Post 13: Assessment

Blog Post 13

November 26, 2012   

Shohamy (2000) pages 201-215

Brown Chapters 23-24

            In Shohamy’s article, she discusses how discourse can affect language testing.  There are various elements of the discourse which can affect a language test. “The issue is not the validity of the discourse elements within communicative language competence, but rather the extent to which these features manifest themselves in testing situations and their effect on test takers’ scores (Shohamy 203).

 First off, I believe that the test writer should consider all of their test takers.  Their prior knowledge needs to be taken into account.  According to the article, prior knowledge could give some test takers advantages. Hock (1990) showed both language proficiency and prior knowledge predicted test takers scores on a cloze test.  Yet Clapham (1994) examined this effect of background knowledge in relation to test performance and found no such effect.  Either way, it should be considered.  Let’s say there is a reading passage about Halloween or Thanksgiving.  Two American holidays.  Some students may not have any background knowledge and others might.  This could in turn alter their test scores.

In Brown’s chapter 23, he discusses the five basic principles for designing effective tests and assessments.  The first is practicality.  A good test needs to be practical in the sense of financial limitations, time constraints, ease of administration and scoring and interpretation.

The second principle is reliability.  A reliable test is consistent and dependable.  There are many things that can cause a test to be unreliable, though.  Some of these are the construction of the test, administration of the test, the test taker, and the scoring.  In my ENG 346 class this is something that we have studied in depth.  There is person-related reliability, instrument related reliability and rater related reliability.

The third principle is validity.  This is a very complex criterion for a good test.  There are three main types of validity: content, face, and construct.  Each needs to be assessed carefully before test administration.  The fourth principle is authenticity.   This is like saying that the test you have created is a task that is likely to be enacted in the real world. According to Brown (451) there are many things that need to be in place to assure this.  For example, the language of the test needs to be as natural as possible.  Items should be contextualized rather than isolated.  Topics and situations are interesting, enjoyable, and humorous.  Some thematic organization to items is provided, such as through a story line or episode.  The tasks should represent, or closely approximate, real-world tasks.

Brown’s chapter 24 discusses classroom-based assessment.  The first topic discussed is the difference between norm-referenced and criterion-referenced tests.  Norm-referenced tests are designed to compare students by dispersing the average student scores along a bell curve.  This can determine students’ individual performance in comparison to others. While developing a norm-referenced test, the publisher must analyze the correlation between parts of the test and reliability measure.  The student is also is placed in percentage among their peers.  As for interpretation of results, a norm-referenced test’s scoring is based on the mean and standard deviation.  The assessor must also consider the standard error of measurement, which is the difference between the score the student receives and the true score, which is what the student actually knows.  Essentially, norm-referenced tests relates one student’s performance to that of other students’ performance.  It does not, however, usually permit you to identify specifically what students have or have no learned.  It does not enable you to isolate aspects of instruction that need additional attention in order to enhance student achievement.

The purpose of criterion-referenced tests is to classify people according to whether or not they are able to perform some task or set of tasks satisfactorily. The tasks are set, and the performances are evaluated. Constructing this test involves describing language objective, selecting appropriate test tasks, devising and assembling test tasks, and devise a scoring system.  Choosing the type or types of tasks to include in a test depends on a combination of factors: instructional objectives, students’ proficiency level, instructional activities, and available testing resources. Tasks can be open-ended or closed-ended. The tests are constructed such that a ‘pass’ is obtained by completing the great majority of the test tasks successfully.  Students take only the test or tests on which they are expected to be successful. This test is also useful for isolating aspects of instruction that need additional attention in order to enhance student achievement.

In the end, assessment helps everyone.  It helps the instructors identify where their student are and what needs to be taught.  They can reflect on their teaching strategies and see if they need to be altered.  Students benefit from assessments from washback, such as self-confidence gain.  Students also learn where they are struggling and can identify where they need help.

Post 12: Classroom Observation and Curriculum Design

Post 12

November 12, 2012

Brown Chapters 9-13

Kumar chapter 13

            In Kumar’s chapter 13, Monitoring Teaching Acts, he states that one of the most important aspects of learning to theorize from practice is knowing how to monitor one’s own teaching acts.  To do this, he explains that teachers can use the pedagogic framework of self-observation, self-analysis, and self-evaluating one’s teaching acts.  First, we should classify classroom observation models into two types: product-oriented, and process-orientated.

