The last reading reflection of the semester - Just about time for evaluation and testing

As i do the reading for this week, it turns out that Chapter 24 in the HDB book was also the last reading chapter for last semester's class. However, just as assessment and testing have always been a matter of concern for teachers and students of all time, it's always helpful to re-read about them. This time, what stood out in my mind as i read is the test-taking procedure that the book mentions, including before-, during, and after-test strategies. The reason i am concerned about this is because in the book it says in order to ensure the face validity of the test, the teacher should prepare students for it, which seems to contrast with some of the experiences i had with testing as a student. What happened is for many subjects in school, we often had a kind of testing called pop quizzes, in which our teachers would give us a 15-minute test in class without prior notice. The rationale my teachers held behind this was to keep us all on task and to make sure that we all review the lesson before going to class. As much as this makes sense to me given the fact that many of us tried not to go to class not knowing what we learned in the previous class, it seems to go against the principle of testing, since the students are nowhere near well prepared. Still, on the other hand, i think this kind of testing works in a way that its spontaneity can most exactly tell the teacher what parts of the lesson stick to students the most and what not when they're not cramming for a test.

Also, anothing that is brought up in the book that i identify with is the alternative assessment techniques such as portfolios and journals. For sure these will help teachers evaluate students' performance more thoroughly and continually. Even though during my time studying English in middle and high school, i was tested mostly by formal testing techniques, i think these alternative ones will work well for students at these levels as well. For instance, the teacher can give students a writing prompt every week and have them keep a journal as a part of class work. Each week some journals will be chosen randomly to receive feedback from the teachers, so that by the end of the semester all students have their works read and corrected by the teacher.