The Implementation of Authentic Assessment for Assessing Students’ Reading Skills at Senior High School

The 2013 curriculum required authentic assessment to assess students' achievement in any subjects, including reading skills as one of the four language skills in achieving English as a foreign language in Indonesia. However, teachers still have problems in using authentic assessment to assess reading skills. Therefore, implementation evaluation on authentic assessment needs to be done. The purposes of this research are to evaluate the authentic assessment implementation for assessing reading skills at senior high school in terms of the types of authentic assessment used by English teachers to assess reading skills, the type of texts used to assess reading skills, and the reading competencies tested in assessing students' reading skills. This research was descriptive. The respondents of this research were ten senior high school English teachers teaching in ten senior high schools in Padang, Padang Panjang, Bukittinggi, and Agam. The data were collected using questionnaires and document analysis. The research findings were that English teachers still preferred to use written assessments rather than other authentic assessments. The texts used to assess students' reading skills were descriptive text, announcement text, transactional interaction text, and recount text. Meanwhile, about 13 reading competencies were assessed, ranging from lower-order thinking skills, middle-order thinking skills, and higher-order thinking skills. In conclusion, senior high school teachers had implemented authentic assessment for assessing students' reading skills partly. It is suggested that teachers implement all types of authentic assessments to assess students' reading skills.