Assessing Listening

Summary

Chapter 5

As teachers we know that is important to assess listening skills, but sometimes we are unable to do this effectively. Nunan(2002) calls listening comprehension "the poor cousin amongst the various language skills."

Listening skill is not passive, it is an active process where students receive, construct meaning form, and respond to spoken messages.

Models of Listening

The two models are:

1. Bottom - up: comprehension occurs when the listener successfully decodes the spoken text. It also occurs when students take in a word, decode it and link it with other words to form sentences.

2. Top- down: the listener is directly involved with constructing meaning from input. The students uses background knowledge of the context and situation to make sense of what is heard.

                                                                              

Approaches to Listening Assessment

Buck(2001) identified three major approaches to the assessment of listening abilities: discrete point, integrative, and communicative approaches.

The discrete point broke listening into component elements and assessed them separately.

The integrative approach assess a learner's capacity to use mani bits at the same time. The whole of the language is greater than the sum of its parts.

The communicative approach. The listener must be able to comprehend the message and then use it in context. Communicative question formats should be authentic in nature.

Background Knowledge

Background or prior knowledge needs to be taken into account because research suggests that it affects comprehension and test performance. An attempt to standardize the presence or absence of backgroung knowledge should be made in any listening text that purports to be a valid indicator of comprehension.

 

                                                                                     

Techniques for Assessing Listening Comprehension       

1. Phonemic discrimination: students listen to one word in isolation and then tries to identify which word was said. Like in minimal pairs (ship/sheep).

2. Cloze: they listen to a passage while referring to a written transript of the text in which several words have been deleted. Students are asked to fill in the blanks while listening.

3. Dictation: it assess a wide range of skills, do it with short text that you will read three times.

4. Information transfer tasks: it requires students to transfer information they have heard to a chart or visual.

                                          

Important Aspects

1. Unknown vocabulary should never occur as the correct answer.

2. Good sources of authentic speech to assess listening are: radio, television, pre-recorded teaching materials, pod casts, internet, and teacher produced materials.

3. For structure purposes in any test start with an easy question. Also ordered the questions as they are heard in the passage.

4. The timing of a test will be determined by how many times the test - takers are permitted to hear each passage. Remember to give time for pre - reading.

5. The way a listening test is administered and delivered can impact the results.

6. Give credit for students know, don't deduct for spelling or grammar mistakes when your focus is on listening comprehension.

7. Give students a reason for listening.                    

                                  

ASSESSING WRITING

Summary

Chapter 4

How important is writing in your program?. Assessing writing skills are important because good writing ability is significant for higher education and employers.

Two major approaches to writing assessment are: indirect and direct.

Indirect measures of writing assessment assess correct usage in sentence level constructions, spelling and puctuation. It is more concerned with accuracy than communication.

Direct measures of writing assess a student's ability to communicate through the written mode based on the actual production of written texts. It requires the students to produce the content; give ideas and use appropriate vocabulary, grammatical conventions, and syntax. Direct writing assessment integrates all elements of writing.

According to Hyland(2003) to design a good writing assessment tests and tasks involves four basic elements:                                                              
1. Rubric: instructions
2. Prompt: the task
3. Expected response: what students will do with the task.
4. post-task evaluation: assessing the effectiveness of the writing task.
 Also Hyland stated that good writing tasks are likely to produce positive responses to the following questions:

* Did the prompt discriminate well among my students?
* Were the essays easy to read and evaluate?
* Were students able to write to their potential and show what they knew?

Techniques for Assessing Writing
The ESL/EFL literature addresses two types of writing : free writing and guided writing.
Free writing: requires students to read a  prompt that poses a situation and write a planned response based a combination of background knowledge and knowledge learned in the present.
Guided writing: this task requires teachers to be clear about what they expect students to do. It requires them to manipulate content that is provided in the prompt, usually in the form of a chart or diagram.

Authentic Writing Assessment

Student-Teacher conferences
You can learn more from your students by asking questions like:
* How did you select this topic?
* What do you feel are your strengths in writing?
* What did you do to generate content?

Self-Assessment
You can use dialogue jornals or learning logs. The first require students to make entries on different topics. On the other hand, learning logs document time students spend on various writing activities.

Peer Assessment
The major rationale for peer assessment is that when students learn to evaluate the work of their peers, they are extending their own learning opportunities.

Portfolio Based Assessment           
It examines multiple pieces of writing produced over time under different constraints rather than a single essay. A portfolio is a collection of student writing that shows the stages in the writing process, the growth of the writer's.

Writing Assessment Scales  
 We need to select the appropriate writing scale for a particular teaching context. The two main types for assessing student written proficiency are holistic and analytic.

Holistic Marking Scales
It is based on the marker's toatl impression of the essay as a whole. This marking is  termed as impressionistic, global, or integrative marking.

Analytical Marking Scales
"Raters provide assessment for each of a number of aspects of performance"(Hamp-Lyons, 1991). Scorers mark selected aspects of a piece of writing and assignpoint values to quantifiable criteria. Analytic scales are generally more effective with inexperienced teachers and more realiable for scales with a larger point range.

It is important to provide feedback to students so they can learn and make improvements to their writing. You can do so by handwritten comments or simple correction codes.

Sample Marking Codes for Writing 

sp= spelling

vt= verb tense

ww= wrong word

wv= wrong verb

?= I don't understand

Remember to give positive remarks and feedback, but be careful too much praise can make students complacent. Be sure to give them aspects to be improve or correct in the following tasks or tests.

      





Assessing Reading

Summary

Chapter 3
By Licda. Belinda Davis

Of course, it is difficult to assess an invisible skill. We cannot see what is going on students' minds when they read or listen, so we design assessment based on constructs or models of receptive skills that include a variety of subskills.