            Product orientated models are based on the assumption that a description of teacher behavior is necessary in order to build a classroom behavior profile of the teacher.  They use a finite set of preselected and predetermined categories.  In my ENG 346 class, we are learning about classroom observation but when teachers observe and analyze the students, not themselves.  I presented last week on the different types of classroom observation, such as annotated notes and rating scales.  Annotated notes are open-ended question notes and can be formatted on the go.  Rating scales have yes/no answers or placing a student on a continuum based on their skills of the learning objectives.  The rating scales of the students can help teacher evaluate themselves in the sense of how their students are performing.  If many of the students are not where they are supposed to be, a teacher needs to consult some of the annotated notes he or she has taken to determine where he or she is failing in instruction.  The annotated notes can consist of student engagement, student participation, and student interaction as well as any other non-predetermined categories.

            Process-orientated models are based on the assumption that an interpretation of classroom activities necessary in order to understand classroom processes and practices.  They focus on classroom input as well as interaction.  They attempt to describe and account for individual behavior and then treat classroom participants as individuals rather than as a collective mass.

            In Brown’s chapter 9, Curriculum Design, he discusses and poses the question, how is a curriculum “born”?  Brown says that Kumar’s “pedagogy of particularity” is highly relevant because no one would dream of planning a lesson in a vacuum, or assuming that lessons are not embedded in a much larger picture.

            One of the first steps in course design is an analysis of the setting, the audience, and most importantly, the needs of the students, which is known as a situation analysis.  I believe that this is the most important starting point a teacher should analyze.  Even if you are teaching the same level of students year after year, things change.  Even over a short period of time.  I am sure during the internet boom of the 90’s and 00’s, teachers had drastic changes in the needs of their students.  The factors to consider are the educational settings, class characteristics, faculty characteristics, governance of course content, and assessment and evaluation requirements.  Teachers should also problematize things that can happen within their classroom so that they can be prepared to handle whatever circumstances that may come about.

Final Paper Update

My final research paper is going to focus on what the basic starting blocks are for newcomers to English to learn to read and write.  I also want to explore some macro-level strategies that would be used to get my students started.

• ·         Tindall, Evie, and Deanna Nisbet. "Exploring The Essential Components Of Reading." Journal Of Adult Education 39.1 (2010): 1-9. ERIC. Web. 4 Nov. 2012 

This article is just what I am looking for.  Not only does it discuss adult ELLs, but it also discusses adult ELLs who are not literate in their first language either.  This is my main concern because I know many of the students I will be working with next semester will not be literate in their L1 and I don’t know how to begin to teach them an L2 if they have no literacy at all.  This also gives some good strategies as to how to begin the teaching process.

• ·         Ditmars, Jane W., and Bethlehem, PA. Adult Literacy Div. Northampton Community Coll. A Field Guide For Literacy: Life Skills And Literacy For Adult Beginning Readers And ESL Students. Manual For Teachers And Tutors. n.p.: 1993. ERIC. Web. 4 Nov. 2012.

This article is a manual that provides specific lesson plans for teaching life skills and literacy to adult beginning readers and ESL students. It includes four curricular sections: Focus on Language Arts, Focus on Life Skills and Literacy, Focus on Holidays and Observances and Focus on Survival Math.

• ·         Rabideau, Dan, Washington, DC. National Clearinghouse on Literacy Education, and Washington, DC. Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse on Literacy Education for Limited-English-Proficient Adults. Integrating Reading And Writing Into Adult ESL Instruction. ERIC Digest. n.p.: 1993. ERIC. Web. 4 Nov. 2012.

This article contains some of the major reading and writing practices currently in use in adult ESL programs. It describes the reading activities for such learners are similar to those used in adult basic education classes. At the beginning level, students dictate stories to the teacher or give an oral account of an experience, etc.

Post 11: Cultural Sensitivity and Social Relevance in the Classroom

Blog Post 11

Kumar chapters 11-12

Brown chapter 26

Kumar’s chapter 11 discusses the importance of ensuring social relevance in teaching.  In order to make our L2 teaching socially relevant, we need to recognize that the “broader social, political, historical, and economic conditions that affect the lives of learners and teachers also effect classroom aims and activities” (239).   Kumar covers the concepts of the status of English as a global language, the role of the home language in the learning and teaching of English, and the use of appropriate teaching materials.    English is now a global language because it has developed such a special role that is recognized in every country.  It has been recognized for many reasons such as science and technology uses, the internet, commerce and communication uses. 

