Unit 5: Final Reflections

Evaluation is not just a test or an exam that we give to the students at the end of a course or a unit of study and then use the results to give the students a numerical grade. As we have seen in this course, it involves much more.

First of all, we saw that evaluation, assessment and testing are different but related concepts, and that they are all part of teaching and the classroom situation. (See Unit 0 in this blog).

Next we looked closer at both formal and informal assessment (see Unit 1 in this blog). In this course, we have seen that both formal and informal assessments are needed. I would guess that most teachers like me are very familiar with formal assessment in the form of written tests often provided by the institution where we teach. I believe that most teachers perform informal assessment on a regular, continuous basis through observation in the classroom, although we probably don’t do it in a structured way but rather in an intuitive way based on our impressions. In fact, we may do it unconsciously without any criteria. Since informal assessment is every bit as important as formal assessment, we need to define criteria for informal assessments of both linguistic and non-linguistic factors, and use it on a regular, continuous basis.

Using this knowledge of formal and informal assessment, we created an assessment plan, and designed activities and instruments to gather information in order to assess our students. This was quite interesting as we discovered ways to assess the different language skills as well as non-linguistic factors such as participation.

We then moved on to testing (see Unit 2 in this blog) where we discovered that creating a test or exam is not as easy as it seems. First of all, there are different types of tests and different types of testing. We created items to use to assess skills which we then included in a test. In designing a test, we saw the many different things to consider besides the items such as the learning objectives and contents, and the scoring system. And still we weren’t finished with the test. We also had to look at some very important principles– validity, reliability, practicality, authenticity and backwash effects, and analyze the test we created with respect to these aspects.

Next we looked at feedback (see Unit 3 in this blog) and its great importance in teaching-learning. Too often, especially in large classes, students receive feedback in the form of a grade or a word like “good”. But does this really help the students improve their performance? I think not. I think that we really need to give the students continuous, ongoing feedback on their performance in all areas of their language development. The giving of feedback is not just the task of teachers; it can also be provided by classmates. All feedback must be supportive with the goal of encouraging the students and promoting improvement.

Finally we arrived at self-assessment (see Unit 4 in this blog). Who knows better how they are doing and where they need to improve than the students themselves? While initially the students and maybe some teachers may resist the idea of self-assessment, I believe that it is invaluable in promoting autonomy and responsibility in our students. In a world where the students will likely take a distance course at some time in their studies, being autonomous and responsible and being able to self-assess are critical.

This course has been very enlightening for me and now the job is to use all of this information to help my students. Although I cannot change the requirement of the institution where I work to provide a grade for the students, with continuous informal assessment, feedback and self-assessment, I can help my students in reaching the course objectives and overcoming barriers along the way.

Unit 4: Self-assessment

Activity 1: Chapter 3 Self-assessment Harris & McCann (1994)

I absolutely think that self-assessment can be (and should be!) implemented in the language classroom. But most of the students don’t like to do it. For the last few semesters, I have had my high intermediate students assess themselves on their oral skills. I give them the rubric that we use at the school and ask them to select the description that fits their skills. The results are interesting – the students with good oral skills generally rate themselves lower than my rating while the students with poor oral skills rate themselves higher than I would rate them.

Advantages of self-assessment:
· provides a lot of information about the students:
- their expectations, needs, problems, worries
- how they feel about the class – the teacher, the subject, the book, the topics, the activities, etc.
- whether or not they think they are making progress
· direct and efficient
· impacts learning greatly by providing feedback to teaching and learning
· takes what we do subconsciously (thinking about our learning) and makes us do it consciously in a structured way – with guidance and encouragement
· forces students to become (more) autonomous and to reflect on their learning or lack of learning and how they can improve
· reduces students’ passivity with respect to how well they are doing in a course

Disadvantages:
· time-consuming
· students must be trained in both language and learning
· students may not be mature enough to be honest in their assessments i.e. they will give themselves 10s instead of really assessing themselves
· is not always possible – depends on the context and the competitiveness of the students

In spite of the disadvantages, I still think that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, and that self-assessment should definitely be done.

Activity 2: Choosing one of Harris & McCann's self-assessment instruments

The instructions said to pick only one. I think many of the self-assessment instruments in Chapter 3 can help me in my classroom situation.

But if I have to choose only one, I'll pick counseling sessions (under descriptions) where the teacher and each student get together to talk about the students progress in the course.

Activity 2 Part 2: Designing an instrument or technique for self-assessment

For the unit that I have been working on, I have designed the following questionnaire using can/cannot questions for the students to complete.

QUESTIONNAIRE

Based on the objectives for Unit 11: In your dreams, mark which of the things below you can do in this way:
a) I can do this well.
b) I can do this.
c) I can’t do this.

