Psycholinguistics and Formative Assessment

Abstract

As novice teachers, we often face difficulties in measuring whether our students get a point or not. Put another way, assessing students’ understanding of the lesson is a crucial step in the teaching process. Despite its increasing importance, few teachers know how to undertake formative assessment and how to exploit its outcome in taking educational decisions. The present study aims to explain the psycholinguistic technique of eye movement (saccades) and suggests its use in daily assessment. More specifically, it proposes that eye movements’ findings can be applicable in helping teachers understand their students’ behaviour toward the lesson. In psycholinguistics, gaze duration, for instance, is used to target places of ambiguity. To examine the adequacy of this technique, the study opts for descriptive approach to provide insights about the effectiveness and the possibility of adopting the psycholinguistic technique of eye movements in formative assessment process. To that end, the daily assessment and practical educational decision no longer presents a barrier to teachers if they understand and interpret students’ eye movement correctly.