            I found the section on the politics of standardization very interesting because I never realized how much of a controversary this topic really is.  Take the section on Oakland California, for example.  The school realized that the majority of their students use AAVE.  They wanted to treat it as any other language or dialect by making it accepted within the school discourse.  They ran into some trouble, however, when they put out a statement saying that they would be using it while teaching and would teach it along side standard English.  After that caused some problems, they retracted that statement and said that they really just want to foster the language because it does have such strong ties with the students’ home life.  If a student is discouraged from using AAVE in school and if they are told it is “wrong” they then feel a rift between their family and the school, thus making the student feel as if they need to choose their family or school.   That is something we never want students to have to consider, even subconsciously.  Kumar states that when teachers were made aware of the effects of taking notice AAVE has on their students, and how acceptance of AAVE can lead to a more stable platform in which to learn standard English, the students were more successful.  My question is this, how do teachers do this?  Do they include the use of AAVE in their lessons? It says that teachers changed their teaching strategies; in what ways did they do this?

            Brown discusses how to be socially responsible and socially aware while teaching.  This mirrors Kumar’s chapters by talking about how politics and culture play a role in teaching another language.  We of course, need to be sensitive to all of our students and realize the ties they may have with their L1.  By engaging the class in everyone’s L1s, we create a nice blend of diversity.  By being “agents” of change, we can change the classroom dynamic.  Something that was an issue in my high school was the tension between cultures.  My high school was 53% Hispanic; we also had a large Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian population.  There was tension between the Hispanics and Polish students.  This lead to many, many incidents and was an obvious tense atmosphere for everyone.  It never hurts to let students talk about their culture so others can learn about it; they will see that we aren’t all that different, people are people. Culture and nationality is only part of who you are, and a lot of cultures are the same in many ways.

Post 10: The Power of Linguistics

October 29^th, 2012

Blog Post 10

Kumar chapters  9 & 10

Brown chapter 17

            Kumar’s chapter 9, Contextualizing Linguistic Input, is probably my favorite chapter so far.  I really enjoy learning about linguistics and find sociolinguistics absolutely fascinating.  Kumar discusses how to join together realities that make up a context.  The four realities that he presents are linguistic, extralinguistic, situational, and extrasituational.

            The linguistic context is the immediate linguistic environment that contains formal aspects of language required for the process of meaning-making (205).  This can pertain to the sentence or sentence to sentence levels.  Kumar then gives the example of the word ‘table’ and the different meanings that can be inferred by using the contextual clues. While the word ‘table’ will usually evoke the referent of an object to place things on in a dining room, the linguistic environment must be assessed to determine if that is indeed what is being referred to.   

While reading this I kept wondering if this was the same thing as pragmatics.  That word is not used while explaining linguistic environment but that is what I think of to describe the concept.  While spending time with my conversation partner, I asked her what the hardest part of the English language is to learn.  She said that the hardest part is knowing all of the different meanings of the same word.  I found that very coincidental because I had just finished reading this chapter!

Another phenomenon that ELLs learn is the linguistic context, mainly the notion of cohesion.  Productive communication depends on the understanding of cohesion.  I cannot answer a question properly if I do not understand the question. My answer is dependent on the question.  The other aspect of cohesion, the fusing of sentences, reminded me of Spanish class in high school.  When you fuse sentences you do not need to repeat the question within your answer, your answer can be an incomplete sentence and still be mutually intelligible.  In Spanish class we were always forced to not fuse our sentences while engaging in dialogue.  I guess this just gives us more practice speaking, but it always felt overly formal and unnatural.

The extralinguistic context referrers to the immediate linguistics environment that contains prosodic signals, such as stress and tone (207).  While reading this, I was overwhelmed thinking about the task of teaching all of these things.  This seems like such an important concept to be taught be 1) not all languages have these aspects, and 2) not knowing these aspects of the English language and societal norms can cause some problems.  Like in the example given, the Asian woman who offered gravy had a spoken the word with a falling intonation which in turn, rubbed the Americans the wrong way because usually when offered something, the word has a rising intonation to signal an offering.

The reflective task 9.2 asks if we have ever experienced a situation where incorrect intonation led to a misunderstanding.  Something that I immediately thought of is how in English, when you put the stress on the front syllable of certain words, it makes the word a noun.  When you put the stress on the back syllable is makes the word a verb.  For example, the word ‘subject’ or ‘construct.’  I remember when I learned that rule, it blew my mind.

Brown’s chapter 17 discusses the integration of the four main language learning skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking.  While many institutions separate these skills, ESL teachers need to make sure to integrate all of these within our lessons.  In a lot of our C&I methods courses we learn about the Multiple Intelligences and how we can tap in to each of them in our lessons.  We have all different types of learners in the classroom; it is impossible not to.  Even if we learn a certain way and we feel comfortable teaching a certain way, it is imperative that we realize our students differ from us and our teaching methods always need to vary.  By varying our lessons amongst listening lessons, speaking lessons, hands on lessons, etc. we can try to best teach each of our students equally.