5.1 Informal vs Formal Assessment & Why Teachers Assess

Why assessment appears on a Module 2 lesson plan

OpenExamPrep publishes this chapter as independent study material for TKT Module 2: Lesson planning and use of resources for language teaching. It is not a Cambridge English publication. Module 2 items on assessment do not ask you to recite a testing-theory essay. They ask whether you can choose an assessment activity, write it into a procedure or a scheme of work, and match it to a purpose: Who needs evidence, when, in what form, and what will the teacher do next?

That is a different job from TKT Module 1. Module 1 asks you to name purposes and task types as background knowledge. Module 2 asks you to build the activity into a lesson or a series. If the main aim is learners can make polite requests at a hotel desk, the assessment line in the plan is not “do a test.” It is a concrete check: thumbs after clarification, listening-in during a role-play, an exit ticket, or a marked role-play in week 3 with a grade in the register.

In the TKT Glossary sense used throughout this independent chapter, assessment means discovering or judging a learner’s ability, achievement, proficiency, or progress, formally or informally. The four nouns in that definition are not synonyms. Ability and proficiency point at what the learner can do in the language more generally. Achievement and progress point at learning in relation to a course, a unit, or a sequence you have taught. Formal versus informal is a separate decision about whether a report or grade is issued.

Informal versus formal as a procedure-column decision

Formal assessment means you assess and then give a formal report or grade: a mark in the gradebook, a report-card comment tied to a score, a certificate line, or an official record the school stores. Informal assessment means the teacher evaluates strengths and weaknesses without that formal report. Typical informal tools you actually write into a Module 2 plan are observation while monitoring, listening-in to pair work, thumbs-up / thumbs-down concept checks, mini-whiteboards, and exit tickets (a one-item slip as learners leave).

Informal is not “unprofessional” and it is not “not assessment.” It is assessment without the reporting step. A teacher who circulates during a hotel-desk role-play and notes that six pairs still open with I want a room rather than Could I have a room has assessed. If those notes never become a percentage, the assessment is informal. If the same role-play is recorded, marked on a rubric, and entered as Speaking 40%, it has become formal.

Plan the distinction in the procedure, not in your head after the lesson:

• Informal line: While pairs role-play, listen in and note who uses could/would; no mark. Delayed feedback on the board.
• Formal line: Week 6: 4-minute paired request role-play. Teacher uses a 4-criterion grid. Score to the mid-term report.

Formative assessment cuts across that pair. It means using formal and informal information during a course to give feedback or to change teaching. A thumbs check that makes you re-teach could is formative. A weekly marked quiz whose results send you back to countable/uncountable nouns is also formative, even though it is formal. Formative is about use of evidence, not about how friendly the task feels.

Diagnostic assessment means finding language or skills weaknesses or strengths in order to inform future lesson planning. Diagnostic work is usually low-stakes and often informal, but a short marked paper can still be diagnostic if the only use of the scores is to rewrite weeks 2–4. Diagnostic is not the same as placement. Placement answers Which class? Diagnostic answers Which language points and skills should the next lessons target?

Purposes you build into a lesson or a sequence

Each purpose below is a planning example, not a definition to memorise in isolation.

Placement. Harbor Community College enrols a new adult on a Tuesday. Before the office prints a timetable, a senior teacher runs a 10-minute interview and a short reading task and assigns the learner to the B1 Tuesday group rather than the A2 Thursday group. You would not put this task in Tuesday’s ordinary lesson plan for learners who are already in B1. You plan it at enrolment. Once the learner is in the class, you still need other purposes; placement has finished its job.

Diagnostic. The same B1 Tuesday group is already placed. In week 1 of “Travel English,” the teacher plans an 8-minute hotel-complaint listening and an 80-word email. She tallies who can extract the problem, who can write a past-simple complaint, and who produces only present simple. She does not put the scores on a report. She rewrites weeks 2–3 around past-simple complaints and email paragraphing. That is diagnostic planning: evidence before the teaching block, used to design the block.

Formative (during the course). In a 45-minute lesson on polite requests, after clarification the teacher plans a thumbs check: Can you make a polite request to a stranger? During controlled practice she listens in. In the last four minutes she issues an exit ticket: Write one request you would use at a hotel desk. No grade. If six tickets still say Give me a room, the next lesson’s warmer becomes a repair drill. The assessment was built into the stages so that teaching can change.

Progress. After a four-week food-and-restaurants unit, Friday of week 4 includes a 25-minute paper: matching menu section headings, eight gap-fills on a/an/some/any, and one 60-word review. Marks go in the gradebook as Unit 3 progress. The paper samples this syllabus stretch, not “English in general.” If results are weak on articles, week 5 recycles them. Progress assessment is a planned checkpoint inside a scheme of work.

