TEACHERS’ PRACTICES WHEN ASSESSING YOUNG FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNERS’ PERFORMANCES IN ONLINE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
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Abstract
The paper aims to give an insight into primary English language teachers’ assessment practices in Serbia in online teaching caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2022. The participants of this explorative study were 30 primary teachers of English representing a variety of teaching contexts in the country. The research aims to reveal the participants’ experiences related to adjusting assessment to the online environment, the ways they gave formative feedback to the learners, and the perceived effectiveness of feedback for improving learning. The results show that the majority of the respondents adjusted their assessment practices to online teaching by relying more on formative assessment and apps. They also found a number of ways for giving feedback to the learners, but expressed a lot of doubts about its effectiveness. The implications of the study involve providing pre-service education and targeted in-service training for foreign language teachers in the area of applying formative assessment in online learning environments.
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