Assessing and tracking your students' language learning

app Languages
A teacher stood at the front of a class with a book, pointing at a student. Students are sat at desks with their hands raised.

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As a language teacher, your goal is not just to impart knowledge but to guide your students on a transformative journey toward fluency. Assessing and tracking learning progress is a dynamic process that empowers both educators and learners, rather than being just a routine task.

In today's language learning blog post, we will explore the significance of assessment in language teaching and provide valuable insights on how to track and assess your students' linguistic development.

The benefits

Informed instruction

Regular assessments enable teachers to tailor instruction to meet individual student needs. Identifying strengths and weaknesses helps educators adapt teaching methods, promoting a more personalized and effective learning experience.

Motivational tool

Assessment results can be very useful in motivating students. Even small progress should be acknowledged as it can boost their confidence and encourage a positive attitude towards learning. It is important to share success stories, celebrate achievements and foster a culture of continuous improvement within your language classroom.

Feedback for growth

Assessment feedback can help students improve their skills by giving them a clear idea of their strengths and weaknesses. Teachers can use this feedback to encourage students to take responsibility for their learning journey and foster a growth mindset that is resilient even in the face of linguistic difficulties.

Tracking and assessment methods

Diverse assessment methods

Embrace a variety of assessment methods to capture the multifaceted nature of language learning. Beyond traditional exams, integrate speaking assessments, project-based evaluations and collaborative activities. This diversity ensures a comprehensive understanding of your students' language proficiency.

Example: Consider assigning projects that involve researching, creating presentations and demonstrating creative expression (like plays or videos) in the target language. Assessing various aspects such as language skills, creativity and critical thinking. Design projects around your class's interests and motivations.

Formative assessments

Integrate formative assessments into your teaching strategy. These ongoing evaluations, such as quizzes, class discussions and short writing assignments, provide real-time feedback. For instance, if you notice that your students are struggling with a particular concept, you can use formative assessments to evaluate the effectiveness of your teaching approach and make necessary adjustments.

Example: Conduct regular quizzes, polls or short assessments during class to evaluate students' understanding. Use quick checks to gauge student understanding to adjust teaching methods accordingly. This will help you tailor your teaching methods in real time to ensure effective lesson delivery.

Portfolio assessment

Encourage students to maintain language portfolios. These portfolios can include samples of their written work, recorded conversations and reflections on their language learning journey. Portfolio assessments offer a holistic view of progress and provide students with a tangible record of their achievements.

Example: Conduct periodic portfolio reviews to discuss progress and set goals. Encourage frequent reflection to show learners how far they've come.

Self-assessment

Empower students to self-assess. Encourage reflection on their language skills, setting goals and evaluating their own progress. Self-assessment also fosters a sense of responsibility and independence in the learning process. When students take ownership of their progress, they become more invested in their education and are more likely to achieve their goals.

Example: Provide your language students self-assessment checklists or rubrics for them to evaluate their proficiency and set personal goals.

Technology integration

Use language learning platforms' analytics and progress reports for data-driven decision-making. It's great to help save time and provide reliable and up-to-date reports.

Example: Using online platforms for assignments, quizzes and collaborative projects with built-in tracking features. Our learning platforms, app English Connect (PEC)and MyEnglishLab (MEL), can help you keep track of your students' progress.

Cultural projects

Cultural projects are a great way to engage students in the broader context of the language they are learning. These projects could involve researching cultural practices, traditions or historical events related to the language.

Students learn how to navigate cultural nuances, understand diverse perspectives and effectively communicate in different cultural contexts by participating in cultural projects. Such projects help students form a personal connection with the language and bridge the gap between theory and real-world application, making language learning more meaningful.

Example: Assign projects that explore certain cultural aspects of the target language, encouraging a deeper understanding of context. These can be evaluated on how well it's presented, its clarity, and how factually accurate it is.

Peer reviews

Peer review is a valuable practice that promotes a sense of community within the language learning classroom. It involves students working together and offering constructive feedback to each other, which leads to the development of their language skills. It creates a collaborative learning environment where students actively participate in the improvement of their peers, learning from one another's strengths and weaknesses.

Students often put more effort into assignments when they know peers will review their work. This increased accountability can lead to higher-quality work and a greater commitment to language learning.

Example: Implement peer review sessions where students provide feedback on each other's written or spoken assignments. Encourage constructive criticism to enhance collaboration and learning. To accommodate shy students, this process can be anonymous.

Assessing and tracking language learning progress is integral to effective language teaching, requiring continuous interaction between educators and students.

