6 Assessing productive and interactive skills Personal refl ection

 Part 
II
these can only give a very limited and incomplete picture in relation to 
the range of knowledge and abilities involved in language production 
and interaction outlined above. It is now well established in language 
assessment that meaningful interpretations of writing ability or 
speaking ability can only really be supported through the use of 
performance assessment
. In a performance assessment, the assessee 
carries out a task involving an extended response (see Example 6.1). 
Performance is evaluated according to a set process – usually employing 
a