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We, as human beings, are always being exposed to sort of testing activities, in every aspect of life, people will always be trying to prove if the process is being fructiferous or not. People will always need to assess what they do to verify or provide correspondent judgment to our performances as learners of something.

Learning a language does not escape from this process either, it is essential for teachers, to assess the performance of the students. The question is, do they know how to do it? Or do they do it right? The answer to these questions may be a little uncertain, however, assessing, testing and evaluating a second language learning performance, should be an accurate procedure a props the existent theory and methodology. Through this paper it will be presented a description and reflection about concepts on the subject of assessing a second language learning process, regarding three main points of view on the topic, these are D. Brown’s, Ch. Coombe’s & Bachman and Palmer’s.

First of all, it is necessary to claim that there is a misunderstanding of the concepts, from part of teachers that is why, sometimes the evaluation process seems to be very difficult to understand for students. Clarifying basic concepts is a helpful tool to carry out the process in a natural way. Evaluation is then, a sort of umbrella concept, form where it emerges testing and assessing. According to Harris & McCann, (2004) evaluation covers the whole program and it ponders all the factors that may influence on the learning process. Some other scholars, among them, Coombe, et al,. (2007) claimed that terms such testing and assessment are part of the evaluation and are linked to achievement of the learner. These two last concepts, are more visua...

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...th an instrument predesign or constructed on a well-studied form. This final point regarding tests types, will allows to go deeper into the question what does it make a test a well-design test? To answer we will describe what has been proposed for expertized scholars on the field.

We have analyzed and described what has been proposed by different authors, on the field of assessing second language learning. Differences have been clarified to our better understanding, and though we might conclude that, there is still a lack of investigation and practice on this area, assessing is not longer, marking, leveling, or discriminating learners because of their performance, it is much more about knowing the learner’s ongoing process when learning, it is stating how well am I, as teacher, doing my job and how learners perceive this process and are also able to evaluate it.