LINGUODIDACTIC ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION IN COMMUNICATIVE EDUCATION

Abstract

Background: The necessity to define the role and conceptual framework of evaluation and assessment in a pedagogical discourse has gained importance in the context of the on-going educational reform in Ukraine. This urges national educa­tionalists to explore the formative assessment and evaluation in secondary school from the standpoint of the strategic and communicative approaches.

Purpose: The purpose of the article is to discuss the necessity and effectiveness of implementing the strategy of formative assessment and evaluation as a teaching-learning model based on English communication and suggest some methods and techniques of evaluation and assessment which will be tested empirically in the next phase of our research.

Discussion: Assessment and evaluation are very challenging issues, since they require advanced skills of choosing the tasks, writing instructions and developing proper evaluation criteria. Only valid tasks can become an effective mechanism to put communication between a student and a teacher into effect. At school, there are two main types of assessment: formative and summative. According to the regulations of the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, teachers are required to execute summative assessment twice a year through a direct test which assesses actual skills (reading, writing, listening and speaking). The assessment procedure – that mainly responds to accountability interests – relies on standardized evaluation criteria, and the results of assessment include information on a full range of tasks and activities completed. However, there are no specific criteria for formative assessment activities which aim at making judgement about the process of learning instead of its result.

Results: The literature overview has enabled the authors to come up with the conclusion that only formative assessment and evaluation carried out on a frequent basis could be utilised as a communicative tool between a student and a teacher. The authors also claim that verbal assessment proved an effective technique of assessment for learning in the context of second­ary school education.