By utilizing diverse assessment methods and fostering a culture of constant improvement, language teachers play a vital role in guiding their students toward linguistic fluency. Helping language students celebrate their successes and overcome challenges helps them to be not only proficient speakers but also lifelong language enthusiasts.

Are you an English teacher preparing for assessments? Check out our postMotivating your students through assessment.

As well as our learning platforms, PECand MEL, we offer various English assessments and courses to help track your learner's progress and to certify their English level, so make sure to explore our range to find the best solution for your students.

All of our courses and tests

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    How the GSE helped Salem State University meet learner needs

    By Sara Davila

    Salem State University is one of the largest and most diverse public teaching universities in Massachusetts. In total, it has about 8,700 students enrolled, 37% of whom are people of color. It also educates 221 international students from 59 different countries – with China, Albania, Brazil, Morocco, Nigeria and Japan among the most represented countries on campus.

    The university runs an intensive English language program. Most students who enrol come from China, Brazil, Albania, Vietnam, and Japan. The program also has a number of part-time English language learners from the local community.

    In 2016, Associate Director Shawn Wolfe and teachers at the American Language and Culture Institute did a review and found that areas for growth included establishing a universal documentation for identifying learner needs, goals and progress.

    “The biggest challenge was that we needed to have a better way of placing students,” Wolfe says. “We also needed to have a way to have our curriculum, our assessment and our student learning outcomes unified.”

    The team lacked programmatic data related to learning gains and outcomes. Additionally, they realized that assessments could be used to inform students about entry requirements at the university and other programs. And that’s where the Global Scale of English (GSE) came in, as a tool which enabled the staff at the American Language and Culture Institute to personalize and diversity their English teaching program to meet learner needs.

    Cultural and linguistic diversity

    David Silva PhD, the Provost and Academic Vice President, highlights the need for this type of personalization when it comes to education.

    “We have to be prepared for an increasing variety of learners and learning contexts. This means we have to make our learning contexts real,” he says. “We have to think about application, and we have to think about how learners will take what they learn and apply it, both in terms of so-called book smarts, but also in terms of soft skills, because they’re so important.”

    Silva makes the point that, as the world gets smaller and technology becomes a bigger part of our lives, we can be anywhere at any time, working with anyone from across the globe. “We need to be prepared,” he says, “for those cultural and linguistic differences that we’re going to face in our day-to-day jobs.”

    The ability to change and adapt

    So how does the curriculum at the American Language and Culture Institute help prepare students for the world of study and work?

    At the Institute, the general review led to the realization that the program needed to be adaptive and flexible. This would provide a balance between general English and academic preparation and would also encompass English for specific purposes (ESP).

    Wolfe says, “The GSE fit with what we were trying to do because it offers three different options; English for academic learners, English for professionals and English for adults, which is another area that we realized we needed to add to our evening program so that we can serve working adults that are English language learners in our community.”

    The English language instructors at the Institute were also impressed with the capabilities of the GSE. Joni Hagigeorges, one of the instructors, found the GSE to be an excellent tool for tracking student progress.

    “What I really like is that you can choose the skill – , listening, speaking – and you’re given the can-do statements, the learning objectives that each student will need to progress to the next level,” she said.

    Wolfe also commented on the GSE Teacher Toolkit and the way that it supports assessment and planning, allowing instructors to get ideas for specific learning objectives for groups or individual students. “It’s enabled us to personalize learning, and it’s changed the way that our teachers are planning their lessons, as well as the way that they are assessing the students.”

    A curriculum that will meet learner needs

    The GSE has allowed the team at the Institute to become more responsive to changing student expectations. The alignment of placement and progress tests to the GSE has allowed instructors to have more input into the courses they are teaching.

    Elizabeth Cullen, an English language instructor at the Institute, said, “The GSE helps us assess the strengths and weaknesses of various textbooks. It has helped us develop a unified curriculum, and a unified assessment mechanism.”

    This unification means that the curriculum can easily be tweaked or redesigned quickly to meet the needs of the students. What’s more, as Elizabeth points out, the students benefit too. “The Global Scale of English provides students with a road map showing them where they are now, where they want to go and how they’re going to get there.”

    Standing out from the crowd

    In this time of global hyper-competition, the challenge for any language program is finding innovative ways to stand out from the crowd while staying true to your identity. At Salem State, the staff found that the GSE was the perfect tool for the modern, data-driven approach to education, inspiring constant inquiry, discussion and innovation. It offers students, instructors and administrators a truly global metric to set and measure goals, and go beyond the ordinary.