grades and based on judge the quality of learning. To understand more, let us see some differences and characteristics.

As it is mentioned before, assessment finds to improve the performance of a student, and evaluation finds the judgment of that performance. Assessment is a diagnostic process because it follows the bases of observations to check students understanding, it can be good or bad. Evaluation is a judgmental process because it follows the bases of making exams, presentations and so on. Other differences are that evaluation is a formative type of evaluation because it look for the good performance or behavior of students. Evaluation is summative because it is based on grades, and it tells that the students who get nice grades are the ones who learn.

In conclusion, evaluation and assessment are the same thing. Assessment is important because it is linked to evaluation. A good grade from evaluation cannot be expected of assessment does not takes place. Teaches have to use both to check students` understanding.

Some ideas were taken from:

https://keydifferences.com/difference-between-assessment-and-evaluation.html

http://www.itlal.org/?q=node/93