Hi,

I would like to know the correct term for the following.

When I give my students a test to see how well they are doing, can this process be called evaluation, assessment, or what?

When I say to my students you need to do this or that to improve and overcome you learning problems, can this be too called evaluation or assessment or this can be called correction?

Hi, Ismael!

Your question reminded me of the three technical terms in Language Testing: test, measurement, and evaluation.

They are often used interchangeably, but technically speaking, there are some differences. "Test" is the narrowest of the three. It is a set of questions. Using a test, we obtain a measure of a characteristic of a person (e.g. language proficiency). Measurement is a broader term. This means that you can have a measure of sth by means of other things, not necessarily tests (e.g. you might use observation to measure sth). Finally, evaluation is the broadest of all three terms, and it involves a kind of decision making too. I mean based on the data we have collected by, for example, a test, we now make some decisions or judgements. This process is called evaluation.

I hope this helps anyway.

quote:

When I say to my students you need to do this or that to improve and overcome you learning problems, can this be too called evaluation or assessment or this can be called correction?

And about this question of yours, I think in such a context, you are giving a piece of advice to your students (or a kind of guidance). I don't think you could call it corretion because correction is used when sth has been done wrongly.

Thanks, Mehrdad, for a clear and enlightening presentation.

And thank you,too, Izzy, for your good question.

You're welcome, Rachel.

Thanks a lot to you all.

I feel that my point wasn't clear. So here is an example to make it explicit.

Say there is a chair with a broken leg. I say that this chair is worth 2 dollars.

When I said "it is worth 2 dollars, is this evaluation or assesment?

Back to the same chair. Say that I fixed the problem and now the chair has four legs and now it is worth 4 dollars. Is this an evaluation or assesment?

Now let's apply this on the student.

I gave a student an exam on English. He got 10 marks out of 20. Now, is this an evaluation or assesment?

Say that in addition to telling him that he got 10 marks out of 20, I told him what his mistakes were and how correct them in order to get better mark. What do we call this process which aims at changing what is present to a better condition?

I hope I made myself clear

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Izzy loves you all,

Comments?

You're right, Ismael. Your question just reminded me of sth else, and I didn't answer your question exactly. Anyway, here's what I think:

Both terms can be used for the chair example you mentioned; however, I think assesment is somehow too technical/formal and involves a kind of systematic way of gathering data, so it might not be a good idea to use it for your example about that chair.

quote:

I gave a student an exam on English. He got 10 marks out of 20. Now, is this an evaluation or assesment?

I think this is just testing. You have not evaluated anything. If, for example, you had concluded that the student needs to study the course again, then that would have been an evaluation.

quote:

Say that in addition to telling him that he got 10 marks out of 20, I told him what his mistakes were and how correct them in order to get better mark. What do we call this process which aims at changing what is present to a better condition?

You might be giving a feedback to him/her. Is this what you were looking for?

Here are some definitions of feedback from Webster and Oxford:
- information given in response to a product, a person's performance of a task, etc., used as a basis for improvement.
- the transmission of evaluative or corrective information about an action, event, or process to the original or controlling source
- the modification or control of a process or system by its results or effects.

Thanks a lot.

You're welcome, my friend.