About two weeks ago, our
colleague Lueli Ceruti wrote a really interesting blog post in the CTJConnected Blog. In short, her post described
our reasons for questioning the way we assess our adult students’ EFL learning
and our experimenting with what we have been calling the “alternative
ass essment system.”
Basically, what is
being proposed is that the assessment of our adult students’ learning be
carried out in a more ongoing manner. The objective here is to make it possible
for us all, teachers and students, to know how well students are learning in
time for us to take action, if necessary, before the last day of class. Also,
with this “alternative assessment system”, our student will hopefully get less
anxious with the idea of being evaluated at the end of the module.
In Lueli’s post, she
described the first assessment activity she did with her Thomas Flex group.
Here is the first one my Thomas Prime 1 students and I experimented with. Thomas
Prime is a Casa Thomas Jefferson upper-intermediate/advanced course designed
for adult students.
The Thomas Prime 1 Experiment:
In week 2 (of 10), we
covered the grammar lesson “Suggest ways to enjoy life more”, and students
learned about the verbs “stop”, “remember” and “forget” followed by the
infinitive and the gerund.
First, we read and
discussed the text “Finding Balance”, which opens the second lesson in the book
Summit, published by Pearson Longman. Next, by analyzing the examples of the
focus verbs in the text, we tried to come up with the different meanings each
of them had when followed by infinitives and gerunds. This information was
recorded on the board, and right after that, the students compared it with the
chart on page 5. They then did the exercise on the same page, and we checked
their answers. I assigned an extra exercise on the focus verbs for homework,
with the students being responsible for checking their own answers (They had a
copy of the answer key).
At the beginning of
the following class, after the students had worked cooperatively to check their
answers in the fill-in-the-blanks in sentences giving advice, I told them about
my sister, a girl who led a very stressful life due to her inability to find
balance. The students then individually wrote five suggestions on a chart I
gave them, and we agreed on the five best suggestions to give to my sister.
This is what the board
looked like:
Before the end of the
class, I collected the charts with the students’ sentences and assessed their
work at home. I used to following rubrics as a guide.
Each of the sentences is worth two points.
a)
Deduct two points if the student’s
sentence does not make sense.
b)
Deduct one point if the student makes
a mistake with the target structure (verbs
stop, remember, forget followed by the wrong verb form)
c)
Deduct half a point if the student
makes small mistakes (prepositions,
articles, spelling).
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We sent these
suggestions to my sister, a Prime 3 student at the Casa, and I asked her to
record a video segment to respond to the students. Here is the video:
Needless to say, the
students really engaged in the activity and had lots of fun watching the
response. The assessment was perfectly aligned with the learning
outcomes and instructional strategies. As a result, my students didn’t even
notice they were actually being assessed. Their major interest was in
communicating authentically with my sister.
