Towards a Sound Assessment of English Language Learners: A Competency-Based and Holistic Approach

	Abstract This paper proposes a transformative, learner-centered approach to evaluating English Language Learners (ELLs), guided by a conceptual framework derived from Evaluación de los aprendizajes: Conceptualizaciones, CEFR descriptors, and seminal works by Ur (1996) and Bailey & Curtis (2014). The discussion highlights the need for transparent, contextualized, and participatory assessment systems that promote autonomy, reflection, and communicative competence. Through metaphor, critical analysis, and pedagogical recommendations, the author explores how teachers can reshape evaluation practices to empower learners and uphold equity. Appendices include CEFR-aligned assessment tasks and practical strategies for classroom use.
	Resumen Este trabajo propone un enfoque transformador y centrado en el estudiante para evaluar a los aprendientes del idioma inglés (ELLs), basado en el marco conceptual del documento Evaluación de los aprendizajes: Conceptualizaciones, los descriptores del MCER, y textos clave de Ur (1996) y Bailey & Curtis (2014). Se enfatiza la necesidad de sistemas de evaluación transparentes, contextualizados y participativos que fomenten la autonomía, la reflexión y la competencia comunicativa. A través de un análisis crítico, metáforas e ideas pedagógicas, el autor reflexiona sobre cómo los docentes pueden renovar sus prácticas evaluativas para empoderar a los estudiantes y promover la equidad. Se incluye un apéndice con tareas evaluativas alineadas al MCER.
	Resumo Este artigo propõe uma abordagem transformadora e centrada no aluno para avaliar aprendizes da língua inglesa (ELLs), com base no documento Evaluación de los aprendizajes: Conceptualizaciones, nos descritores do QECR e nas obras de Ur (1996) e Bailey & Curtis (2014). A discussão enfatiza a importância de um sistema de avaliação transparente, contextualizado e participativo, que promova a autonomia, a reflexão e a competência comunicativa. Por meio de metáforas, análise crítica e recomendações pedagógicas, o autor convida os professores a repensarem suas práticas avaliativas de forma mais ética e inclusiva. Um apêndice oferece tarefas práticas alinhadas ao QECR.

Introduction

Evaluating English Language Learners (ELLs) requires moving beyond traditional methods centered on summative tests and narrow judgments of linguistic accuracy, whether in grammar use, vocabulary appropriateness, or pronunciation of segmentals and suprasegmentals in English. For those willing to rummage their archive of evaluation approaches, this essay proposes a more expansive and inclusive path where ELLs are agents of their own learning. Drawing upon the conceptual framework outlined in Evaluación de los aprendizajes: Conceptualizaciones (n.d.), supported by Penny Ur’s (1996) principles on effective language teaching assessment, and enriched by Kathleen M. Bailey and Andy Curtis’s (2014) emphasis on ethical and practical assessment, changes in assessment are necessary and urgent.

While some may cling to the conceit that accuracy-based assessment ensures fairness and control, they might be appalled at how such rigidity can inhibit learning and autonomy. Indeed, a shudder can pass through learners when evaluation is perceived as punitive rather than empowering. To reframe evaluation as the cradle of learning, it is imperative to encourage teachers to create, adhere to, and endorse a dynamic, process-oriented, and participatory approach in their assessments, a model that integrates principles of formative assessment, competency-based learning, and learner autonomy to construct an evaluation framework that is both pedagogically sound and humanistically grounded, adaptable to diverse language learning contexts and the plethora of existing personalities among students in our classrooms.

1. From Product to Process

As teachers we must critique product-oriented evaluation because it is overly focused on outcomes and often disconnected from the learning process itself. As responsible educators truly interested in student learning, we have to advocate for a model in which evaluation centers not only on results but also on the unfolding processes of learning, characterized as ongoing and continuous (Evaluación de los aprendizajes: Conceptualizaciones, n.d.). One might say that the forefathers of language assessment, who placed an almost exclusive emphasis on test scores and error-counting, left behind an evaluative legacy filled with brushwood, cluttered, rigid, and resistant to the dynamism of learning. That might be why Penny Ur (1996) also stresses that effective assessment in language education must promote learning rather than simply test knowledge. Bailey and Curtis (2014) similarly assert that assessment design must align with instructional intentions and allow meaningful demonstration of student progress. Assessment then is not just a mere passing or failing grade; it is the demonstration of knowledge applied to various contexts and situations while using the target language.

Applying this to ELLs requires shifting from test-based performance to evaluating language use in authentic, ongoing communicative contexts. These may include production portfolios, comprising aural and written materials generated by the learner, and task-based assessments that allow instructors to “see” students’ linguistic development across a variety of communicative events, such as sketchpads, simulations, debates, or TED-Talk-like presentations. If the worst comes to the worst, and one must rely solely on static testing formats, the learning process risks being stripped down to a loincloth of memorized formulas, which are usually useless in real-life communication events. Finally, to pounce down upon isolated errors without regard for communicative intent is to misjudge the purpose of language assessment in the 21st century, helping learners improve areas where they are struggling.

