Benefits Of Classroom Assessment

Introduction

Recent research on classroom assessment has focused on the interaction between assessment and learning with a hope that improvement in classroom assessment would result in effective learning. As a result, a variety of alternatives in assessment have been proposed and researched. Alternatives in assessment have become popular for that they require students to perform, produce, and create; focus both on processes and products; tap into higher level thinking and problem-solving skills; and provide information on both the strengths and weaknesses of students (Brown & Hudson, 1998, p.654). They are also popular as they establish an ongoing interactive association among three significant aspects of education: teaching, assessment and

To reduce stress and anxiety

2. To make evaluation regular and comprehensive.

3. To allow teacher to be innovative both in teaching and assessment.

4. To make diagnosis and instruction dependent on each other.

In light of CCE, assessment of reading is not just assessing reading comprehension through comprehension questions, but it includes assessing students’ interest in and attitude to reading, their approach to reading, their reading habits, their reading strategy use, and their reading of other than prescribed materials. Consequently, reading teachers are in need of assessment tools that can capture the “authentic, continuous, multidimensional, interactive” aspects of reading assessment (Valencia, 1990, p.339). Reading journals can one of the options reading teachers may explore in classroom assessment.

Reading Journal: what and

Reading journal, which had no place in the second language classroom erstwhile, occupies at present a “prominent role in a pedagogical model that stresses the importance of self-reflection in a student’s education” (Brown & Abeywickrama, 2011, p. 134). Journal writing has been recognized as a significant retrospective tool in language research. In general, a journal, as defined by Brown & Abeywickrama (2011), is “a log (or ‘account’) of one’s thoughts, feelings, reactions, assessments, ideas, or progress toward goals, usually written with little attention to structure, form, or correctness” (p. 134). Reading journal, which provides insight into the reading process, is a useful tool as it promotes reflection on the nature of reading and on the problems encountered by the reader during reading. Journals have been recommended for strategy training purposes to assist learners develop metacognitive awareness of their strategy use, learning and thinking. However, it is not without concerns. Certain critics concern over the cultural issues as revealing one’s inner self may not be a practice in certain cultures. It is also argued that it is difficult, if not impossible, to construct valid and reliable criteria for evaluation since journal writing involves potential