IMPLEMENTING AUTHENTIC ASSESSMENT: A CHALLENGE FOR ENGLISH

LANGUAGE TEACHERS
Hana Yulinda Fithriyani, S. Pd
hanayufie22@gmail.com

Abstract
The 2013 curriculum asks teachers to use authentic assessment as one of assessment methods.
Authentic assessment is the multiple forms of assessment reflecting students learning,
achievement, motivation, and attitudes toward classroom instructional activities (OMalley
and Pierce, 1996: 4). It can enhance teachers creativity and encourage students motivation.
Through this assessment teachers can portray students learning progress in order to measure
whether instruction objectives are reached. In contrast, utilizing this kind of assessment is
quite challenging since condition of real class does not support. Further, managing time,
putting fairness and purpose of the assessment, and teachers objectivity are the major
challenges that can cause problems in applying this assessment. This paper will reveal the
most crucial challenges in conducting authentic assessment related to the implementation of
2013 curriculum.
Keywords: authentic assessment, implementation, 2013 curriculum, alternative assessment

Introduction
The implementation of 2013 curriculum resulted many changes in teaching and
learning process, particularly in English language subject. The changes happened in all steps
in the TLP including teaching strategies, teaching material, as well as assessment. Since the
2013 curriculum has been implemented by the Ministry of Education and Culture two years
ago, many kinds of teacher trainings were carried out to meet a demand of teachers need.
The teacher training given is to promote new approaches used in the 2013 curriculum which
only focus on recent teaching methods or strategies to developing students competence.
Unfortunately, the Ministry of Education did not arrange trainings about current methods of
assessment as the new approaches promoted should be assessed with the appropriate
assessment. Because of applying the new teaching approaches, the standardized assessment
that had been used is no longer matched with those approaches. Consequently, the main
change as the impact of the new curriculum should be brought about in the assessment.
To cope with the missing, based on Permendikbud No. 81a 2013, authentic
assessment are regarded to be implemented as the suitable method of assessing students
competence. The authentic assessment is implemented in order to improve the quality of
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formative assessment. However, the skillful English teachers are required in implementing
this authentic assessment as the kind of assessment is still unfamiliar to teachers especially
who do not improve their knowledge of current issues and complicated to do. As a result,
those become challenges for the teachers.
Authentic Assessment
Authentic assessment is defined by many experts of language education. One of them
is OMalley and Pierce (1996: 4) who explained authentic assessment as the multiple forms
of assessment reflecting students learning, achievement, motivation, and attitudes toward
classroom instructional activities. Another definition is from Prendeville and Wellman (2011)
in Hijriati (2014: 1155) that authentic assessment is a process of gathering information in
which the skills and needs of a student are identified respectfully to the language and
curricular demands they will encounter. From those above definitions, it can be concluded
that authentic assessment is a kind of recent assessment method done by the teachers which
aims to describe students achievement and needs in the teaching learning process through
reflection and monitoring.
Related to the implementation of the 2013 curriculum, authentic assessment is highly
relevant since it can describes the progress of students achievement in line with the new
approaches applied. It does not only portray students learning progress and motivation but
also give teachers chance to provide feedback and follow-up activities from the result of the
assessment. In addition, four major skills of English such as speaking, listening, reading and
writing can be covered by using authentic assessment. Besides, if authentic assessment is
implemented to measure students competence, teachers can decide to select some possible
specific purposes in designing instructional activities both inside and outside classroom based
on students achievement and needs so that the assessment can assess all instructional
activities conducted by the teachers. Therefore, authentic assessment offers a lot of benefits
which are suitable to be implemented as one of assessment methods in the 2013 curriculum.
Types of Authentic Assessment
There are various types of authentic assessment used in classroom. English language
teachers in Indonesia actually already use many types of this assessment. However, they do
the assessment in informal way that does not have systematic purpose to collect information
about students learning or the goals of instruction. OMalley and Pierce (1996: 4) mention
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three types of authentic assessment they are performance assessment, portfolios, and
students-self assessment. Performance assessment consists of any form of assessment such as
oral reports, writing samples, individual or group projects, exhibitions, as well as
demonstrations in which students respond orally or in writing and it requires students to