2. Multiple Forms of Evaluation

Evaluation must be multidimensional. As language educators, we must emphasize the importance of integrating self-evaluation, peer evaluation, and teacher evaluation as complementary practices within the broader framework of language assessment. Learners should so like to see themselves not as passive recipients of judgment but as full participants, engaged agents shaping their own trajectories of growth. They should not be treated as objects to be measured, but as dynamic characters in the “unfolding narrative” of their own learning. After all, they are the ones immersed in the construction of knowledge, and to be smothered by externally imposed assessments is to deny them ownership of that journey and the joy of improving and being understood in the target language.

In language learning, for instance, self-assessment fosters metacognitive awareness, peer assessment nurtures collaborative competence, and teacher feedback ensures alignment with course objectives and program-level exit profiles. Developing students’ ability to evaluate themselves becomes more important in the long term than merely mastering content (Evaluación de los aprendizajes: Conceptualizaciones, n.d.). Penny Ur (1996) also affirms that learner involvement through self-assessment increases motivation and responsibility, fostering greater engagement in both brick-and-mortar and virtual classrooms. Bailey and Curtis (2014) emphasize the ethical imperative of student-centered assessment, noting that learners must understand the goals and rationale behind how they are evaluated.

If learners do not comprehend the purpose of assessment, its impact risks being hollow, like a casket of empty rituals, devoid of formative power. When assessment becomes something learners dread rather than value, it ceases to be a tool for growth and becomes a barrier in their linguistic development. Thus, language learners must play an active and participatory role in assessment, not only to deepen their awareness but to understand where they are in the ongoing development of their communicative competence in the target language.

3. Real-World Language Use and Competencies

        The promotion of evaluations that reflect real-life applications of skills by recommending that assessment tasks simulate authentic scenarios as closely as possible (Evaluación de los aprendizajes: Conceptualizaciones, n.d.) is vital in education. For ELLs, this implies communicative tasks like role plays, email writing, or oral presentations that mirror authentic language use, supporting both fluency and the pragmatics behind specific speech events or speaking scenarios. Bailey and Curtis (2002) advocate for such contextualized assessments that reflect learners’ needs, educational goals, and future communicative demands. It’s imperative that we move learners from their comfort zones and really make them participate in their assessment as true self-regulated individuals who want to achieve a certain level of mastery of the target language within a  time frame for them to challenge themselves.

4. Transparency and Clarity of Criteria

Evaluation should be based on clear, previously established criteria rather than on vague comparative norms, and these criteria must be made public and known to students from the outset (Evaluación de los aprendizajes: Conceptualizaciones, n.d.). For ELLs, this translates into transparent rubrics and clearly defined learning outcomes being available from day one, whether in printed form or downloadable from the institutional LMS. Such clarity reshapes the learner’s worldview, allowing them to see the learning path ahead with precision, rather than stumbling through the netherworld of hidden expectations. Without this clarity, learners may find themselves, as a result of not knowing what the ELL gods bestow on learners, adrift in uncertainty, unable to chart progress or meaningfully engage with their own development. Worse yet, when bad teachers relieve themselves of toil by creating no rubrics at all, evaluation becomes arbitrary, subjective, and untrustworthy. In such cases, students are reduced to mere pawns in a learning drama they cannot direct, perform in, or even understand.

For all these reasons, Penny Ur (1996) asserts that clarity in expectations and assessment tools contributes to both test validity and fairness. Additionally, Bailey and Curtis (2014) argue that transparency enhances ethicality and empowers learners, reducing anxiety and promoting trust. When rubrics are shared, understood, and used, assessment ceases to be a mythopoeic ordeal shrouded in mystery and becomes instead a collaborative tool for learning, structured, reliable, and student-centered.

5. Feedback as a Learning Tool

One of the core functions of evaluation is to provide feedback that strengthens the learning process, not simply to deliver a passing or failing grade. Timely and constructive feedback helps ELLs adjust study strategies, assimilate course content more effectively, deepen their understanding of the subject matter, and stay motivated as they begin to see and experience their own progress. Constructive, timely, and meaningful feedback shifts assessment from a judgmental act to a genuine growth opportunity (Evaluación de los aprendizajes: Conceptualizaciones, n.d.). Penny Ur (1996) also highlights the importance of feedback being actionable and specific, which is essential for learners seeking to improve their performance. The aim of the language teacher should always be linguistic and communicative development, not merely assigning numerical values to populate learners’ academic records.

