Student as marker: Formative use of test results

This paper will report on the rationale and design of “student-marker training sessions” that aim to counterbalance “assessment of learning” by using university test results in a formative way. By adapting the structure of regular teachers’ standardisation meetings, a local language centre engages students to make sense of the test-design constructs and assessment criteria of a mandatory, standardised English proficiency test (the four skills) which they have taken. During the student-marker training sessions, students and teachers interact to make meaning of assessment, i.e. they are engaged in an “assessment dialogue” (Carless, 2006) during which meanings of proficiency standards are negotiated and communicated. These student-marker training sessions foreground the diagnostic function of tests by helping students to identify their language weaknesses as well as directing students to set up learning goals in relation to their existing and target standards. This paper will also present some operational concerns and students’ affective responses towards an “open dialogue” on their own weaknesses/strengths, factors of which need to be considered in making these teacher-student dialogues mutually meaningful. This project is implemented at the centre level and forms part of the centre’s attempt to enforce an institutional feedback cycle that aligns curriculum, assessment and instruction. Copyright © 2018 Asia TEFL.