accomplish complex tasks to scrutinize prior knowledge, recent learning, and relevant skills
to solve problems. Then, portfolio is formed from a systematic collection of student works
that is analyzed to show progress over time regarded with instructional objectives. Last,
student-self assessment encourages students to involve in the teaching learning process with
highly motivation and attitude because it gives students freedom to make choices of planning
their own learning activities.
Compared to those above types, the 2013 curriculum suggests three types of authentic
assessment which can be performed in the classroom. Those are performance assessment,
portfolio assessment, and project assessment.
a) Performance Assessment
Performance assessment, as explained before, is a kind of assessment which demands
students to construct response, create a product or demonstrate application of
knowledge in the form of individual or group works. According to Hijriati (2014:
1156) performance assessment is aimed at dealing with students attitude toward the
lesson, the teachers, learning process, and the value or norms prevailed in TLP. The
examples of performance assessment usually used are oral reports, story-telling or text
retelling, writing samples, demonstration, etc. This kind of assessment can be carried
out to assess each skill and integrated skills of English.
b) Portfolio Assessment
In portfolio assessment, students together with the teachers can determine what topic
and kind of work they will do in the form of writing and certain period of time how
long they will conduct it connected to the instructional objectives. During certain
period of time, teachers supervise and observe students progress and if there is
problem, then both teachers and students solve it together and do some improvements.
At the end of the period, students submit their work which will be evaluated by the
teacher. Moreover, Sharifi and Hassaskhah (2011: 197) add that portfolio is an
ongoing assessment which can give reflection on students learning progress.
c) Project Assessment
Project assessment is a kind of assessment which assesses students task in the forms
of investigation starting from the planning, data collecting, organizing, analysis, and
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presenting within a period of time. This assessment purposes to know the students
understanding in applying and informing to a certain subject. As its name, project
assessment demands students to complete or create a project on specific topic
individually or in a small group agree with the instructional objectives. After that, the
projects done by the students are presented through oral or written reports. This may
be effective if the students are taught to deliver a procedural presentation about
project description.
Implementing Authentic Assessment
The two major reasons why authentic assessment can be utilized as one of the
assessment methods in the 2013 curriculum are first, the previous or current assessment does
not assess and include all students outcomes, and second, teachers are getting harder to plan
the instructional activities based on the recent issue or information. These are also supported
by OMalley and Pierce (1996: 2) statement that the standardized testing such as multiplechoice tests is unavailable to evaluate higher-order thinking as considered important
nowadays and cannot represent authentic representations of classroom activities related to
students interest and motivation during the instruction process. Thereby, because of those
main issues authentic assessment is implemented.
To implement authentic assessment, there are some crucial points that have to be
understood. First of all, teachers have to know characteristics of authentic assessment. Then,
they also have to be able to design authentic assessment as suitable as possible to students
and TLP objectives. Later, designing authentic assessment requires considerable work prior to
the beginning of a subject so that teachers are suggested to be cooperated with schools,
parents, and administrations in order to gain the main purpose of the assessment.
Participation of those who involve in the assessment is also important in the process for
developing authentic assessment. Indeed, Baker (1993) and Herman, Aschbacher, and
Winters (1992) in OMalley and Pierce (1996: 17) give eight steps in planning and designing
authentic assessment as follow:
a. build a team,
b. determine the purpose of the authentic assessment,
c. specify objectives,
d. conduct professional development on authentic assessment,
e. collect examples of authentic assessment,
f. adapt existing authentic assessment or develop a new one,
g. try out the assessment,
h. review the assessment.
Meanwhile, according to UNSW Australia, designing authentic assessment involves the
following steps:
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Determine the broad characteristics of authenticity

Align assessment with the intended learning outcomes
Design the real-world conditions such as describing problems or scenarios, finding

placements in authentic settings, or designing a learning environment

Ensure that students have the knowledge and skills needed to carry out the tasks
Highlight the importance of students understanding their roles when engaging in real-

world activities
Design the assessment task(s)