Without consistent feedback, ELLs can be beset by a prolonged series of misfortunes, misunderstood expectations, repeated errors, and growing frustration, which gradually erode their confidence. Too often, students are left trying to draw evaluation secrets from teachers, unsure of how to improve or what they did wrong. When assessment becomes the domain of a whimsical role of the instructors, dispensing vague commentary or no commentary at all, learners lose trust in the process. For this reason, Bailey and Curtis (2014) stress that feedback is a powerful pedagogical tool and a central part of the “washback” effect of assessment, meaning it directly shapes how and what students learn. When used meaningfully, feedback becomes a bridge between instruction and learning outcomes. It allows motivated students to huddle close to true assessment: formative, relevant, and centered on helping them build knowledge with clarity and purpose.

6. The Role of the Evaluator

The evaluator must evolve from acting as an inspector or scorekeeper to becoming a facilitator of teaching and learning, a foreman at the construction site of knowledge, offering guidance to a team of masons eager to build something meaningful. In the ELL classroom, this means teachers must serve as coaches who encourage, challenge, and guide learners from their current zone of development to their zone of proximal development. Rather than coiling around their role in assessment with rigidity and detachment, educators must embrace their evaluative function with openness and care, blending technical expertise with a strong sense of human empathy (Evaluación de los aprendizajes: Conceptualizaciones, n.d.).

Instructors must foster bonds of trust with learners, becoming allies in the learning process rather than distant authorities. Bailey and Curtis (2014) reinforce this view by positioning teachers as reflective decision-makers who must strike a careful balance among validity, reliability, and practicality, without ever attempting to snatch the last bit of ethics from their practice. The teacher's position is not to thin out the complexity of language learning into mechanical checks, but to enrich it, to make it meaningful. A classroom without this kind of evaluative leadership may appear full of tasks yet be barren in purpose and coherence. By contrast, a classroom where teachers embody the role of ethical, supportive evaluators is one that is seething with life, dialogue, growth, and shared responsibility. As role models, teachers are not just record keepers of academic performance but the helping hands and guiding lights that learners look at when navigating their path through the intricacies of language acquisition.

7. Student Agency in Assessment

Empowering students to take an active role in assessment is essential; we must not reduce them to passive receptors of numerical grades that may carry little relevance to their learning experience. When learners are plunged into the deepest woe in learning, confusion, disconnection, or lack of direction, it is often because they are detached from the evaluative process itself. Instructors in language teaching or any other educational field must pursue a model where evaluation is formative and meaningful, grounded in student engagement and voice (Evaluación de los aprendizajes: Conceptualizaciones, n.d.). Assessment, in this light, becomes less about declaring verdicts and more about issuing tootles of encouragement, brief, formative signals that steer learners without overwhelming them.

In our field of language teaching, this involves guiding ELLs to set specific goals for each lesson, track their progress, and evaluate their own learning using accessible, user-friendly rubrics. By doing so, teachers do not plunge their hooks into a chaotic sea of grades, but into the lived experiences of learners’ linguistic development. The instructor is no longer the debonair lecturer who remains aloof or the dainty grader whose delicacy serves no pedagogical purpose. Rather, the teacher becomes a collaborator, offering structure while encouraging student autonomy. These practices align with Penny Ur’s (1996) support for fostering learner independence through active involvement in assessment and Bailey and Curtis’s (2014) view that ethical, transparent assessment must honor learners’ rights and responsibilities. Ultimately, students must recognize that assessment is not something done to them, but something done with them.

8. Contextualized, Inclusive Evaluation

In alignment with the CEFR (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages), language learning assessments must reflect levels of communicative competence that range from A1 (beginner) to C2 (proficient). Language teaching and assessment, therefore, must ensure that learners are not simply exposed to content but are actively progressing toward clearly defined levels of linguistic proficiency. For instance, tasks at the A2 level may involve introducing oneself, describing daily routines, or writing short messages, while B1 learners might engage in guided conversations or compose emails on familiar topics. This level-referenced approach supports differentiated instruction and allows for the valid measurement of language development over time (Council of Europe, 2001).

Yet the CEFR framework should not be mistaken for a coquettish checklist to be admired from afar or selectively applied when convenient. It should be an indomitable tool in the hands of teachers, used to illuminate the sight of one’s learning and to resist the temptation to shy out of complex, student-centered assessment planning. When faithfully implemented, it protects against the chaos of a motley procession of evaluations that may be inconsistent, superficial, or disconnected from real communicative goals.

Beyond level-aligned tasks, evaluation must also be situated in the learner's context. It should take into account all curriculum elements and remain contextual, democratic, and inclusive. For ELLs, this implies culturally responsive assessment practices that respect students’ backgrounds and adapt to their cognitive and emotional needs (Evaluación de los aprendizajes: Conceptualizaciones, n.d.). Bailey and Curtis (2014) likewise emphasize the need for context-sensitive assessment that acknowledges and honors the diverse realities of classrooms and the varied identities of learners. When assessment is genuinely rooted in the lived experiences of students, it becomes more than a bureaucratic requirement; it becomes a reflection of our ethical commitment to equitable, transformative education.

