Creating Effective Assessments

While reading Chapter 24 in HDB I was reminded of both some of tests that I have taken through my life and of some tests that I have seen others take or that I have administered. Throughout all of those tests it seemed that Face Validity was one of the most important aspects because it either made the students confident in the assessment or it made them laugh it off, even if it was an effective assessment. A good example of an assessment that had no face validity was one that my instructor in my obeservation class had administered. One of the questions that was on this test (a test of multiple writing skills) was something like, "List 3 reasons why an Elephant does not make for a good pet". Most of the test was short answer like this and since the students were not told explicitly what this was assessing they didn't take it seriously or understand it. Now to give this particular question some credit, the instructor had used this example to teach a lesson one day and the analogy made sense at the time. Although by the time the midterm test came almost everyone had forgotten about how he had used this analogy for 10 min. of a 2 hour lesson over a moth ago. The problem here was simply a lack of purpose/clarity, face validity, authentic tasks, and possibly some perceived Washback. Interestingly enough, many of these simple problems (3/4) were addressed in HDB Ch. 24 under how to turn" existing tests into more effective procedures". Now my observation class' instructor might have to restructure much of his test tasks in order to fulfill these seemingly simple issues, but in the end his test would be much more effective and useful for semesters to come.

To address Washback quickly (which reminds me of the negative term "back-wash", i.e. when someone's saliva goes into their drink, but since this is the opposite of our term we can consider Washback as possitive) I just want to mention the grading of our Video Analysis Assigment. I think that the feedback we got (or at least that I did) was very helpful for our Washback, since I will be able to use those comments the next time I teach. If the only thing we had gotten back was the rubric with the different grades then I would've only been able to speculate about how I did; usually my mind goes to the negative when being graded. Since the comments that I got were relevent and helped me to think of things that I hadn't thought of before, I felt that our assessment was much more useful and practical.

Archaic language and speaking activities for children

One of the things that caught my interest in this week's reading was the chapter on 'Developing Children's Listening and Speaking in ESL'. Before I read the chapter I didn't think I would be interested in it, but I ended up connecting with it because I did many of these same activities when I was in pre-school and kindergarten. I am not sure if many of the activities I did were intended to improve our listening or speaking, but I assume this is what some of them were meant for (also for memory as well). 

An example of one of these activities was the Haunted House listening activity I did in pre-school. The gist of this activity was that our teacher would play a record (yes an actual one) that told a story and we were to act out what was going on in the story as we listened to it. She had a collection of these records, but in the Haunted House one we would start by stomping our feet in place as we walked, then if the narrator said we went under/over/around/or through something we would act it out. As the story progressed we made it under branches, over walls, around ponds, and through vines until we made it to Dracula's lair. As soon as this happened we would then run as fast as we could back the way we came doing the exact same under/over/around/or through motions in order to get back to safety. All of this was done in place and after we had become familiar with one of the records (these were done maybe a couple times a week) we would then sing along with the directions that the narrator would give. This is somewhat similar to the HOT DOG song on pg. 142 in MCM. I think that activities like this are useful because not only are they memorable, but students often see them just as something fun to do instead of as boring drill exercises.

The other thing that I wanted to mention was the idea of using songs and stories with archaic language in them (MCM 143). I thought that the author made a good point when they said that the students understand that this language isn't usually used in English and so they don't adopt it in their speech. I agree, if we did change some of the language in these songs and stories I think that we wouldn't be allowing our ESL students to engage with the same cultural materials that many native-speaking children use. This won't hurt their language abilities, but they may miss out on some important cultural information.

A note about Feb. 23rd

At the beginning of class last week Kizuna and I gave our presentation on Oral Language Development. I think that the discussion portion of our presentation (which followed Kizuna's introduction on speaking difficulties for non-native English speakers) went better than planned. We didn't cover all of our discussion questions, but I think that the class came up with some very good points about speaking that I hadn't anticipated (i.e. body language and outside factors that affect our speech or willingness to produce it). The discussion went so well that Kizuna and I were unaware that our time was almost up and so we had to cram in our last activity. This definitely had an effect on how we gave our instructions and how the class perceived/understood the activity, but even so I think that the activity wasn't a total loss because it got the class to discuss some important ideas about how people communicate from more than one point of view.

