English Teachers’ Perception and Implementation of Authentic Assessment for Speaking Based on 2013 Curriculum

Authentic Assessment is one of important aspects in 2013 Curriculum promoting an idea of assessing students’ authentic skills including speaking. However, many teachers claimed to have difficulties in implementing it properly. This research aims at explaining the English teachers’ perception and implementation of authentic assessment for speaking based on 2013 Curriculum in state senior high schools in Semarang. Descriptive qualitative method is applied in this study. By using purposive sampling technique, sixteen English teachers from sixteen state senior high schools in Semarang were involved. There were four instruments to collect the data, namely questionnaire, interview, document analysis, and classroom observation. The findings of this research revealed that the English teachers had good perception of authentic assessment for speaking both in the concept, preparation and implementation. However, in the actual implementation, it was proven that the teachers did not apply authentic assessment for speaking as required by 2013 Curriculum. This was due to several problems such as limited time, teachers’ lack of creativity, students’ motivation and other reasons. Therefore, this study was expected to help teachers broaden their knowledge on authentic assessment for speaking as well as improve the implementation in accordance with the standard and purpose of the assessment.


INTRODUCTION
The implementation of 2013 Curriculum in senior high school level has been one of many concerns since 2013 Curriculum was first applied in 2013 replacing the previous curriculum named 2006 Curriculum or School-Based Curriculum. The 2013 Curriculum itself promotes a grand idea of restoring character education and improving students' creative thinking. It is claimed as the main reason of the new curriculum development. However, up to 5 years of its implementation, several studies conducted in senior high schools in several regions in Indonesia revealed that there are still many problems faced by teachers and institutions where the 2013 curriculum is implemented. The problems are low teacher's quality, inadequate infrastructure, and curriculum which has not been standardized (Marijan in Anugrahwati, 2015). One of those that needs special attention is the low quality of teachers in implementing the 2013 curriculum in their teaching and learning process.
In teaching, teachers' understanding of the curriculum as the base of the teaching and learning process directs them on how to manage their classes, starting from preparing learning devices, selecting materials that are in accordance with students' needs, the use of teaching techniques, to the assessment process.
In several studies, some English teachers claimed that they were still not familiar with the changes in the 2013 Curriculum, which changes affected many aspects in their teaching practice. One of the fundamental changes promoted by 2013 Curriculum is a change in the assessment standard, namely Authentic Assessment.
Authentic Assessment, as defined by O' Malley and Pierce (1996), is an evaluation process that involves multiple forms of performance measurement reflecting the student's learning achievement, motivation, and attitudes. In other words, this kind of assessment requires teachers to measure all domains of students' skill (cognitive, affective and psychomotor) during the learning process. Also, authentic assessment aims to assess students' abilities related to the real world, namely how students apply their knowledge and skills to tasks and problems in the real world. As stated by Wiggins (1990) that authentic assessment contains tasks and procedures in which students are asked to apply knowledge and skills to solve real-world problems and provide authentic tasks.
In English language teaching, one of students' skills that needs special attention in the assessment is the speaking. Yet, for some reasons, assessing speaking is usually considered difficult for teachers. In a pre-observation stage, the researcher had small interview with several teachers during English Teachers Association Meeting asking them about their understanding about authentic assessment and how they apply it to assess their students' speaking. The result is that there are still many teachers who do not have sufficient understanding about the concept of authentic assessment so that they do not apply it properly to their students' speaking. They claimed that there are several difficulties holding them back from applying a good and proper assessment for their students.
A critical issue in the assessment for speaking is the selection of criteria for evaluating students' performance. Stiggins (as cited in Butler and Stevens, 1997) points out that the selection of these criteria should be one of the first steps in designing performance assessments. This can actually help students to understand on what aspects they will be judged so that they can perform as they are expected. The second difficulty is in the actual implementation of speaking assessment because it is difficult to test a large number of students in a relatively short time, so teachers tend to only assess the students' speaking at the end of the teaching and learning process of their stage.
Another challenge is in designing the authentic assessment. As Khaira and Yambo (2005) stated in Holt, Segrave & Cybulski (2012) that authentic assessments should resemble meaningful performances in real world contexts and should involve real life tasks with multiple solutions for the student, teachers must be able to determine tasks that are in accordance with the needs of students in the real world and able to improve students' critical thinking and problem solving skill. This was supported by O' Malley and Pierce (1996) saying that authentic assessment requires teachers to have proper understanding and commitment to use, because it needs an intensive preparation and procedures to be applied effectively. In other words, without the teachers' deep understanding, sufficient and proper knowledge and skills of the assessment concept, they will face problems in applying it.
Based on the explanation above, in this research, the researcher attempts to describe the English teachers' perception and actual implementation of authentic assessment for speaking based on 2013 Curriculum in state senior high schools in Semarang. From the research findings, the researcher hopes that this research provides adequate and meaningful information as well as recommendation for senior high school English teachers on preparing and implementing a good and proper authentic assessment for students' speaking.

