Teaching... outside the comfort zone!!

When I was at school, as far as I remember I can tell there was probably not assessment at all. There were no projects, portfolios, lack of positive feedback, or any other way of assessment. The truth is that assessment is a term not very known by Colombian teachers. Teachers in public schools just come to class, teach the topic (though some of them even skip this part), make us present a bunch of quizzes, schedule standardized summative examinations, and that’s it. This is how they determine if we pass or not. Actually, tests still work as a way to differentiate the “good students” or the “intelligent students” from “the other students”. But, are they taking each student as a particular person with different skills and different ways to learn? There is not fairness at the time of testing students.

Teaching, in general, should be more critical. Assessment procedures help “to make decisions and judgments about the teaching-learning process” (Lopez & Bernal). Thus, assessment procedures work, not only to keep track of the students’ performance and improvement, but also to evaluate and reflect our teaching effectiveness. From Lopez and Bernal’s study it might be concluded that teachers need to have more preparation in assessment, so that they can change their perceptions about it, and also put it into practice in their classes. I think most of us have this clear thanks to this career and Assessment & Evaluation in ELT subject but, will we put all of this into practice? How will we apply all this concepts, especially when we go to the real teaching practice which is not English institutes, but public/private schools?

A few days ago I was watching an Asian drama about bullying at schools, among students and also among colleagues. One of the characters that called my attention was one of the teachers, who was determined to fight against bullying. Directors of the school wanted to keep in secret that bullying issue because it would affect the school’s reputation. Even when directors and other teachers were bullying her due to her actions, she followed her perceptions until the end. As expected, she got unfairly fired. Nevertheless, when she gets to teach at a new school, she keeps her fight against bullying. I believe this is the kind of teachers that are almost extinct, who are willing to protect and follow their beliefs until the last/worst effects.

I know this has nothing to do with assessment, but I just wanted to share my thoughts regarding that drama because it made me think about our true power as teachers. Regarding assessment, in an English institute it might be easier to make your voice heard and propose new was of assessing the students, especially because the directors believe the institute will have all the benefits. But, is it that easy in a public/private school? I don’t think so… 

* This post is about Lopez & Bernal (2009): Language Testing In Colombia: A Call For More Teacher Education And Teacher Training In Language Assessment.

** Image retrieved from http://www.paulcheksblog.com/real-education/

Can we design reliable tests?

When I started reading this chapter, one of the preview questions called my attention: Do you think it is a good idea to give students lots of times to complete a test?

Regarding my experience in designing tests, I always had a bad time when designating time to the tests. Sometimes I tried to state the time depending on how much time I would spend answering the test, because I thought that if they studied enough, they wouldn’t need much more time. But, is this reliable? Is this a fair way to give time to the tests? I always asked myself that.

Other times, I just gave my students a random time span to take the test.  Then, I would frequently check their progress. If I saw they needed more time (or they asked me for more time) I would enlarge the time limit.  For me, it felt better this way. Nevertheless, there were times of disorganization because most of the students would ask for extra time, and as I was flexible before, I should be flexible with all of them.  According to Genesse & Upshur (1996), judging each skill by real contexts would be a good strategy to allocate the correct time to a test.

Regarding instructions, I think this is one of the reasons why many tests fail their purposes. Sometimes we don’t know how to give instructions and we don’t know exactly how much information should we include in the instructions of the test. For example, we don’t usually include the purpose of the test, the students’ response we expect, or in writing tests, what exactly we are going to assess (like adding a rubric), and so on (more aspects are included in this chapter). In my case, I haven’t told my students the purpose of the test, or the objectives, or those things.  As I have worked with kids only, I consider they wouldn’t give it much importance to this. They just want to answer the test as soon as possible and get a good grade, of course. I would like to know, do you usually give your students all this important information and instructions before starting to implement your tests? Or you really don’t? Do our students really care about knowing all this information?

As said by Genesse & Upshur (1996), tests that are “carefully constructed, edited, tried out, and revised” are more reliable. A test that is prepared the night before its implementation will certainly be lacking of reliability. Sometimes we don’t give tests design the importance it requires, so we should start doing it if we want successful assessment.

*This entry is about Genesse & Upshur’s Classroom-based Evaluation in Second Language Education, chapter 11. 
**Image retrieved from http://minds-on-math.blogspot.com/2012/10/timed-tests-and-development-of-math.html

Planning evaluation

It is clear that evaluation needs planning. It could be time consuming, but it’s necessary if we want evaluation to be successful. When planning evaluation, there are some questions that should be asked. Here they are:

If you take into account all the five questions when planning evaluation, it will give you the advantage to foresee problems and the opportunity to involve the students in the process of evaluation. For instance, in the first question, it is usually the teacher who keeps the results of assessments, but there are other people who can also be involved in this. Students can be participant of the process of evaluation; thus, including self-assessment will increase the students’ involvement and self-awareness of their own learning.   

For further information, it is recommended to check Classroom-based Evaluation in Second Language Education, by Genesee and Upshur (1999, pp. 44-51)

Some Experiences about Listening and a little bit about Speaking

Listening might be the most difficult skill to achieve. As we know, there are many factors that make listening comprehension that difficult (Clustering, Redundancy, Reduced forms, Performance variables, Colloquial language, Rate of delivery, Stress, Rhythm, and Intonation, and Interaction). The more unfamiliar the language, the harder it is for us to understand it. See for example if you listen to a Japanese guy. Even if you have practiced Japanese for some time, you might have difficulties due to its different structure (subject-object-verb). 