After that we went to the GLL. Since many of our computers weren't working properly we ended up doing two activities. One was an assessment of two ESL students from a video and the other activity was to create activities for our students using props and games from the library's teaching section. I think that it was interesting to see how each of the lessons had to be changed last week because challenges like this often come up in classrooms and we have to be prepared to adjust our lessons and even throw out some of our planned activities.

Speak up or else!

I'm not up to creating awesome titles at the moment, but hopefully it gets the job done in a moderately boring way instead of in an extremely boring way (kind of like the Oscars). Anyways, this week we read about the subject of speaking, which is one of the central focus points in language learning. Both of our texts came from similar yet different points of view and I think that they were able to provide a lot of useful theoretical information as well as plenty of possible activity options.

As Kizuna and I prepare for our presentation tonight we mainly focused on the discussion and conversation activities because they fit both the advanced/proficient speaking level of our class and these activities will hopefully allow us to explore our role as teachers more effectively than say a role play in complaining might. I think our class already has that speaking situation covered... just kidding. I don't think that, I know it! I do think that ideas such as role plays and speeches would be very effective and appropriate speaking activities in an ESL/EFL class though. Speeches may be particularly useful for a class such as business English, since many students in that field might have to refine the art of a speech in their 2nd language in order to speak to a foreign company. We might also think that role plays should be used with younger learners since this might engage their interests more, but I think that most of these activities (even many in the P & B readings) can be adjusted and used in virtually every ESL/EFL setting. For instance a beginning student's ability to give an effective speech may be limited, but it would provide them with a new, even if uncomfortable, way of speaking. Likewise, the role play could be an extremely useful tool for my example of a business English class because they could then project their future goals and situations onto their current classroom experience and this would help to prepare them for a real-life situation. The only thing that I wish these reading would have covered a little more are speaking strategies. We will be discussing some of them in class tonight because I think that many of these strategies are important for our future students to know since they will help to increase their speaking ability.

A note about Feb. 16th

I felt like this class period was probably the most productive for me over the course of this semester so far. We got a good presentation from Thea and Stephanie, got some valuable insight from Solen, looked at some interesting cultural material from Malaysia, and we were able to sufficiently prepare for our portfolio assignment that will be due next week.

Out of all of those activities I want to mention what I found to be the most interesting part of Solen's presentation. He informed us that his ESL 202 students were very uninterested in being in his class for various reasons and then he gave some advice about how he bypassed his students' lack of motivation. I think that many of his techniques may have been very practical, but I think that they would be very effective. He even told us the differences in his approach from his first ESL class to this one. I experienced an unmotivated student last semester when I was tutoring for pronunciation and I think that when we are able to show our students their true need for further language development then they usually become more internally motivated and engaged, which are just a couple of the essential ingredients for L2 success.

Shhh, listen

This week our readings were focused on the aspect of second language learning that is largely forgotten and/or ignored at times, listening. I agree with our texts that this aspect of language learning should play a more significant role than it already does when one tries to learn a language. From my L2 experiences I know that the very first thing that many people teach in language classes is speaking. In my first German class we started by simply learning to speak the ABC's, but at the time I was unaware of how detrimental this would be to the acquisition of my L2. The reason why it turned out to be harmful for me was because my teacher did not allow us to hear a correct pronunciation of the German alphabet, instead she simply had a choral instruction planned that day. This lead to my mispronunciation of the language and so when I ended up going on a 2 week trip to Germany a few years later no one could understand me. It is interesting to note that I could understand most of the native Germans while I was there. 

