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Unit 15 provides me with knowledge of evaluating ESL students. In essence, assessment is of three types: Initial, formative and summative. • Initial assessment consists of the measures undertaken by the teacher to determine what students already know about a topic or what they can do. Initial assessment is often used to place students in a particular course or level. • Formative assessment comprises the ongoing checks that the teacher makes to determine if the students are acquiring the knowledge and skills that are the objectives of the unit. Formative assessment allows the teacher to adjust the focus of forthcoming instruction. • Summative assessment is the evaluation conducted at the end of a unit to determine how well the students have learned the content and skills they have been taught. Summative assessment is often the basis for a report or grade that is conveyed to the student's parents. Other ways of categorizing assessment which overlap with the three categories discussed above include: formal / informal, alternative, authentic, peer and self-assessment. • Formal assessment includes written examinations or classroom presentations, and usually results in a grade. Informal assessment includes observations, interviews and checklists. • The term alternative assessment is most commonly used to differentiate it from traditional assessment by pen-and-paper tests. Portfolio assessment is a popular form of alternative assessment. • Authentic assessment is the term to describe the use of real-world tasks to demonstrate how far the student has acquired the essential knowledge and skills that are the focus of the unit of instruction. As such, an authentic assessment task differs from, for example, a traditional multiple-choice format. • Peer-assessment is the evaluation by a peer of an another student's work in progress. This is most often conducted using a checklist provided by the teacher, at a stage where the student can act on the feedback to improve the work. • Self-assessment is the assessment by the students themselves of their understanding and skills. It can take place during the course of a unit (formative) or at the end (summative). Feedback is an integral part of the assessment process. Indeed, many types of formative assessment can themselves be regarded as feedback. Robust research† tells us that feedback is essential to development, provided that it is timely, relevant and action-oriented. Summative feedback usually involves grading according to a set of criteria determined by the teacher. The fair grading of ESL students is a tricky issue.