Principles and Practices for Effective English Class Assessment

Abstract

Nowadays there are progressing trends in language testing and assessment fields to consider Washback as one of the basic principles of the assessment process that has indirect impacts on any teaching programme. It is an important term that indicates the positive or the negative test impacts on the language learners, the instructors as well as all the elements that combine together and lead the teaching –learning processes. The researcher in the current study has collected a primary data for answering the research questions and testing the hypothesis through the application of a questionnaire survey which was filled up by forty students of English language department who were randomly chosen from the third grade to introduce their feedback on the washback of any test they have gone through it during their educational programme. Interviews with English language instructors of the same grades were other means for gathering data in this study. The analyzed collected data indicate hat testing process is more than just scoring process for the students’ answers in a test and evaluating their linguistic competence. Also the results explain that most of the instructors are in need to be more skillful in the construction process of the test through selection of the accurate formats in their tests that assess the relevant developed different language elements and improved linguistic skills.