· Hypothesize in the present to express regrets and wishes using:
o wish
o second conditional
o if only
o ’d rather

· Hypothesize in the past to express regrets and wishes using:
o wish
o third conditional
o if only
o ’d rather
o should (not) have + past participle

· Recognize when to use first, second or third conditionals.
· Use word pairs (for example wait and see) appropriately.
· Use word pairs (for example wait and see) accurately.

· In speaking:
communicate your own wishes and regrets.
contribute to class discussions.

· In listening:
grasp the main idea.
catch specific information or details.

· In reading:
grasp the main idea.
find specific information or details.
understand new vocabulary by context.

In writing:
use linking words and expressions in a narrative.
organize well with introduction, body and conclusion.check spelling, punctuation and

grammar.

Once the student has completed the questionnaire, we (the student and I) would have a counseling session to discuss the information of the questionnaire. The idea of the counseling session would be for the student to make a plan for any further studying needed with respect to the contents of this unit.

Activity 3: Design an Instrument to Self-Assess my Performance in this Course

Progress Questionnaire

Use your portfolio to complete the table of the areas covered in this course. Then grade yourself using the following scale:

3 - I have no problems with this.
2 - I am not completely sure of this.
1 - I don’t understand this or I was unable to do this.

Unit Description
0 What is assessment?
· Define terms: evaluation, assessment, testing, teaching
· Understand how terms relate to classroom situation
· Understand what a portfolio is

1 Informal Assessment
· Define informal assessment
· Understand the difference between formal and informal assessment
· Adapt and/or design instruments and techniques to collect assessment data
· Create an assessment plan

2 Testing
· Understand the different types of tests
· Explain the types of testing
· Design test items to assess skills to include in a test
· Design a test which includes all parts
. Revise a test in terms of validity, reliability, practicality, authenticity, and backwash effect.

3 Feedback
· Define feedback and explain its importance.
· Make a plan for giving feedback including when and how
· Adapt and/or design instruments and techniques for collecting information for giving feedback

4 Self-Assessment
· Understand the advantages and disadvantages of self-assessment
· Design an instrument for self-assessing

Adapted from Harris & McCann (1994).

My Reflections on Unit 4: Self-Assessment

I have used self-assessment with my students but as a way to give a grade. Like feedback, this should be a continuous, ongoing activity. I think it is a very useful way to promote autonomy throughout a course.

At the beginning of a course, it would be valuable for the students to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses in the different skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking as well as grammar and vocabulary. With this reflection, an awareness of the areas that they need to work on would be created right from the start.

Throughout the course, continuous self-assessment would reveal any shortfalls in order for the students to plan extra activities to complement the class activities in their ‘weak’ areas.
At the Language Faculty at UABC, we have a self-access centre, CEMAII. If the students have an awareness of what areas they need to work on, the time they spend at CEMAII could be focused on these areas.

At the end of the course in planning for future studies, self-assessment could assist the students in selecting the appropriate course of study. For example, if a student sees that he needs to work on speaking, he could join a conversation class.

Unit 3: Feedback

Activity 1: Chapter 14 Feedback, Penny Ur.

In this chapter, Ur (1996) asks us to examine and reflect on what we think and how we provide feedback to our students. She provides ideas and examples for providing oral correction and written feedback.

So what is feedback and why is it important? It’s letting the students know how they are doing and involves both assessment and correction. It’s important because the goals of providing are to promote learning and to improve performance. Although feedback is primarily provided by the teacher, it can also be provided by other students. How feedback is provided varies in different theories of language learning ranging from avoidance to acceptance of mistakes.
Ur writes about both formative and summative assessment and the gathering of information. As we saw in Unit 2 of this course, if we use tests for assessment, the issues of validity and reliability must be carefully addressed. And we must look also at criteria and assignment of grades.

In correcting oral work, the distinction is made between fluency work and accuracy work. During fluency work, the usual advice is not to correct although as Ur suggests “supportive intervention” should be given. The teacher is only one source of correction. The student himself as well as the other students can also provide correction. Ur poses the question as to whose ideas about the ways of correcting in the classroom are best. While the teacher has knowledge from experience, the students have “reliable intuitive knowledge about what kind of correction helps most” (Ur, 1996, p. 248). The suggestion that correction should be tactful, encouraging and given with sensitivity seems like good advice.

In my experience with conversation class, I always asked the students how they wanted to be corrected during oral work. It’s interesting to note that some students wanted to be corrected right away; others wanted to be corrected at the end; and finally the others didn’t want to be corrected as long as their message was understood. So it appears that the technique for correcting is not ‘one size fits all’ but an individual preference.