I remember that one of my English teachers told me that if I wanted to increase my listening comprehension in the questions section, I should focus on the key words. That is, try to identify the words that you need in order to understand the question. For instance, say that the question is “What did sally buy at the shopping mall?  Here we should try to identify, first the type of question (in this case it’s a WH question ‘WHAT’, asking for ‘SOMETHING’), second, the verb, and third the person (if there are many people in the story). Then, if the story is something like “Sally went to the shopping mall with her sister, Diana. Sally wanted to buy a pair of boots but she didn’t have enough money so she bought a pair of sandals, whereas Diana bought the boots”. Then we are able to say that Sally bought the pair of sandals.  There have been many teachers who have said that in English it is not important to listen to every single word. If you can catch some words, the most important ones, you can understand what they are saying. Trying to understand every single word may lead us to lose focus and to be lost easier.   

It also happens to us. In the listening exams we are frustrated because we want to understand each word but sometimes we can’t. I think this strategy is very useful and is a way to make our students realize that listening can be easier than they think.  I have noticed in my experience as a teacher that when I’m asking questions to my students about a prior listening, e.g. “What color is Suzy’s skirt?” I can see how they catch the words “color” and “skirt” (because they repeat these words aloud) and rapidly they tell me the correct color. Those students are kids and I had not told them about that strategy I said before. I think our students, especially kids, can teach us lessons many times. 

As for speaking, there’s something I’d like to share with you. When I attended the “Using ICT for Teaching the Four Skills” conference at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, they gave us many useful websites in which we can make our students practice speaking, listening, reading, and writing. For speaking, there was a website that I didn’t know and it called my attention. It is Voxopop. This is like a kind of ‘spoken blog’, in which the teacher proposes a topic and make the students talk about it, but they don’t have to write what they think. They tape it and upload it. I think it is a useful way for, not only evaluating, but also assessing your students’ speaking abilities.  You can have a permanent observable product for speaking performance. There is formative and summative assessment and also process and product assessment because you give a final grade depending on the student’s final recordings and you can also provide an accurate feedback based on the process that the student followed. Plus, you can see if the student showed motivation and willingness to identify and avoid his/her weaknesses in the previous recordings. It is also useful for those students who are really shy when it comes to speaking in public and in a class discussion they are just too afraid to talk, but when they are in front of a computer they don’t have that anxiety and are more relaxed to speak.

The cons with this website are that it does not provide authentic speaking settings or real life communication. However, as a starter for speaking I still think it’s a good tool.

Here you can have access to the website if you want to check it. 

Tests' Effectiveness

Tests' Effectiveness 

This entry is about Brown's Language Assessment Principles and Classroom Practices, chapter 2.

Do we teachers pay attention to the effectiveness of the exams we apply? In some cases, teachers -especially those who teach at English institutes- must create or design the tests. We probably do not even give a second look to the test we just designed for our students before handing it in because we might think our test is good. But it is not only important to take care of the exam. Also, external factors, or even students’ personal issues play a role in the development of a good or a bad exam.  Brown (2000) proposes five criteria for "testing a test". They are: practicality, reliability, validity, authenticity, and washback. In this entry, I'm going to focus on reliability. 

One of the factors that can make a test unreliable is Student-Related Reliability. Sometimes we do not take into account the fact that one student is sick, or is having family issues, or is just too nervous when it comes to taking an exam. The deal is that sometimes we do not even notice it. These factors can affect prominently a student's performance in an exam. What can we do in those cases? I remember this was one of the matters we were discussing in the previous assessment class. One of my classmates proposed a good alternative. It was to apply the test again, in another time and when the student's condition was better. But then, will we evaluate that student with the same criteria? Will the rest of the students accept this? How can we know if the student was really sick or not? How can we be really fair with all of the students?

The test reliability is another important factor. The exam should be as clear as possible and here, the appropriate instruction plays and important role. If the test's instructions are not understandable enough it would be difficult to our students to do the right things. Time also counts. There are many students -I have to say  that sometimes it was my case- that freak out when they know how much time they have for the test and then, when time is running out they start writing whatever comes to their minds, even nonsense. This applies mostly for writing tests. Thus, giving the students clear instructions of the test might also avoid this problem of time to happen.

    

When the students are in the middle of an exam, there are factors that will not let them concentrate, such as music or people chatting around the classroom. In my own experience, I am a person who needs total silence when taking a test. I think this may cause a student not to have a good performance in an exam. But how do we teachers deal with that? How do we teachers take that into account?

I think a teacher should not be biased. A way to avoid this is to make the evaluation criteria clear to the students, thus they know what exactly they must focus on and how they are going to be evaluated.  I do not think judging a student by their class behavior is fair. We can evaluate the student’s performance in classes, but the test is something apart.

There are other factors that should be taken into account when evaluating how effective a test is. Of course there will never be the excellent conditions, or there will always be students who are feeling bad, or the devices might not work for all the students –in a listening test, for instance-. This is why we teachers should be prepared for those things, and learning from our mistakes is a positive result of experience.

If you want to answer some of the questions in this post, feel free to do it. It would be enriching for my current and future teaching experience.