Exploring Mexican EFL Elementary School Teachers’ Perceptions of Online Language Assessment Training

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore the perceptions that fifty-seven EFL Mexican elementary school teachers had of a four-week online, productive language skill assessment course (LAC) regarding its content and its impact on teachers’ future classroom assessment of speaking and writing. Quantitative analysis of the closed ended questions in combination with qualitative analysis of the open-ended responses of a semi structured questionnaire delivered online and in Spanish to participating teachers, suggested that they perceived the course as suitable and useful for their future Language Assessment (LA). It was also found that participating teachers perceived the course impacted their classroom management of assessment, their rubric use, and triggered their reflections of their assessment performance. Results of this study highlight the importance of contextualizing language assessment and language assessment literacy to encourage students’ language learning and suit teachers’ assessment literacy needs.