Assessment as a key to promoting learning in the inclusive foreign language classroom

Based on experiences of teaching practice in German EFL classrooms, the contribution explores the viability of innovative and potentially inclusive assessment strategies at German secondary schools. For German EFL classroom practitioners, the challenge is to adapt differentiated assessment strategies to their own teaching routines. Systematically and purposefully gathering assessment data, e.g. from samples of work or end-of unit tests while applying formative or ongoing assessment during students` working process, seems indispensable in a differentiated and inclusive classroom.First, EFL textbooks catering for various age and ability groups are examined in order to determine to what extent the assessment tools and strategies provided can actually help foster language learning in differentiated classrooms. Particular attention is being paid to the adaptability of inclusive assessment strategies originating in Anglo-Saxon countries to German FL teaching practice. The analysis carried out suggests that German textbooks need to be amended in order to actually yield the positive effects expected from formative assessment as a tool to facilitate differentiation and to promote inclusion.Besides, a review of guides aimed at in-service or future language teachers reveals that the usual "tool box" which is supposed to contain "hands-on advice" helping to put best-practice assessment strategies into action, often requires a set of teaching skills and presupposes a learning and teaching tradition mostly embedded in English-speaking countries. Focusing on both current (German) EFL textbooks and publications introducing innovative assessment strategies from Anglo-Saxon countries, examples of teaching and learning resources are examined in an effort to come up with a viable model of assessment strategies helping to cater for different educational needs when learning a foreign language.