The Opinions of English Language Teachers towards Language Assessment and Evaluation in Turkey

Key words: Assessment, Evaluation, English Language Teachers’ Opinions ABSTRACT Assessment is an indispensable part of education and carries importance as well as teaching. Teachers’ believes and opinions have great impact on assessment and test types. The authors’ aim is to investigate English language teachers’ opinions towards language assessment and evaluation. In this regard, a questionnaire has been adapted from the study of Brown (2002) and conducted to 45 language teachers at state universities in Turkey. The participants are from four different departments: English Language Teaching/Linguistics/Literature/Translation and Interpretation. Results have been analyzed under four main components of assessment: Improvement, school accountability, student accountability and irrelevance. In addition, experience of the participants, if they took any assessment course during bachelor degree and/or master/PhD degree cycle education or not have been analyzed. The results of the study are as follows: It has been found that the teachers graduated from English Language Teaching department show great tendency towards assessment improvement component; the teachers graduated from Linguistics department show great tendency towards both student accountability and irrelevance; the teachers graduated from Translation and Interpretation show great tendency towards school accountability. In terms of experience, the English Language Teachers who have experience 0-2 year/s and 5-15 years show positive correlation with assessment and evaluation. Taking a course based on assessment and evaluation during 1st and/or 2nd cycle/s education affects the results