ASSESSMENT IN A VIRTUAL LANGUAGE CLASSROOM: CHALLENGES AND CHANGES

Assessment and tracking of student progress have always been the focus of all educators’ attention. Formative and summative kinds of assessment are essential components of language pedagogy as well. Although language instructors are consistently searching for innovative ways of effectively integrating assessment forms into the learning cycle, students frequently associate an assessment process with strong negative feelings as fear, anxiety, and stress (Vaughan, ClevelandInnes, & Garrison, 2013: 81). The COVID‐19 pandemic has only increased students’ concerns and alienated many teachers from the idea of smoothly integrating assessment into the curriculum. It is fair to say that many students are more focused on getting a good grade than on the entire learning process. Assessment in an online context adds an extra level of complexity for our students, especially in terms of the current circumstances of COVID-19, when anxiety and stress are unavoidable. The long period of remote and online learning has raised many questions that caused debates among language instructors and educators in general. How to assess students’ work in online settings? Is it the same or different? How best to conduct assessment activities and make them accessible and less stressful for students and educators? In addition to all of these questions, language instructors have actively started discussing possible ways to prevent cheating during tests and other assessment forms. Many language educators across the USA have focused on redesigning their syllabus and curricula, emphasizing formative assessment, implementing new forms of interaction with students, and replacing previous assignments with group projects and presentations. In this regard, more attention has been paid to productive types of speech activity. There has also been a significant increase in the use of authentic materials in assessment activities to make them more engaging and help students cope with stress.

This work describes the main challenges that many American language educators faced during COVID-19 regarding assessment forms and changes made and applied to teach languages in the new circumstances. According to the recent student surveys, changes in assessment format can be beneficial for language pedagogy and provide educators with innovative ideas to improve the future assessment system.

Keywords: assessment, tests, languages, Russian, formative assessment