In addition, another crucial point which should be understood is about scoring of authentic
assessment. Authentic assessment is scored by using rubrics, checklist, and rating scale
(Nitko, 2001 in Fitriani, 2014: 1152). The most frequently used scoring is rubric which is
divided into two types, holistic and analytic rubrics. A holistic rubric requires the teachers to
score overall process or products as a whole, without judging separately. On the other hand,
an analytic rubric asks the teachers to score separately, each part of a product or performance
first then sum the individual score to obtain the total score (Fitriani, 2014: 1152).
Challenges in Employing Authentic Assessment
Authentic assessment is designed to deal with the implementation of 2013 curriculum
which forces teachers to develop better instructional activities and improve students learning
outcome through the newest approaches applied. As explained before, authentic assessment is
employed to reflect students achievement progress and needs in the TLP. For that reason,
implementing authentic assessment emerges some challenges to English language teachers.
1. Purpose of the assessment
The first challenge appeared is determining purpose of the assessment. The
purposes of authentic assessment are identification, placement, re-clarification, and
monitoring students progress. Those purposes need to be reached in line with the type
of instruction and the duration over the instruction. To put purpose forward, the teachers
should select appropriate tasks given to the students. It will be difficult to do since the
assessment conducted by individual teacher to monitor students progress or to plan
instruction can be less formal due to high stakes. Consequently, teachers have to define
the purpose of the assessment related to the instructional objectives in order to bring
consistent combination on the extent to those purposes.
2. Fairness
The second challenge is about taking students fairness. In implementing
authentic assessment, teachers should ensure that each students gets same opportunity
to learn and express their comprehension of material taught. Furthermore, some new
difficulties may be introduced (OMalley and Pierce, 1996: 27). For instance, the
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performance called for in authentic assessment is highly language-dependent, either oral

or written. Afterwards, the students will have different response to the assessment
depending on their level of English proficiency if the teachers do not guide them to
what they should do in completing the assessment. Teachers have to lead students to
learn how to express critical thinking towards the problem given in the assignment.
Again, authentic assessment is often used to measure students knowledge in depth in a
particular area. Students who have limited opportunities to exposure may find the
knowledge and skills that they possess miss altogether. Besides, the use of authentic
assessment may exacerbate the problems mentioned above with culturally unfamiliar
content because it usually asks in terms of a small number of questions about
applications of knowledge to a single theme rather than asks a larger number of
questions about a broader topic or theme. If the content connected to the single theme or
topic is unfamiliar, students may be unable to respond to any of questions consisting of
in the assessment.
3. Time-consuming
Time-consuming becomes another challenge in conducting authentic
assessment. As known that authentic assessment takes much time to do. That is why
teachers have to manage time-allotment well if they want to implement this assessment.
They should be able to prepare long schedule from planning to scoring before starting
the instruction. Also, they should give students understanding and guiding about what
they will do in the assessment.
4. Objectivity and reliability of scoring
Authentic assessments require teacher judgment to produce a score. This
introduces the possibility of subjectivity and lack of consensus with other teachers so
that teachers have to use inter-rater reliability to ensure consistency and fairness.
Moreover, according to OMalley and Pierce (1996: 21) the quality of the scoring needs
staff developments activities that can help teachers reach agreement in scoring any
authentic assessment.
Conclusion
Authentic assessment is regarded as an appropriate method of assessment that can be
used in the 2013 curriculum. This kind of assessment encourages both teachers and students
to be more creative and motivated in teaching learning process. Moreover, depending on its
benefits, it can be conducted to measure students learning. Nevertheless, implementing
authentic assessment promotes some challenges. Those challenges will lead some difficulties
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to the teachers if they apply authentic assessment. They are purpose of assessment, fairness,
time allotment, as well as objectivity and reliability of scoring. Consequently, teachers should
be ready with the challenges and prepare themselves well before implementing authentic
assessment.
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