Conclusion

A sound evaluation system for ELLs must be continuous, transparent, inclusive, and aligned with real-world competencies, especially those clearly outlined in the CEFR's can-do statements. This kind of assessment resists the outdated structures that often come creeping from behind, ready to gobble up creativity and replace meaningful interaction with rigid, impersonal testing. By integrating formative strategies, multiple perspectives, and learner-centered practices, as advocated in Evaluación de los aprendizajes (n.d.), echoed by Penny Ur’s (1996) practical guidance, and reinforced by Bailey and Curtis’s (2014) ethical and decision-oriented framework, educators can foster deeper learning and equity in language education.

In one’s exultation over traditional metrics of academic success, it is easy to forget that standardized exams alone cannot account for personal progress, cultural nuance, or individual learner voice. It is time that reductive assessment models be told, "Begone from students forever." What we must nurture instead is a responsive and flexible evaluation culture that equips learners for leaner times, when adaptability, communication, and critical thinking are far more valuable than memorized rules. In such a model, assessment transcends measurement and becomes an instrument of empowerment and transformation.

📚 References

Council of Europe. (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Cambridge University Press.

Bailey, K. M., & Curtis, A. (2014). Learning about language assessment: Dilemmas, decisions, and directions (2nd ed.; D. Freeman, Series Ed.). Heinle ELT.

Evaluación de los aprendizajes: Conceptualizaciones. (n.d.). Assessment course manuscript.

Ur, P. (1996). A course in language teaching: Practice and theory. Cambridge University Press.

Evaluación de Los Aprendizajes Conceptualizaciones by Jonathan Acuña

✅ Transformative, Learner-Centered Approach to Evaluating ELLs

• Emphasize process over product: Assessment should monitor growth, not just outcomes.
• Incorporate multiple perspectives: Use self-assessment, peer assessment, and teacher feedback.
• Align with real-world language use: Include authentic tasks (e.g., role-plays, presentations, portfolios).
• Anchor in transparent criteria: Rubrics and learning objectives are shared early and clearly.
• Provide timely, meaningful feedback: Feedback guides learners, not just grades them.
• Position yourself as a facilitator: The teacher supports, reflects, and adapts rather than controls.
• Empower learners to reflect: Learners take active roles in setting goals and evaluating their own progress.
• Respect learner context and identity: Assessment is culturally responsive and emotionally supportive.
• Connect with CEFR descriptors: Ensure level-appropriate, differentiated, and communicative performance.
• Prioritize ethical, formative practices: Move away from punitive, high-stakes models.

🧩 Teacher Self-Reflection Checklist on Assessment Practices

Instructions: Use this checklist before designing or delivering an assessment. Mark ✓ for “Yes,” ~ for “Somewhat,” and ✗ for “No.” Reflect on how to improve areas marked ✗ or ~.

Statement	✓ / ~ / ✗
I use assessment to support learning, not just to grade it.
I offer regular opportunities for self-assessment and peer feedback.
My assessments include real-life communication tasks, not just exercises.
I share rubrics and learning objectives with students from the beginning.
I give feedback that is timely, specific, and helps learners improve.
I reflect on my role as a facilitator, not merely a grader.
I involve students in tracking and discussing their progress.
I adapt assessment practices to be sensitive to learners’ backgrounds.
I align assessments with CEFR levels or can-do descriptors.
I continually revise assessments to reflect ethical, learner-centered values.

Discussion Questions (For Peer Group Work)

Instructions: Use the following questions to prompt discussion in small groups or reflective writing sessions. Encourage participants to share concrete examples from their own teaching experiences.

1.    What role does self-assessment currently play in your classroom, and how could it be expanded?

2.    How does your institution’s evaluation system align—or conflict—with formative assessment principles?

3.    In what ways do rubrics enhance or hinder transparency and fairness?

4.    What might be some unintended consequences of relying heavily on summative assessments?

5.    How can CEFR descriptors be used to inform day-to-day classroom tasks?

6.    How does feedback function in your current teaching practice? Is it timely, actionable, and motivating?

7.    Have you ever felt “coiled” into a rigid role as an evaluator? How might you redefine that role?

8.    How can assessment practices become more culturally responsive to your students’ backgrounds?

9.    What does a “motley procession of evaluations” look like in real classroom settings? How can it be avoided?

Suggested Topics for Continued Exploration

1.    Designing effective rubrics for formative assessment in ELL contexts

2.    Balancing reliability and flexibility in classroom-based evaluation

3.    Student-led assessment: strategies and challenges

4.    Using CEFR can-do statements for differentiated instruction

5.    Assessment for learning vs. assessment of learning: practical shifts

6.    Ethical dilemmas in grading and feedback