MONITORING AND EVALUATION IN SERBIAN LANGUAGE TEACHING

Abstract

The importance of Serbian language teaching for the proper development and education of primary school students requires the teachers to act responsibly both regarding the learning goals and learning objectives, and regarding the contents used in the classroom to achieve these goals, but especially concerning the student activities that need to be properly assessed. The learning goals for Serbian language lessons and the final learning objectives depend on carefully designed activities that will help to develop students’ linguistic and speaking skills, and also to constantly monitor and assess the overall engagement both in and outside of the classroom. Classroom experience worldwide shows that the results of the teaching process in general, and in particular language teaching, are perceived through the students’ knowledge acquired and their behavior, their linguistic and speaking skills, interaction with each other, individual traits, interests, which all imposes the need for both formative and summative assessment in primary school, in order for student performance to be observed in a thorough and objective manner. Contrary to this, evaluation in Serbia is mostly numerical, except in the first grade of primary school where it is descriptive. This paper, among other things, explains how the fourth grade students perceive their teachers’ attitude towards evaluation, which contents of the Serbian language lessons he/she most often evaluates, the feedback he/she provides or does not provide and the importance that he/she does or does not give to feedback, as well as the “self-image” that students create based on the assessment and the grade given to them by their teacher.