With respect to written feedback, Ur provides us with nine points to consider. These points range from what colour of pen to use when correcting to putting ourselves in the students’ place to imagine how you would feel reading the corrections.

Activity 2: Plan for Feedback

In my assessment plan, I wrote that I would have a data collection form for each student where I would record my observations with respect to linguistic and non-linguistic factors of 4 or 5 students in any given class session. Then this would be used to provide feedback to the students. So the fast answer to when should I provide feedback would be continuously. But let’s get specific. Following through the unit (11) in the book, there are many opportunities for the teacher to provide feedback. I think that whenever we are assessing the students, we can also provide feedback either in verbal or written form.

With respect to the grammar point in this unit which is different ways of hypothesizing about the present and past, when we do the book’s grammar exercises in class, we often check the answers verbally or by writing them on the board. In reviewing these answers, I (and the students) can provide verbal feedback regarding both what’s right and what’s wrong. Before I provide feedback on work that students have written on the board, I always give the students the chance to provide feedback by making changes before I do.

There is also an exercise called Talking about you where the students have to make personal wishes and share them with the class. The idea is for the students to use the grammar point to write sentences about themselves. This provides me with an opportunity to give verbal feedback both as to content and the correctness of the grammar structures used.

The reading in this unit is called Have you ever wondered? After the reading, there are some comprehension questions which can be used to assess the students’ understanding of the text. This gives me the opportunity to call on the students whose data I am collecting in that class session to check their understanding using my Reading Assessment instrument. Also after the reading, there is a section called What do you think? to promote discussion about the reading. This discussion, which could be done in small groups or as a whole class, would provide an opportunity for me to assess oral skills. In these group/class discussions, I try not to interrupt the discussion except when someone is stuck or when they are faltering and need some help to keep the discussion going. I agree with the idea that if we continually interrupt to correct, the students may lose their enthusiasm or concentration. And if we are indeed promoting the communicative approach, what we want to focus on is that message is understandable not that it is 100%. I like to make notes about errors (and good and/or interesting things) that I hear and after the discussion, provide feedback to the whole class. During these discussions, I could also collect data for the Oral Assessment Scoring Guidelines instrument.

Other opportunities for discussion and providing feedback occur both before and after the listening exercise. Before the listening there are some guiding questions for a discussion about dream interpretation and after the listening there is a What do you think? to promote discussion about the listening. As in the above reading example, these discussions provide an opportunity to assess oral skills. In addition to the discussions, there are some true/false and comprehension questions. As with the reading, I cold use this as an opportunity to call on the students whose data I am collecting in that class session to check their understanding using my Listening Assessment instrument.

In each unit of our book, there is a writing exercise. In this unit, the focus is on narrative writing using linking words and expressions. The students are required to write a narrative in the context of something that they looked forward to for a long time. The requirement of writing a first draft and then a final version both provide opportunities for feedback. On the first draft of their narrative, I like the suggestions from Ur (1996). She suggests for feedback, we show that there is an error but don’t offer the correction as they will be writing a final version and will be looking to make it as correct as possible. She suggests that with the first draft of this kind of written work, we also provide the students with feedback in the form of constructive ideas to be used in their final version. I would use the Writing Assessment Scoring Guideline instrument to provide suggestions for the first draft and to give comments and provide a grade for the final version.

After a class where I have collected data about a student, I think I should provide feedback to the student about my observations both in writing and verbally in a face to face meeting. As this could easily become time consuming and tedious, these would be short informal meetings. I think a more formal meeting would be appropriate to provide feedback on all the skills after the formal written and oral tests which occur after every two units.

This assessment and feedback plan might be a little too ambitious although with my small class of 11 students, I think it might be possible. I look forward to trying it in the future.

(The instruments that I refer to were provided in Unit 1.)

My Reflections on Unit 3: Feedback

Feedback is very important yet I think that it is often overlooked or treated casually. I think I have been very lax in providing feedback to my students. Often I have provided just a grade in numerical form or a single word like ‘good.’ After this unit, I can see that I need to provide more meaningful feedback about what is good, what needs to be improved, and the contents. And not just feedback from me but also from the other students.

In real life when we try to communicate verbally, we usually receive immediate feedback. We can see by our listener’s body language and their facial expressions as well as their verbal response whether or not they have understood. And with that feedback, we take the necessary steps to make repairs. But without feedback, we don’t really know and often just assume that our communicative intent was successful.

In the classroom, without feedback either positive or negative, students are left in a ‘no man’s land’, not sure whether they have been successful or not. For the more confident students, this might not be a big problem as they would assume they were understood without any indication to the contrary. However, most students need the feedback, both positive and negative.