Thinking about Assessment - Part 2

THINKING ABOUT ASSESSMENT (part 2) – A follow-up on Thinking About Assessment… Again)

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

Thinking about assessment... again!

If you are a teacher, like me, then you have certainly spent countless coffee breaks discussing assessment: either criticizing or praising it, maybe questioning it, or even plain “cursing” it… no matter who we are, what or where we teach: assessment is close to our hearts… in oh so many ways! 

I have personally been working with and looking into this matter for many years, be it as a course supervisor, designing, writing and revising tests, probing into the process; be it as an examiner, participating in the final assessment of someone else’s handiwork, with cold analytical eyes, scrutinizing the final product; or even as a curious mind who wonders what it is that we do: Do we test to teach? Do we teach to test? And moreover, what it is that we should be doing? 

Anyway, back in January, when Isabela Villas Boas shared a blog post by Nick Provenzano with us, I dared ask her if we could dare… Only to discover that she was the one daring us… In his post, Nick recounts how he spent a semester without his traditional testing system, and how he witnessed high levels of commitment, as well of strong evidence of his students’ skills and knowledge through the use of alternative assignments, essays, projects, and different assessment opportunities. 

The discussion was not new to us. We had already been questioning the unquestionable… the effectiveness of our traditional system with our adult students… Why were we able to find students reaching the higher levels – passing test after test, and still not able to use the language? Why were some of our adult students discouraged? How come teachers were feeling frustrated? We decided to turn these difficulties into opportunities for development. The theoretical project had been ready – on paper – for a few months, as Isabella had taken an online program on assessment with Oregon University. All we had to do was “take the leap” and bring it to life. Right now, there are two groups – one Thomas flex 1, and one Prime 1 – being piloted with an alternative assessment system. 

This series of posts is an attempt to share what we are trying to do, inviting you into this experience-experiment, summoning your thoughts and encouraging your input. 

The THOMAS FLEX 1 Experiment: 

In week 3 (of 10), having already worked with most of Unit 1, we wanted to ascertain that the students were able to interact using the following exponents:

• What’s your name? My name is… 
• How are you? I’m…, and you? 
• What’s your telephone number? It’s (numbers 0-9) 
• Nice to meet you/Nice to meet you too. 

The lesson was designed to build on student’s recently acquired abilities, consolidate them, and finally, invite linguistic output that could be assessed. The procedure was the following: 

1. Each pair of students received a dialogue cut up into slips. They were asked to put the slips in a logical sequence to make the dialogue. 
2. With the correct sequence, students were asked to personalize the dialogue, by substituting names and other elements with their own personal information. 
3. Then, the slips were collected and the teacher elicited the dialogue on the board – leaving blanks in which they would complete with their own names, etc. 
4. After that, the students were asked to stand up and cocktail, talking to at least three different classmates, using the dialogue on the board as a model. T observed and monitored the exchanges, cleaning the board when most of the students had performed the dialogue at least once. 
5. Finally, the T called on pairs of students and asked them to perform the dialogue out loud – no model available. As they did so, the teacher filled in an assessment sheet with the following criteria:

• Correct greeting / response to greeting - Yes (2pts.) - Partially (1pt.) - No (0 pt.)
• Asks name correctly - Yes (2pts.) - Partially (1pt.) - No (0 pt.)
• Responds to question about name correctly - Yes (2pts.) - Partially (1pt.) - No (0 pt.)
• Says and responds to “nice to meet you”  - Yes (2pts.) - Partially (1pt.) - No (0 pt.)
• Asks and/or answers about phone number - Yes (2pts.) - Partially (1pt.) - No (0 pt.)

This was the end of their first “Oral Assessment Opportunity”. The plan is to have one of these every week, focusing on different skills-areas such as speaking, writing – in which grammar would be either intrinsically embedded, or clearly stated, and also listening and reading – for we see that one of these students’ main difficulty is understanding input, so that they can formulate their own output. 

Anyway, we are using the media with one sole purpose: hearing your thoughts. Do you have any ideas we can use in this pilot project? Are there any feelings or thoughts you would like to share? Is there anything in your experience that can add to this experiment? Let’s get this chat started… The ball in on your court!