Having decided that we were going to pilot the alternative
assessment program, we had to inform students of our plans, and listen to what
they had to say about it. We were ready to “abort the mission” in case of
rejection. They accepted it with no reservations. Still, it was to my surprise
that, at the end of the first lesson, one of them came to me and said (in
L1, of course, as this is the beginner group) “See you next class… but
you will only see me because you told us we won’t have to take that final
test.” It took me a couple of seconds to grasp the meaning of what she was
telling me. She went on: “I’m too old to suffer with tests. In my life, I’ve
taken all the tests I needed to take… Now, I’m interested in learning!”
And that was what we needed to know that we were on the
right path. The focus had naturally shifted from teaching and testing to
learning. The learners had assumed their rightful place at center stage,
taking control of the process. “Now, I’m interested in learning!”
Lately I’ve been following Adrian Underhill and Jim
Scrivener’s blog on ‘Demand-HighTeaching’, and two of their questions really hit a nerve: How can we stop
“covering material” and start focusing on the potential for deep learning? How
can I shift my attention from “successful task “to “optimal learning”? Well,
this was exactly what we wanted to explore in our “assessment quest”.
Anyway, back to my tale to tell… After the first evaluation
of their oral performance, we decided to give them a weekly “assessment opportunity”.
On week 4(of 10), the focus was “Listening”.
In the past we had been cautious of venturing into
evaluating the listening skills with the adult groups. Adults are afraid of
listening, terrified by its unexpectedness,
petrified by the possibility of failure.
Adults are interesting language learners; they bring a whole lot of
baggage with them:
- Their beliefs, more often than not tainted by their
previous language learning experience – usually their formal learning of the
mother tongue (which they had already acquired in their childhood), with the
grammar exercises, linguistic analysis, etc.
- Their personal history. Your student is most likely a
self-respecting human being, a skillful professional, someone who undoubtedly
has a lot to teach you, who can tell a number of success stories, and learning
English is not one. At least not yet.
- Their needs and expectations: They ‘ve come to us because they want to be
part of the world who can speak English. That is the question, isn’t it? “Do
you speak English?” or “Can you speak English?”
These learners, more than any
other language learner, need to be able to speak, to communicate effectively!
Well, communication implies a message that is sent and, consequently, received:
Listening! How can we ever assess language learning without analyzing
listening? If they don’t understand what
is said to them, how can they respond?
Anyway, assessing
their Listening skills, after no more than 12 (twelve) classroom hours, for
most of them twelve contact hours. How do you do it? Preferably without any
extraordinary acrobatic feat, just keeping it simple and structured, with the
appropriate scaffolding, and making sure that the lesson is designed focused on
enabling optimal learning, while providing you – teacher – an opportunity to
assess whether the goals have been
achieved, and how far they have been developed.
Here is the step by step:
1. We had previously explored the following exponents:
- What’s his/her name?
His/Her name is…
- Where are you from? I’m from…
- Where is he/she from?
He’s/She’s from…
- Vocabulary: countries
2. On the second lesson, I showed them a PPT with
international celebrities… At first I showed a photograph and asked the
questions ‘What’s his name?’ and ‘Where is he from?’ (before revealing the name
and the flag) Here are some samples:
3. After two or three samples, I invited the students to ask
the questions: ‘X, ask Y.’
4. Then, they worked on their books, which brought an
information gap activity. Both students had pictures of six people. One student
had information on three of the people (names and countries of origin), while
the other had to look at a different page, where they had information on the
other three. The structure and vocabulary was very much the same as my PPT had
prompted: What’s his/her name? Where is he/she from?
5. Next, they were asked to look at an incomplete dialogue –
again from the book, and work in pairs to predict what was missing.
6. After a couple of minutes, I asked them to listen to the
dialogue and check if they had made the correct choices.
7. Just before giving
them the listening task, I replayed a recording from the previous lesson, and
they repeated the names of the countries.
8. Next, I gave them the worksheet with the following task:
They heard the following dialogues:
Dialogue I
A: Hello!
I’m Luis, from Mexico.
B: Hello, Luis. I’m Akemi, from Japan.
Dialogue II
C: Hello. My name’s Charles. What’s your name?
D: Hi, Charles. I’m Mike. I’m from the United States. Where
are you from?
C: I’m from London, in England.
D: Oh, yeah? I’m from Chicago.
Dialogue III
E: Hi, I’m
Loretta. I’m from Sydney, Australia.
F: Hi, Loretta. I’m Jason. I’m from Australia, too.
E: Oh, wow! Are you from Sydney?
F: No. I’m from Melbourne.
They were graded both on the correct country, and the
correct spelling of the country’s name.
As you may have noticed, nothing fancy. The PPT could have
been easily substituted with good old flashcards. I used written and audio
material from the book. My main worry was to make sure they were “comfortable”
when they got to the listening task. The listening element was introduced with
the dialogue (steps 5/6), but they had the chance to predict what they were
going to hear before they heard it. It was safer that way.
They also had plenty of meaningful and varied practice on
the target piece of language. The dialogues they heard were, in a way, familiar
to them. In this lesson, before getting
to step 8, they were given at least three different opportunities to produce
and listen to the names of the countries, as well as the language structures
surrounding them.
Now, the important thing is that this lesson was, as the
first one I described here, not designed to test. It was designed to teach, it
had learning at its core. The assessment opportunity was created, but it only
took as long as those three short dialogues – which, by the way, they heard
only once.
So, once again, I invite your input. How do you see this
project? Can you help us by suggesting activities and procedures we can use
with these pilot groups? We are counting on your thoughts, your suggestions,
your criticism… We are waiting for you!
Lueli Ceruti
