Welcome to the NEAS Professional Development module: Designing Effective Assessment Tasks for English Language Teaching.
Before you start the course, we’d like you to take a few minutes to reflect on what you already know about assessment design — and to explore a few short videos that will give you some useful background.
This short pre-course activity will:
• Activate your prior knowledge.
• Get you thinking about how assessment influences learning.
• Give you a head start when you dive into the first section of the module.
It’s not marked — it’s simply a self-check to help you see what ideas you’re already confident about and what you might want to focus on during the course.
1. Watch this video of Stephen Krashen talking about the Input Hypothesis before you start.
2. Now take the quiz ‘Pre Course Quiz – Assessment Design’
3. After completing the quiz and watching the videos, take a moment to reflect:
- Which of these ideas do you already apply in your own assessments?
- Which concepts — such as validity, cognitive load, or authenticity — are new or less familiar?
- How do you currently give feedback, and how might theory improve your approach?
You can record your thoughts in a short journal entry or discussion post before beginning Section 1.