Probably the second biggest consequence of my first year of learning German was that since I wasn't given the chance to listen to the language I then didn't acquire many of the grammatical forms. These forms were taught explicitly many times, but I never got the chance to internalize them and I think that if I could have listened to the language from day 1 then I might have picked up on the language much sooner (it took me about 3 years to learn the basics that I missed in my first year and in that time I missed much of the advanced material because my language base was weak).

Because of this experience I believe that the listening aspect of language learning should not be taken lightly, even if poor instruction is able to be overcome by the student eventually. I thought our readings this week did a good job of conveying this importance and they provided a lot of useful tools and ideas to get teachers started with meaningful listening activities. I think that as teachers if we are unable to provide our students with authentic listening situations (i.e. in EFL situations this may be difficult) then it is our duty to find good materials for our students. Now that we have the internet in most developed countries we can allow our students to seek out what they are interested in listening to and at the same time they can learn a lot about a language. Another useful media is television/movies, although when we use these for listening activities we should give our recommendations since not every program, film, or internet video/news cast will have useful and authentic language.

A note about Feb. 9th (vocab)

Last week we started our class with a presentation by Stephanie and Rachel. Their main activity for us was to try and write the definition of an unknown word by using the sentence context and by using its spelling (no matter how complicated). Surprisingly as a class we figured out most of the words and individually we might have gotten about 50% correct on average. Some of the wrong answers may have been due to over thinking and others may have been due to not enough context. I thought the hedgehog one was interesting because I had a porcupine in mind while reading the sentences (which is somewhat similar), but I assumed that since that image was already created by the other words that the unknown word had to be something else (over thought it).

The other part of the class that I enjoyed was Diana's presentation of her vocabulary research. Since vocabulary is such an important thing to teach our students I think that it's necessary to know what kind of research is being done on it and how this can help us to teach it more effectively. On a side note I just want to mention the activity we did in the library computer lab. I thought it was linked well to our readings (and interesting), but it felt like it wasn't a very structured activity. This may have been done intentionally but I know that many of the students in the class weren't clear about what we were doing and I think this was reflected by how uninteresting our D2L postings of our findings were.

Form-Focused Instruction & Vocabulary

This week I preferred the HDB reading to the MCM reading because it touched on many general issues about grammar, while still keeping it simple. I agreed with both of the readings, but it seems like the MCM reading would be most useful when teaching advanced English learners. I especially liked the Grammar Techniques section of the HDB reading because I believe that tailoring our teaching methods to our students' learning styles is very important. HDB only included 5 grammar techniques, but they seem to be very basic and effective which is important when a teacher hasn't had much teaching experience because then they don't confuse their students with lessons that try to fit too much information into a short time slot. The 5 grammar techniques that HDB mentioned were charts, objects, maps and drawings, dialogues, and other written texts. Most of these 5 techniques take various learning styles into consideration, but the 5 techniques also cover the 4 skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) which makes these techniques more well rounded.

Since I preferred the HDB text that doesn't mean that I didn't get anything out of the MCM text. Actually I learned a lot of new information and I also think that has a lot to do with why I preferred the HDB text. Since I learned more new information I had to just take it in, while when I read the HDB text I was able to compare it to other information and make an more educated opinion about it. Oddly enough I think this is somewhat similar to how some students approach vocabulary in their L2. If there is too much new information and not enough old information to reinforce what they've already learned then much of what is being taught isn't acquired by the learner. I think that this week we were able to find a good balance in the readings between new and old information. 

On a quick side note I liked when it was mentioned that, "words are not chosen in isolation, but rather, can have ramifications some distance away from their actual placement in the discourse" (MCM 295). I think that this is a very important idea to keep in mind when discussing vocabulary because many of the words that we choose to use often have more to do with the context of the discourse than with the words themselves (but there are also exceptions to this of course).

A note about February 2nd

I really enjoyed our class last week because it allowed for some open discussion and debate. I think that everyone in our class was able to learn something new about how their own culture works or how another's culture is different from their own. Thea and Rachel's presentation was very enjoyable as well. They allowed the class to do most of the work in the open conversation, but I thought the way that they structured the questions and comments went very well (they also brought some candy which was a great idea).

