How is English Assessed at Thai Schools?
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Abstract
In the test-centric Thai education system, results on national exams are often viewed as indicators of educational success. These exams use multiple-choice which can have detrimental effects on students’ attitudes and learning. If school assessments also rely on multiple-choice exams, the situation would be worrying, yet there is little data available on how English language courses at Thai schools are evaluated. This paper presents the initial results of a large-scale survey of the assessment practices of several hundred Thai teachers. On average, exams and quizzes account for 64% of marks for a course, and 60% of exam scores come from multiple-choice (meaning that multiple-choice accounts for 27% of marks). Furthermore, a high proportion of teachers use some innovative and creative assessment practices, providing chances for further positive developments. To promote more positive impacts from assessment, a greater proportion of the overall scores should be assigned to innovative formative assessment.
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