Week 1: Ground Zero to LTA

Week 1: Summary/ Review

 Language Testing and Assessment is a very wide concept that every teacher or future teacher should know very well. A good teacher should be able to understand the relationship between teaching and assessment. Ironically, most of teachers, even the experiences one face the problems in differentiate or understand the underlying meaning of assessment and testing. To be honest, me myself also still a little bit blur in classify this two terms. That is because, to me both word mean the same it is inter-changeable. Yes, after watching the movie that Dr Lee had provided us with it come clear that most people think assessment =test=MCQ=true-false and etc. This is very wrong in all ways.

Sadly Malaysia education system supports this kind of so call "assessment" where grade will decide student future. Which to me seem unfair. Maybe some students are born with "exam oriented skills" but some may not and they will left-out, elsewhere they have so much "latent" skills such as leadership, communication, drive force and so on. This skills need to be develop to prepare student in the real world situation that usually not A, B and C choice of situation. That why, we Malaysian should move to a new approach of assessment rather than Assessment for Learning to a more current and formative assessment such as Assessment for Mastery, Performance and Authentic.

After listening to the lecture, I catch up a little bit of the big "umbrella" real perspective of assessment that is:

i. Assessment - procedure/ how it is done continuously.

ii. Evaluation - either the goal achieve or not quantitative of data.

iii. Measurement - to determine if that being taught have achieve.

iv. Testing - an instrument used to measure student understanding or not.

Well that all I can understand for now but looking forward to "dig" the more truth. Frankly speaking, I am not a fan of test (papers and pencils), but I like to see knowledge far beyond than the syllabus can offer. I like to quote from the video that Dr Lee had showed to us stating that "learning should be a celebration" - so student will not see learning as a pressuring anymore and they can explore their potential to the maximum. Yes I do agree on the point that "excellence is NOT a single act, BUT rather a habit". Student should be given change to monitor their own learning and keep track on growth by doing constant self-reflection.

I have to admit it such a beautiful opening to me. To be able to see teaching in the highest standard and to make sure that I have all the knowledge need to become the 21st century teacher. As the students demand more and more from teacher because they are thirst for knowledge. Oh I like to point out, it a need for future teacher to catch up with technology, in this rapid race of savvy and technology. I hope this course LTA will provide me with that kind of opportunities. Looking forward to know more about assessment through out this course.