English Teachers’ Assessment Practices during the COVID-۱۹ Pandemic:Opportunities and Challenges

The Covid-۱۹ pandemic has led to a sudden shift to emergency remote teaching. Along with the new teaching experiences in online platforms, the teachers were forced to adapt their assessment practices. The current study aimed to investigate the high school English teachers’ perceptions of online assessment practices within the COVID-۱۹ pandemic. Accordingly, ۳۵ English teachers were asked to write their answers to four open-ended questions in the form of self-reflection essays and reported their methods of assessment, challenges and strategies to overcome them,and their preferences for assessment procedures. The content analysis of the data revealed that the English teachers mostly took advantage of formative assessment techniques such as classroom discussions, active participation, problem-solving tasks, and different types of homework. Furthermore, the English teachers referred to such challenges as weak internet connection, limited time, students’ lack of motivation and literacy, difficulty of scoring and interpreting the test results. To rise to these challenges, the teachers attempted to encourage the students, send them reminders, give them adequate time, and use convenient platforms. The English teachers also expressed that they preferred in-person assessment due to its authenticity and credibility. The findings revealed the deficiencies which hinderedaccessible and user-friendly assessment procedures. The results raise the stakeholders’ awareness to provide the teachers and students with the requiredtraining programs to enhance their technological literacy