Pre-service English language teachers' conceptions of assessment and assessment practices

The main purpose of this study was to investigate pre-service English language teachers' conceptions of assessment. It was also aimed at finding out which assessment practices pre-service English language teachers think of using when they undertake teaching English. Data were gathered through the short version of Teacher Conceptions of Assessment Scale (TCoA- IIIA) which was developedby Brown (2001-2003, 2008), and had 27 items categorized under four-facet model including Improvement, School Accountability, Student Accountability, and Irrelevance, and a checklist. The data were obtained from 133 pre-service English language teachers from two universities in Konya. The descriptive results revealed that on one hand pre-service English language teachers conceived assessment as a way of improving the quality of teaching and student learning, measuring the quality of schools and certifying the students learning, on the other hand most of pre service English language teachers also think assessment as irrelevant. Moreover, correlation results of the study showed that Improvement, School Accountability, and Student Accountability were significantly correlated with each other, and they were also moderately correlated to Irrelevance conception. Finally, the descriptive results revealed that pre-service English language teachers think of using alternative assessment practices more than their own language teachers did. Key Words: Assessment, Conception, Pre-service English Language Teacher,Assessment Practices