I'm glad that we got to do a practice unit plan in the computer lab because I think it helped to clarify the upcoming assignment. I also think that by being able to actually work on a 'fake' assignment that it at least gets the class aware about what is going to be due, what is expected of them, and (the most important) it makes us aware of when it is due. That way it doesn't creep up on us and surprise most of the class.

Cross-Cultural Communication & the 4 Skills

In our MCM readings this week the subject was, "Building Awareness and Practical Skills to Facilitate Cross-Cultural Communication". I was really excited to begin reading this chapter because I believe that cross-cultural communication is imperative to our experience as teachers, but when I started reading the chapter I was a little disappointed. It was disappointing because I expected there to be more of a discussion about how both students and teachers can become better communicators cross-culturally, but instead MCM mostly focused on how we can make our students more aware about the culture in the US. I was kind of surprised with this one-sided view just because, even though it is a text meant for US ESL teachers, they mentioned the use of some of these techniques for EFL classes as well, but they failed to acknowledge that English teaching is now a global job market and not just a means for assimilating others into our culture here in the US. Much of the information in this section seemed to be somewhat common sense, but once they started discussing cross-cultural awareness in writing it got a little more interesting. I think that the reason why it became more interesting is because our western view of writing (essays in particular) is far different when compared to many other cultures and so we must be able to explain many of our "strange" ideas such as plagiarism.

To me the most interesting portion of the HDB readings this week was the idea of the "Episode Hypothesis" where new vocabulary and sentence structures are taught in an episodic fashion. I agree with HDB that this cannot be the only way that English is taught in a lesson, but it seems like a very motivating way to integrate new information for our students. I wish I would've read this last semester since Stephanie, Adib, and I did our Multi-Genre project on Creative Writing in ESL, but I'm glad that we eventually read it because it emphasizes the importance of our students' motivation in learning. It also points out the well established fact that reading is also a great contributor to language learning.

A note about Jan. 26th

During our last class period we managed to have some interesting discussions about researching in the TESL field. Brian's presentation helped to highlight the fact that most of us need to learn by experience and experience only. That's not to say that a class like ours isn't useful, but it shows that much of the information we cover must be applicable in a classroom in order for it to enhance our teaching abilities. I have realized this as I have gone about my private tutoring this semester as well. During and after each of my lessons I take some time to assess myself and I try to notice if my student is in fact learning. This can sometimes be hard because their language ability cannot miraculously improve overnight, but it can improve steadily over time and I feel that this accumulation of feedback is crucial to how I will alter my teaching style and technique for future classes with other students (and possibly with the same students).

This concern with needs analysis is what lead me to my current topic of research. I think that since this kind of analysis is extremely useful then I should become as aware of it as I possibly can so that I can have a flexible and creative approach in my teaching from class to class. Stephanie and Nate joined me in this project during the end of our last class period and I believe that we will be able to discover several approaches that will only help to enhance our teaching skills.

Readings for Week 3

The readings this week were helpful to at least get my ideas flowing about how to conduct research this semester, but they didn't stimulate too many ideas about what to research. I noticed that in both the MCM and HDB readings that at least one teacher had done research on error correction techniques. I thought that this was interesting because as teachers we obviously don't want to alienate our students by over correcting them, but at the same time we know that some sort of error correction is necessary in order for our students to learn. I think that it's this common self-consciousness as teachers that makes a subject like this worth investigating because if we believe that there is a better way to teach we will be determined to figure it out. 

Of course there is another side to this coin though. That is, if we know many teachers and professionals have already done a ton of research on a subject like this then is it really necessary for me to do similar research or would it be more advantageous for me to just read up on the subject? I don't know about other teachers, but I would rather become informed by the wealth of knowledge that is already out there on a subject such as this and then choose something else that is a little more mysterious for my research. I'm not saying as current students in a teaching program that we should be on the cutting edge of TESL research, but I think that it is important for us to at least uncover a small and practical question rather than rediscover what is already in the common knowledge of the TESL field.