The effects of assessment on stakeholders within an elementary-grade EFL program

Abstract

This paper will explore which aspects of English language assessment could be said to have affected the teaching and learning that took place within the context of an elementary grade EFL program, from the point of view of the different stakeholders involved. This paper presents, by way of a case study, an exploration of the effects of summative, formative and criterion-based aspects of assessment and the impact that they had on the stakeholders in the EFL program. The case study explores attitudes towards the introduction of explicitly defined learning outcomes in the EFL program’s curriculum to see how they affected approaches and attitudes towards learning and teaching. The second area to be explored was how the inclusion of monthly spoken language tests affected the test stakeholders’ perceptions of learning and teaching English as a foreign language.