Assessing Reading

The kind of reading we had was interactive reading. The name of the reading is 'April's fool'
The linguistic goal we sat was:

•  Students will be able to comprehend texts about cultural information of a particular community in the past contrasting it to customs of the same population into the present.

1. Read the question and circle the correct answer.

• When did April Fool's start?

a) Fifteenth century

b) 1520

c) Sixteenth century

• How was the new calendar called?

a) Chinese calendar

b) Gregorian calendar

c) April fool

2. Answer the questions with the information given on the reading

• Why did people start to be fooled?
• What does the word "unknowingly" mean? (paragraph 2, line4)

3. Write true or false.

• On April Fool's day people say 'April Fool' and then play a trick._____
• On April Fool's day people give presents. ________
• When the calendar changed, April's fool started being celebrated in January 1st. _______
• April's fool is celebrated for people to have fun by making fun of each other. _______

4. Answer the question

• Do you celebrate April's fool in your country? If not, do you have a similar one? How do you celebrate it? 

Sergio Picon

Gerson Nieto

Carolina Villanueva

Assessing Listening

There was one sentence that really caught my attention of Brown's chapter “How could you speak a language without listening?” It makes think about deaf people who cannot articulate words because they have never heard one. I think that in most of our experiences we could not produce any combination of sounds before our teachers taught us them.

Now, let us think about our students as if they were deaf people and the cure to that was in our hands. What are those medicines that we are going to use? Here it comes the crucial decision. Long and boring tape scripts may be the solution since that is what our books offer but teachers, let me tell you those are not the only ones that have got authentic pronunciation. There are plenty of funny videos, TV shows, movies and so on that we could use in our classes and that would certainly help our students to improve!

I know that sometimes the syllabus or the requirements of the places we work do not let us work on many extra activities for listening, different from the ones on the book, we should organize better our time and try to at least give our students one different perspective than formal, academic English, because let us face it, they are not going to hear BBC accent all the time!

Language testing in Colombia

Much have been said about the way teachers evaluate student's performance most of it has been just criticism . And as everything in this country everyone has a different opinion about it but if you ask them what should be assessed instead they would not know. But where does the problem lay? On the educational system of course. We have just two universities that offer assessment courses to their pre-service teachers and what about the rest? We have hundreds of Licenciatura programs around the country.

So in my very personal opinion it is obvious why students are not being as proficiency as expected, they are not being well assessed. And it is because teachers are not being trained enough. Most of us started to work one or two years ago and we did not know anything about how to evaluate student's performance but our own experience. I bet that most of us did the same that was done to us with our students. Now after all we have read and done, what do you think you did right? What did you do wrong? Is there any way you can repair it? If there is, do it right away because remember that we, as teachers, can even enhance or destroy student's love for whatever they are learning.

Remember that not everything is about written texts and that in English especially we have up to five skills to include on a test. So try to be as reliable as you can on your assessment and make sure you get to know each case, I know it is time consuming and sometimes get on your nerves but I am pretty sure that when you see the results they will be just awesome! 

Perceptions regarding portfolio assessment

If all portfolios were as boring as the first one I had to do, I would say that they were just a waste of time. But fortunately there are always different perspectives to take into account. When in some class we were asked to do a portfolio we thought it was going to be nice and easy since it was just a compilation of all our effort during the semester, but when the time to deliver it came the teacher did not give us clear instructions and everything was messed up. We corrected everything she said was wrong during the semester, in two or three days and at the end delivered a "perfect portfolio" but then I asked myself, isn't a portfolio the compilation of all the things a student has done in order to evaluate and keep record of his process? Well the conclusion we got was: Either the teacher doesn't have a clear idea of what she wants to evaluate or she doesn't know the real purpose of a portfolio. The result a mess in our grades and of course we were really disappointed.

Later on at work I was asked to work on a portfolio with my students which shows how they progress on using verbs in past tense goes. I sat down and thought what am I going to do if I my experience was terrible? My students cannot go through the same. So I started asking other teachers whose experience was better than mine and they told me that the most important thing was to reach an agreement with my students, since they were teenagers they could get easily bored if I just said write down some sentences using verbs in past tense.

Finally the day of the instruction came and I told my students that they were going to do a portfolio and of course all were mad at me, but when I explained in detailed and highlighted the importance for their process they agreed to do it. And the experience turned out to be awesome, at the end they even made fun of their own mistakes and gave not only themselves but their partners job a grade, which of course was taken into account for the final one. Their and mine reactions towards portfolios changed and now I'm willing to do it again! 

