Assessing and Evaluating Students' Learning: Coping with the Issues of Assessment

As I think about my years in the classroom as a student, I remember my English classes consisting only of essay or writing assessments. While we had a quiz every once in a while on the content of a novel that we were reading at the time to prove that we had read the material, we demonstrated our learning as students only in writing. When we learned grammar, we showed our comprehension through our use of proper grammar in our essays and papers. So, I was shocked when I began observing classes as a teacher and saw only multiple choice tests being given to assess the students in English courses. While it may be true that "students remember things better and they learn more when they are tested on the detail of the novel," testing only on content concerns me. In my own classroom, I hope that my students will be showing what they know in their own writing rather than filling in a bubble on a piece of paper. What is the point of learning it anyway if they don't know how to use it? Sure, semicolons are great, but show me how you will apply it to your own writing. I am concerned though. Now that the current generation of students has been raised in a test-based ELA environment, I am worried that the shift to a writing-based assessment will be quite a shock, making them hesitant to adapt. I have experienced this a bit in my current placement, as the students only display their learning through multiple choice tests, which are intended to evaluate the students' knowledge of the content as well as ability to analyze. When I first started teaching in this classroom, I created lessons for the English classrooms that I was accustomed to, where students talk and write about their interpretations of the texts. However, the discussion was painful and the writing was nearly as painful as the discussion. The students haven't ever been asked to formulate their own ideas about a text before, they've only had to choose a theme of a text from a), b), c), or d). I have since been using my time to encourage them to make connections with the text, as I think that the first step into thinking analytically about literature. Without allowing students opportunities to write and discuss the literature that they're reading, we are undermining the value of our students' ideas. They deserve to think as respected individuals. Their ideas benefit us as teachers just as much as they benefit the other students.