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Measurement also allows a teacher to compare one student’s performance on a particular task with a standard or with a performance of other students.  Thus, measurement is an essential part of the learning process.

 

            By definition, the term measurement is restricted to quantitative assessment in which ordinal numbers are applied to data.  Ordinal members indicate rank order only, as opposed to numbers that indicate categories or number that assume equal interval units, as found on rules.  The item or person that is rated highest is given the rank of one, the second highest, the two and so on usually, qualitative assessment is closely tied to evaluation, which is a more comprehensive term than measurement.  Evaluation is measurement plus a value judgment ; the teacher makes decisions about the degree of “goodness” or “importance” of certain data is also quantitative in nature – the teacher may even quantify feelings about a student in an attempt to make that data compatible with other measurement information.  Grading systems are simply translations of this often complex evaluation into meaningful symbols.

 

            At all levels of education, the determination and the meaning of marks have become serious issue.  Today there is pressure from students, teachers, school boards and state legislators to create real and meaningful learning situation that are evaluated in real and meaningful ways.

 

What are the purposes of systematic classroom evaluation ?

 

The purposes are

1)                 to appraise academic achievement of individual students

2)                 to diagnosis learning difficulties in a students in a classroom

3)                 to appraise curriculum or instructions

 

The appraisal of students is to give them some type of formal test. Test may have some other purposes – may be to motivate students, giving the students relevant feedback, deciding on teaching approach with different students, comparing a student’s result with the group or predicting the future performances of the students.

 

This means, that the evaluation procedure ought to be purposive and systematic.  We need to be sure of what we want to evaluate ?

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H M Patel Institute of English Training & Research, Vallabh Vidyanagar - 388120, Gujarat, India

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