Collecting Information

Through the reading of this chapter I realized that when I find myself grading or assessing an activity, quiz, homework or so, many factors are relevant to take into account. First of all, that any kind of result I find has a why and that is what I should look for before telling my student "You failed". Second, that according to the kind of test my students take, I should value the results. Because as the example the test gave if it is a multiple answer test, many of the answers may be just coincidence or luck. 

To do so the three main characteristics of a test, practicality, reliability, and validity, take their importance. All of them are vital when it comes to analyze no matter if the information is qualitative or quantitative. So, teachers should always be aware of the majority of aspects that could make their evaluation procedure less reliable and valid. 

In my opinion, standard tests would never be reliable, valid and even practical, at least when we have to take them. All those test have been done by native people, who clearly know how where and when to use the language appropriately, so they do not take into account when it comes to foreign people like us, and the interference of our mother tongue language or the way we were taught to express our ideas. And let us not talk about the use of idioms or phrasal verbs, which are only used in some context and not with an specific definition as any other word. This tests should be designed by people from here, people who is in contact with the students who are going to take the exam, who knows whether it is appropriate or not to ask something in the students' context. 

All these I have said makes me wonder whether am I doing right or wrong, at the moment of applying the test the book provides me to my students. I consider there are still many things to cover.

PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT

Five things we are going to deal with this chapter are the five cardinal criteria for “testing a test”: practicability, reliability, validity, authentic, and washback.

PRACTICABILITY:

Taking into account that an effective test is practical, which includes being not expensive, staying within appropriate constraints, being easy to administer, and having a scoring or evaluation procedure that is specific and time-efficient. We can say that if don’t follow this suggestions seriously our test is evidently not going to be as the name indicates, practical. I would like to point out the fact that a test considered as such, will be really helpful for us cause it will save time and let’s face it, we never have enough.

RELIABILITY:

For a test to be reliable we have to consider the following possibilities:

Student-Related Reliability, this focuses on the students’ attitude and disposition the day of the test. Did they have a problem at home? Are they sick? Implications like that one are relevant for the test result.

Rather reliability: this deals with the person who scores the test and what if there are two. It is not an easy thing to grade 40 tests when all the answers may vary and you don’t have enough time. So, try to be as fair as you can with you students, sometimes it is difficult because we have the bad ones that irritate us, and the good ones that makes us feel the satisfaction of the accomplished duty, but we have to give all a chance to show what their abilities can do.

Test administration reliability: the environment is also an important factor at the moment of applying a test. You have to take into account the conditions of the classroom, the weather and noise, so your students can really take the test in the most appropriate conditions.

Test Reliability: Don’t forget that even the best student can be affected but simple things as the clock ticking. So pay attention to those long exams and the number of possible correct answers they may have. Also keep in mind that some answers can be correct for the student depending on his own point of view.

VALIDITY

Being the most complex criterion validity is defined as, the extent to which inferences made from assessment results are appropriate, meaningful, and useful in terms of the purpose of the assessment. (Gronlund, 1998, p.226) for this to be accomplished we have to take into account these five types of evidence:

Content- related evidence: this can be identified if you can define the achievement you are measuring. So speaking has to be evaluated through an appropriate speaking test, writing with writing and so on.

Criterion- Related Evidence: it usually falls into one of two categories. One is concurrent validity which appears when the results are supported by other concurrent performance beyond the assessment itself. And predictive validity which takes its importance on placement tests, admissions assessment batteries, language aptitude tests, and so on.

Construct-Related evidence: a construct is any theory, hypothesis, or model that attempts to explain observed phenomena in our universe perceptions. This helps us to identify whether the text designed was really based on the approach we wanted it to be or not.

Consequential Validity: this wraps up most of the things we have talked about, as considering the accuracy in measuring intended criteria, its impact on the preparation of test-takers, its effect on the learner and the social consequences of a test’s interpretation and use.

Face validity: it depends on the view of the person who takes the test and if it fulfilled all his expectations or if on the other hand it was not what he expected and the reason why he could not succeed.

AUTHENTICITY

We know that a test has got authenticity if it has:

·         A natural language usage.

·         Contextualized items

·         Meaningful topics

·         Thematic organization, such as a story line or episode

·         At least closely approximate, real world tasks.

WASHBACK

It concerns the effects test have on instruction in terms of how students prepare for the test and the effects on preparation for the assessment. Informal assessment is more related to interactive feedback.  Remember that if you just give a number to the assessment or the test you are doing it wrong!

As we can clearly see, to prepare a good test we have to take into account many things that may sound a bit out of range but I am pretty sure that after having read all this factors, at least, we will think it twice before we apply a test to our students and of course at the moment of giving it a grade or the feedback the student needs.