METHOD
This study assumed that most of senior high school English teachers as the subject of this study have good perception on authentic assessment for speaking. It means that they already have good understanding on the concept of authentic assessment for speaking as well as understand how to implement it properly. However, in the actual implementation, it is assumed that the teachers might face several problems that prevent them from implementing a good authentic assessment for speaking.
The subject of the study is sixteen English teachers from state senior high schools in Semarang determined by using purposive sampling. Here, the schools involved are pilot schools in implementing 2013 Curriculum since academic year 2013/2014. Thus, the researcher assumed that the teachers from these schools had more knowledge and experience related to authentic assessment practices so that their contribution would be able to meet the purpose of this study. Then, as the objects of this study, the teachers' perception and the actual implementation of authentic assessment for speaking in their classes were analysed.
In collecting data, the researcher used questionnaire, interview, document analysis and classroom observation. The teachers were asked to show their level of perception by responding to several statements in the questionnaire related to the concept, preparation and implementation of authentic assessment. Then, the interview was conducted to confirm the questionnaire results by knowing the teachers' real perception from their direct statements. The document analysis was to gain information on how the teachers actually prepared their authentic assessment and to see whether the assessment documents met the curriculum requirements. Lastly, classroom observation was to find out whether the teachers implemented the authentic assessment for speaking as planned and to know what problems the teachers faced during the process and how they coped with them.

Teachers' Perception
From the results of the questionnaire and interview, it is revealed that almost all teachers had good perception of authentic assessment, both of the concept, preparation and implementation. They defined authentic assessment as a form of progressive assessment carried out in conjunction with the learning process, not just at the beginning or at the end of learning, to monitor the progress and evaluate the students' learning. This is in accordance with the definition of authentic assessment in the Decree of the Ministry of Education and Culture Number 53 Year 2015 concerning Education Assessment Standards, that authentic assessment is the process of gathering information/ data on learning outcomes of students in the aspects of attitudes, knowledge, and skills that are planned and systematically carried out to monitor the process, learning progress, and improvement of learning outcomes through assignments and evaluations of learning outcomes. The teachers also explained that authentic assessment is an assessment engaging students to perform a task that is applicable to their real life rather than a formal assessment that is considered as a source of anxiety for students since they are affected by the results. As Wiggins (1998) claimed that authentic assessment refers to the idea that assessment should engage students in applying knowledge and skills in the same way they are used in real world outside school. This result showed that there was a good improvement since the result of the study by Trisanti (2014) explained that several English teachers in Central Java at that time still had poor understanding of authentic assessment.
Supporting the teachers' perception about the definition of authentic assessment, the teachers could also explain the characteristics of authentic assessment, especially compared to traditional assessment. They stated that authentic assessment is a more complex assessment, where teachers do not only assess students' knowledge, but also their skills and attitudes. When traditional assessment tends to only collect students' final results that are oriented to product, authentic assessment is done during the learning process to know the progress of students' learning (Brown, 2001). In its form, authentic assessment is also more varied than traditional assessment, especially to assess students' speaking skill. The teachers mentioned that authentic assessment for speaking can be carried out through practices, products, projects, portfolios and/ or techniques in accordance with the competencies assessed as exemplified in the Decree of Ministry of Education and Culture Number 23 Year 2016 about Education Assessment Standard. From the sixteen teachers, there were four types of assessment technique that they said they frequently used, namely presentation, dialog practice, group discussion, and question and answer. Below is the table of frequency of the assessment techniques used by the teachers. The results in the table above show that presentation, dialogue practice and group discussion are the favorite speaking assessment techniques for the English teachers in this study. They stated that those techniques are the most suitable techniques for senior high school students since they are more active and critical speakers. Moreover, in their future education, their ability to present a material well and have active discussions will be very useful.
Moreover, the teachers were also aware of the benefits of implementing authentic assessments for both teachers and students. In line with the teachers' understanding that authentic assessment is conducted to control students' learning progress, authentic assessment is considered beneficial for teachers to detect students' problems in learning and help students overcome their problems and improve their abilities. This is in line with Andrade & Cizek (2010) that authentic assessment has the purpose of understanding the students' learning and conceptual organization, identification of strengths, diagnosis of weaknesses, areas for improvement, and as a source of information that teachers can use in instructional planning and students can use in deepening their understandings and improving their achievement.
For students, authentic assessment emphasizes the provision of real-life tasks that can be applied in the students' real life. Authentic assessment is also expected to train students to independently recognize their abilities, evaluate themselves and think critically to overcome the problems they have. While completing the tasks, students will also automatically learn new things that might spontaneously occur. As stated by O' Malley & Pierce (1996) that there are several direct implications for authentic assessment that implicitly also explain the benefits of authentic assessment, namely: (1) authentic assessment occurs when students construct new information as they learn in the class, (2) students should have opportunities to demonstrate the knowledge and skills they have acquired, and at last, (3) the assessment should accommodate complex and critical thinking through the class activities.
Further, in understanding the preparation of authentic assessment, all teachers agreed that before authentic assessment is carried out, teachers need to arrange a lesson plan. This is in accordance with the mechanism of authentic assessment implementation suggested in the Decree of the Ministry of Education and Culture Number 23 Year 2016 concerning Education Assessment Standard that the design of an assessment strategy by educators is carried out during the preparation of the learning implementation plan based on the syllabus. The syllabus is further developed into a lesson plan. A lesson plan including a clear scoring criteria guides teachers to be able to carry out authentic assessment in a coherent and procedural manner, helps teachers conduct a fair and objective assessment, as well as to minimize obstacles that occur during the implementation.
According to the teachers, in addition to preparing lesson plans, it is also important to determine the appropriate assessment materials and techniques. The implementation of authentic assessment is expected to be interesting and useful for students, so teachers must be creative in determining assessment materials and techniques that are appropriate to the needs of the students. According to Endler & Parker (1994), teachers must provide tasks that go to the heart of essential learnings by asking for exhibitions of understandings and abilities that matter as well as tasks that resemble interdisciplinary real-life challenges, not schoolish busywork that is artificially fragmented and easy to grade.
In line with the perception of the concept and preparation of authentic assessment, the teachers also had a good perception of its implementation. They stated that authentic assessment for speaking can be done through various techniques, such as presentation, dialogue practice, group discussion and question and answer. The selection of assessment techniques is based on the learning materials, students' individual abilities, and the effectiveness and efficiency of the implementation. They said that in applying authentic assessment for their students' speaking skill, ideally they conduct assessment two to three times in one semester. There was even a teacher who claimed to assess students' speaking skill at every meeting. It is intended to meet the purpose of authentic assessment, which is to evaluate students' learning progress. However, various problems were experienced by the teachers so that the perfect picture of the implementation of authentic assessment for speaking that they expected was difficult to realize.