Achievement. At the end of a 12-week evening course, the school requires a course grade. The teacher plans a longer formal sample of the course aims (requests, complaints, a short review, a listening for detail on bookings). The report says how well learners met this course. Achievement is not a random gap-fill on a Thursday. It is a planned, reported judgement of course learning.

Proficiency. A parent asks, “What is my child’s level of English?” A unit gap-fill does not answer that. Proficiency judges overall ability independent of this course. You might plan a separate sample that is not tied to Unit 3, or the school may use an external exam it already runs. You would not treat last Friday’s some/any paper as a proficiency score, and you would not treat a teacher’s TKT Module 2 band as a learner’s CEFR speaking level. TKT Module 2 is a teaching-knowledge test about planning and resources.

Continuous assessment. Instead of one speaking-exam day, a teacher plans that every Thursday two pairs are recorded for three minutes on that week’s function, marked on a simple interaction grid. Over ten weeks every learner is sampled several times. The scheme of work shows the rotation. Continuous assessment is a sampling plan, not a mood.

Self-assessment. The lesson aim is copied onto a slip: I can ask for a table and order a meal. Learners tick a three-point scale as they pack up. The teacher collects the “not yet” slips and plans a recycling warmer. Self-assessment only works if you plan the criteria from the aim and collect them in time to use them.

Peer-assessment. Poster presentations on local festivals are in week 8. In week 7 the teacher designs a four-box grid (content, organisation, pronunciation of key names, handling of questions) and shows a model. During presentations, peers tick the grid; the teacher still awards the formal mark with the same grid. Peer-assessment is a planned activity with criteria, not “tell your partner it was nice.”

Portfolio. Across the term, learners keep three emails (enquiry, complaint, thank-you), each with a first draft, a self-checklist, and a redraft. In week 10 the teacher plans a 12-minute writing conference using the folder. The portfolio is the sequence of evidence, planned from week 1, not a scrapbook added in week 11.

Planning table: purpose, moment, use of evidence

Worked scheme-of-work sketch

Imagine a 12-week B1 evening course, two 90-minute lessons a week, already placed.

• Week 1, lesson 1: diagnostic listening plus short email (no report). Teacher rewrites the next fortnight.
• Every lesson: informal monitoring and a planned exit ticket on that lesson’s aim (formative).
• End of weeks 4 and 8: short formal progress papers on the units taught; marks recorded; weak items recycled.
• Weeks 2, 5, 8, 11: continuous speaking samples on a rotation.
• Weeks 3–10: portfolio of three emails with drafts.
• Week 12: formal achievement sample of course aims for the school report — still not a proficiency claim about “English in the world,” and still not a TKT Module 2 analogue.

A candidate who can place each of those lines in a plan is answering Module 2 assessment items the way they are written: as planning, not as abstract labels.

Traps that cost marks on Module 2

• Calling every gap-fill achievement. A six-item gap-fill after presenting countable and uncountable nouns, self-checked from the board, with no mark, is an informal (and probably formative) check of today’s presentation. Achievement needs a course or syllabus judgement plus a formal report or grade.
• Treating informal observation as useless. If the teacher listens in, notes a pattern, and changes the next stage, that is assessment. Module 2 expects you to plan that monitoring, not to invent a test for every aim.
• Mixing placement with diagnostic. Placement sorts people into classes. Diagnostic tells you what to teach this class next. A new arrival can need both, in that order, on different documents.
• Treating TKT Module 2 as a language-proficiency test. Module 2 scores a teacher’s knowledge of lesson planning and resources. It does not place learners on a CEFR speaking scale and it does not measure whether your class has learned Unit 3.
• Planning a proficiency label from a unit test. “80% on some/any” is progress or achievement evidence for that content, not a proficiency band.

When you read a Module 2 item, ask three planning questions in order: What decision does the teacher need? Will there be a grade or official report? What happens to the evidence in the next lesson or the next unit? Those three questions separate informal from formal, diagnostic from placement, and progress from proficiency without turning the item into a Module 1 theory dump.

How to read the diagram on a Module 2 item

Start at the top: a teacher is planning. Every branch is a decision, not a personality type. Placement sits before the ordinary lesson. Diagnostic sits before or at the start of a teaching block and feeds the next plans. Formative is a use of whatever evidence you gather during the course. Progress and achievement ask about taught content; proficiency does not. The yes/no about a grade or official report is the formal/informal fork. Continuous assessment, self-assessment, peer-assessment, and portfolios are ways of organising evidence on those branches — they are not extra purposes that replace diagnostic or achievement.

If an item describes a teacher who already has a class, listens in, and changes tomorrow’s warmer, you are on the informal + formative path. If the same school later needs a course grade, you add a formal achievement sample; you do not relabel the Thursday thumbs check as achievement. If a director wants a CEFR label, you leave the TKT Module 2 certificate in the teacher’s file and look for a proficiency decision that is actually about learners’ language.