Performance based assessment in language teaching: Teachers’ perceptions and attitudes

Assessment is an essential component of English language pedagogy, and one of the biggest concerns that educators face. Historically, numerous educators have depended on tests as a means of evaluating learning, therefore, the performance-based assessment has become popular recently and its usage in the English language classroom is highly recommended to align with the requirements of the latest curriculum since it requires from the learners to apply their knowledge into real-life situations through various tasks, projects, solving a problem, demonstration task, etc. Given this circumstance, the purpose of this research is to explore teachers’ perceptions regarding the effectiveness and fairness of performance-based assessments compared to traditional assessment in measuring English language proficiency, as well as to shed more light on strengths and weaknesses of current assessment methods in language education, and how can these methods be improved to better support student learning and achievement. Information and data were gathered through a survey completed by 20 teachers who teach English in English Language School (ELS) at International Balkan University. With regard to performance-based assessment, the participants seemed to share good perceptions and attitudes towards this form of assessment. Also, the results revealed that the main strength of the way they assess their students is that it indicates which students are doing well during the lectures and which ones are doing poorly. On the other hand, the main weakness of the way they assess their students is that they are limited to give detailed feedback on specific aspects of the language.