Decolonizing Colombian Foreign-Language Classroom Assessments: A Meaningful Framework

In Colombia, foreign-language evaluation validity appears to be mainly related to the analysis of instruments, leaving aside students’ characteristics, affective schemata and expectations. Drawing from critical pedagogy, this study aimed at raising authenticity and meaningfulness in the development of valid foreign-language assessments in a higher education classroom. Framed in the sociocultural perspective, the teacher/researcher and her students obtained substantial gains by adapting a syllabus and evaluation system to better respond to the needs of their context. It was a collaborative process that implied contextualizing contents, establishing a concept of language ability, and including students’ voices in the design of assessments, to answer the question: how could authenticity and meaningfulness become decolonizing forces in a foreign-language course? Conjugating the Communicative Curriculum and the Model of Language Ability, the course syllabus was shaped around communication goals, meaningful dimensions, significant class events and linguistic purposes of the class ecology. As a contribution, this article presents a framework educators can adjust to work with their students towards the decolonization of knowledge in the Global South.