Teachers' Implementation
From the results of document analysis and direct observation it is proven that the teachers performed procedural stages of authentic assessment for speaking according to the 2013 Curriculum described in the Decree of the Ministry of Education and Culture Number 23 Year 2016 about Education Assessment Standard, namely: a. arrange assessment plans; b. develop assessment instruments; c. carry out the assessment; d. utilize the results of the assessment; e. report the assessment results in numeric form with a scale of 0-100 and description. The teachers were proven to have prepared the assessment by making lesson plans that contained detailed learning plans although there were some teachers who did not explain in detail the assessment plans, which was about the assessment techniques, instructions and scoring criteria.
Next, along with determining the assessment techniques, several teachers developed the assessment instruments by making an assessment rubric that was suitable with the material. The teachers stated that rubrics are more specific to evaluate students' performances and products resulting from an authentic task. This is based on Mertler (2001) that rubric is scoring guide, consisting of specific pre-established performance criteria, used in evaluating student's work on authentic assessment. Here, the teachers applied different scoring criteria for their rubrics. For example, for teachers who used dialogue practice techniques, the criteria were vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. Another example for teachers who used presentation techniques, the criteria given are fluency, vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. Unfortunately, not all of the teachers employed scoring rubrics containing scoring criteria, so that they directly took the students' final score without considering each aspect of students' speaking.
In the actual implementation in classroom, the teachers mostly used presentation, dialogue practice, and group discussion. The teachers argued that they liked to use presentation because the English materials in senior high schools are dominated by long text or essay that needs every student to present to see their individual comprehension of the texts. This shows that the teachers tend to use task-based assessment and performance-based assessment to assess their students' speaking as long as they reflect students' real life needs in speaking English. In this case, different result shown in the study by Jannah & Hartono (2018) which found that teachers in senior high schools tend to use role play to assess speaking.
During the classroom observation, the teachers' problems in implementing the authentic assessment and how they dealt with them were observed. The researcher categorized those problems into three types, namely technical problems, teachers' problems, and students' problems. 1. Technical Problem a. Limited Time English subject is only given 90 minutes for every class each week with a large number of students in each class (36 to 40 students). It seemed inadequate to carry out the whole package of learning perfectly, including assessment. The teachers claimed that to overcome this problem, they often modify the assessment techniques by using paired or grouped assessment, or they look for additional time outside the classroom to complete the assessment.