Some examples of reliable reading assessments are: 

1. Cover a range of reading skills.

2. Choose different text topics and types.

3. Help students distinguish between main ideas and supporting details.

4. Help students get the meaning of unfamiliar words.

5. Students should recognize the purposes and audiences of texts.

            

6. Remember grammar is an important part of reading comprehension.

Since we can only get an idea of how students process texts through techniques such as think- aloud. For classroom assessment we can focus on important skills that are divides in major and minor reading skills.

MAJOR READING SKILLS INCLUDE:

- reading quickly to skim for gist and scan for specific details.

- reading carefully for main ideas.

- drawing inferences from both stated and implied content.

MINOR READING SKILLS INCLUDE:
- understanding at the sentence level(vocabulary, syntax)

- identifying what pronouns refer to, recognizing discourse markers.

- understanding nonlinear texts(meaning of graph or charts).

Specifications
They are used to establish a clear link between the overall objectives and the design of a particular assessment instruments. Some typical features of specifications are:

1. Content: refers to the material that will be cover.
2. Conditions: the structure and the component parts. Timing should also be include and the circumstances of the questions and answers.
3. Grading Criteria: how the assessment instrument will be marked.

There are many sources of reading texts. Keep a file of authentic material form newspapers, magazines, brochures, instruction guides and any suitable source of real texts.

Avoid texts with controversial material: religion, abortion, or international disputes. Remember that texts should be culturally neutral as possible to avoid offense.
Reading comprehension questions should be in the same order as the material in the passage.                                                                                   

We need in terms of reading assessment to think about the skills, techniques and formats that our students will need for standardized tests. Analize publicly available material and then try writing practice tests.
Give your students the opportunity to think beyond what they see in print. Reading is an important skill to master in English.

 

Propuesta final para mejorar la organización del Calendario Escolar

Desde inicios de año planteamos a la comunidad educativa un borrador de propuesta para modificar la organización del curso lectivo de manera que se pudieran distribuir mejor los tiempos de vacaciones y descanso. También incluya sugerencias sobre los procesos de recuperación y ampliación, tratando de distribuirlos a 10 largo del curso lectivo.

Como sabemos, durante más de 40 años nuestro curso lectivo ha estado organizado en trimestres.

Paradójicamente, las vacaciones se han mantenido como si fueran independientes de esa organización, con dos semanas en julio que, sin ninguna lógica educativa 0 pedagógica, cortan de manera abrupta el segundo trimestre.

A esto se agrega el cansancio acumulado durante la segunda mitad del año que comprende 22 semanas lectivas durante las cuales no existe pausa como si la hay durante la primera mitad con la Semana Santa. Esto es algo bien conocido y sentido por la comunidad educativa.

Durante el proceso de consulta escuchamos diversidad de opiniones y sugerencias sobre nuestra propuesta. Pero si bien una gran cantidad de docentes, administrativos, estudiantes y padres de familia la consideraron interesante y atractiva, lo cierto es que fue rechazada con fuerza por las organizaciones del magisterio.

En nuestras últimas reuniones con esas organizaciones hicimos clara nuesfra posición de no impulsar una propuesta si no contábamos con su apoyo. También dijimos, sin embargo, que por responsabilidad con quienes participaron en la discusión, nos sentíamos obligados a presentar una versión final que recogiera las principales preocupaciones y sugerencias externadas durante el proceso.

Principales objeciones                                                                 

Durante la consulta, dos fueron los principales elementos de objeción. EI primero fue el rechazo casi unánime a iniciar el curso lectivo en enero. Esta fuertemente arraigada la visión de que enero debe ser un mes de vacaciones, descanso y unión familiar.

La segunda objeción -0 temor- giro en torno a la organización de los períodos de recuperación y las pruebas de ampliación. En general, prevaleció la sensación de que esto podrá significar un aumento en la carga laboral y que, tanto para docentes como para estudiantes, podrá significar que las vacaciones de fin de trimestre no fueran tales.

En consecuencia, y tratando de conciliar recomendaciones y objeciones, preparamos un planteamiento final que subsana esos problemas y ofrece una organización de los períodos de vacaciones y descanso que consideramos positiva tanto para los docentes y administrativos como para estudiantes y sus familias.

En qué consiste la propuesta?

EI elemento central de la propuesta consiste en tener vacaciones intermedias al final de cada trimestre, en lugar de tenerlas a medio año; manteniendo las vacaciones largas en diciembre y enero.

EI curso lectivo seguirá teniendo las mismas 42 semanas que hoy contempla y que incluyen los 200 días de c1ases, los feriados de ley y los cinco días de congresos gremiales. Las diez semanas restantes del año seguirán siendo -como en la actualidad- semanas de vacaciones y descanso (una de ellas es la Semana Santa).

Actualmente, esas diez semanas se distribuyen así: una en abril (Semana Santa), dos en julio (vacaciones de medio año) y siete entre diciembre y enero (vacaciones de fin de curso).

Nuestra propuesta consiste en cambiar esta organización de la siguiente manera:

1. Inicio de curso lectivo en la primera semana de febrero.

2. Dos semanas de vacaciones en el primer trimestre: una en abril (Ia Semana Santa) y otra al final del periodo (aproximadamente en la segunda mitad de mayo).

3. Dos semanas de vacaciones al final del segundo trimestre (aproximadamente en la

segunda mitad de agosto).

4. Seis semanas de vacaciones de fin de curso (segunda mitad de diciembre y todo enero).

5. En las modalidades educativas semestrales, se respeta la distribución semestral de su oferta curricular, distribuyendo siempre los períodos de descanso en períodos

trimestrales.

Información en www.ande.cr