Using Authentic Assessment to Better Facilitate Teaching and Learning: The Case for Students' Writing Assessment

The issues on the use of authentic assessments have been arising over the time. Various forms of assessment had been employed in the teaching and learning activities. Among of them, authentic assessment has been considered as an appropriate assessment to be used in education since it has various forms of assessment and its purpose is to create a meaningful learning. This assessment can be useful for assessing productive skills in language learning. A model of authentic assessment suitable for assessing writing skill, one of the productive language skills, had been developed by the writers. This article investigates the implementation of the authentic assessment model in classrooms practice. It specifically examines the use of authentic assessment to enhance students' learning and creativity for writing skill. Two English teachers were observed while implementing the authentic assessment model. 124 students were asked to give their perception of the implementation of the authentic assessment model. The result shows that authentic assessment is effective to encourage students' interest and critical thinking in writing. The students were exited in finishing any kind of the assignments. The authentic assessment allows the teachers to evaluate students' skills in writing intensely. It can be concluded that authentic assessment can be used to better facilitate teaching and learning, especially for writing ability.