Teachers Problems a. Scoring Criteria
The teachers tend to ignore the use of scoring criteria. Whereas, scoring criteria are very important to understand every student' abilities in accordance with the aspects of speaking. If teachers assess students without going through criteria, they will have difficulty in understanding each student's constraints. In fact, to help students improve their speaking ability, the teachers must know every student's problem since the treatment will be different depending on the needs of every student.
b. Creativity The teachers were found lacking of creativity in applying assessment techniques. The teachers can try to use other techniques such as oral interviews, story or text retelling, writing samples, projects and exhibitions, experiments and demonstrations, constructed response items, teacher observation and portfolios as promoted by O'Malley & Pierce (1996). In addition, Cohen et al. (2008) stated that authentic assessment could also be applied through portfolios, self and peer assessment, observation, recording, interviews, role play, etc.
c. Instruction Before starting the assessment, almost all teachers did not convey the detail of the assessment; the purpose, the benefits, the technique, the instructions, including the assessment criteria. The teachers generally only explained the techniques and instructions. Communicating the purpose and benefits of assessment to students is very important to increase the students' motivation in following the assessment process. Moreover, mentioning the assessment criteria. Students have the right to know how they will be assessed and what they should do to meet the assessment criteria to get the best score. d. Feedback In the assessment process, while the teachers were observing the students' performances, the teachers did not use special notes to record the detailed performance of each student. As a result, the teachers did not provide direct feedbacks to the students soon after they performed, but only general feedbacks at the end of the assessment process. Whereas, positive feedback is very important for every student so that they know which parts of their abilities needed to upgrade, or what aspects of their speaking they should improve. So, it is better for the teachers to give direct feedbacks to the students to help them evaluate their performances.

Students' Problems a. Motivation
Students' motivation affects their engagement with the assessment process and also influences the results of their performance. As revealed by Apriliyanti, Warsono & Mujiyanto (2018) that the results of students' assessment depend on their motivation since it is the second factor in building speaking English competence. However, this problem can be overcome with teachers' support. One way is to convey the purpose and benefits of an assessment to students' achievement in school and their real life so that they understand why they need to follow the assessment process and perform their tasks well.
b. Speaking skill Many of the teachers stated that mostly their students had problems in pronunciation and grammar, and they kept repeating the same mistakes over and over. Khunaifi & Hartono (2015) assumed in their study that this was caused by fossilization that was suffered by the students. It should also be the teacher's active role in helping students overcome this constrain. The teachers must dig deeper into students' individual ability regarding the aspects of speaking skills and help them improve based on their individual needs. Then, the teachers can give special exercises to students at school or projects at home that are useful and meaningful for them.

CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
Based on the data interpretation and discussion above, the conclusions could be finally drawn that the English teachers in state senior high schools in Semarang had a good perception both on the concept, preparation and implementation of authentic assessment. However, they also considered several problems that might block their way in implementing a proper authentic assessment for speaking.
Meanwhile, the document analysis and classroom observation results revealed that the English teachers in this study conducted authentic assessment for their students' speaking, but it was not properly compatible with the 2013 Curriculum standard. From the findings, several teachers were found putting their perception into practice. On the other side, several teachers did not implement the authentic assessment for speaking as they had perceived. The teachers were proven as well-prepared by arranging a lesson plan, yet they missed many details in the lesson plan especially in the assessment part. Many of them also did not provide scoring rubric. They were also found conducting speaking assessment only once in this semester. This surely did not meet the authentic assessment purpose which is to control students' progress. All these shortfalls were claimed by the teachers due to several problems. As the consequences, they used some strategies in overcoming those problems such as by modifying assessment technique and managing their time well so that the assessment process could run as planned.
Considering the research results, the researcher provide some suggestions for teachers related to the authentic assessment for speaking, both in the preparation and in the implementation, and also for future researchers. In preparing the authentic assessment for speaking, the teachers should pay more attention on giving details to their lesson plan. They should provide the material and the assessment details including the technique, the instructions and the scoring criteria in the form of rubric. A well-prepared assessment leads to a good assessment practice and helps teachers to minimize problems that might arise during the process. While in the implementation, the teachers should utilize the scoring criteria well in order to collect accurate data on the aspects of students' speaking skill. It also helps teacher to give proper feedbacks for students based on their individual performance. The feedback is hopefully expected to encourage students to improve their speaking skill.
Then, dealing with the problem of limited time, the researcher suggest the teachers to improve their creativity in using assessment techniques. They can utilize many types of assessment techniques that they consider the most effective and efficient in accordance with the assessment material, the number of students and the time provided.