2017
Plenary Speech
Yuko Goto Butler
Self-assessment for Young Learners: A Tool for Assisting Learning
Self-assessments (SA), including "can-do statements," have gained substantial attention in recent years as an alternative assessment for young learners (defined as children up to 12 years old) of second and foreign language (L2/FL). However, educators of young L2/FL learners have often expressed concerns about a lack of accuracy and subjectivity of SA. In this talk, I introduce two orientations towards assessments: a traditional measurement-based orientation (assessment of learning) and a learning-based orientation (assessment for leaning). I argue that the commonly addressed concerns with accuracy and subjectivity of SA are primarily originating from the assessment of learning. Considering young learners’ linguistic, cognitive and social-affective developmental characteristics, I discuss how SA can be used as an assessment for learning in order to assist young learners.
Yuko Goto Butler is an Associate Professor of Educational Linguistics at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the director of the Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) program at Penn. Her research interests are primarily focused on the improvement of second/foreign language education among young learners in the U.S. and Asia as well as assessment methods for them in response to the diverse needs of an increasingly globalizing world.