Week 14 Class reffection - Testing and Evaluation

We started the class by actually doing a test designed for ESL students called AccuplacerESL. I was in group 2 and the test i did contained a writing exercise, a grammar and sentence meaning exercise. Considering the principles of testing that we learned in the previous class, i think this part of the test meets the requirement of validity, since it is challenging enough for students whose English is under evaluation. However, i could hardly see authenticity on display, because all the questions were asked separately and divorced from the context. One more thing, which also was a matter of concern for many students in the class, was the fact that our essays in the writing part were graded by the computer! I was really surprised at first when receiving the writing score after submitting my answer, and seriously had no clue how the computer, a machine with practically no brain, is intelligent and flexible enough to read and evaluate human writing. I believe by making the grading process quicker and easier, the designers of the test have, in some way, undervalued human ability and intelligence.

After discussing the test and voicing all our concerns and comments, we continued with a test-designing activity which was done based on a reading text. Our group was assigned a text about US history, and we had fun creating the exercises.

The last reading reflection of the semester - Just about time for evaluation and testing

As i do the reading for this week, it turns out that Chapter 24 in the HDB book was also the last reading chapter for last semester's class. However, just as assessment and testing have always been a matter of concern for teachers and students of all time, it's always helpful to re-read about them. This time, what stood out in my mind as i read is the test-taking procedure that the book mentions, including before-, during, and after-test strategies. The reason i am concerned about this is because in the book it says in order to ensure the face validity of the test, the teacher should prepare students for it, which seems to contrast with some of the experiences i had with testing as a student. What happened is for many subjects in school, we often had a kind of testing called pop quizzes, in which our teachers would give us a 15-minute test in class without prior notice. The rationale my teachers held behind this was to keep us all on task and to make sure that we all review the lesson before going to class. As much as this makes sense to me given the fact that many of us tried not to go to class not knowing what we learned in the previous class, it seems to go against the principle of testing, since the students are nowhere near well prepared. Still, on the other hand, i think this kind of testing works in a way that its spontaneity can most exactly tell the teacher what parts of the lesson stick to students the most and what not when they're not cramming for a test.

Also, anothing that is brought up in the book that i identify with is the alternative assessment techniques such as portfolios and journals. For sure these will help teachers evaluate students' performance more thoroughly and continually. Even though during my time studying English in middle and high school, i was tested mostly by formal testing techniques, i think these alternative ones will work well for students at these levels as well. For instance, the teacher can give students a writing prompt every week and have them keep a journal as a part of class work. Each week some journals will be chosen randomly to receive feedback from the teachers, so that by the end of the semester all students have their works read and corrected by the teacher.

Week 14 Class reflection

This week's class started with Ahmet's presentation about his experience in teaching composition to international students. To me what stood out the most was the difficulties he had when selecting appropriate textbooks for his students, especially when he shared that once he had to change the book in the middle of the semester because it didn't work for the students. This again brought it home to me how hard it is to design a syllabus and choose an accompanying textbook that will fit a class of students whom you hardly know when you plan the syllabus. Sadly, this is what usually happens in the teaching context in my home country, especially at middle and high school level, where we have a set of national textbooks designed specifically for each grade, and the teacher has to rigidly follow the sequence of units presented in the textbooks. Another thing that caught my attention was the follow-up discussion about assessment rubrics for native and non-native students. Personally i greatly agree with Dr. Smidt that at college level, there should be no difference in the assessment process between international studentts and their American peers. Despite the language barrier, we all go to class for the same purpose and one should not be judged only by his/her language abilities.

Next, Jodi gave a presentation about assessment and i think she did a good job presenting by making us actually do the assessment ourselves.

I really liked the next activity in which we worked in group to create and match definitions of evaluation techniques. This is a good demonstration of class activities, and i think it could be effectively used to review vocabulary. Next, we broke into smaller groups to brainstorm activities that can be used to test the four skills, and then carried out a specific one. What i like about this part is that after brainstorming we switched topics and demonstrated an activity that was listed by a different group, which enabled us to share ideas and learn from each other.

The last class discussion about testing was informative, but what struck me was when we talked about authorities and power, the conflict between innovative ideas and long-rooted practices, and the issue of how to apply what i learn here to the real teaching context in my home country. I know it will be hard for a novice teacher like me to try to change routines and customs that have been around for a long time, so as everyone in class was suggesting, i will try to be well-prepared and probably start with small steps first.

Week 13 Reading reflection

This week's reading continues to deal with the issue of Teaching Writing, with more focus on how to go about designing an effective writing course.

Among the issues that second language teachers need to take into consideration when it comes to developing a writing curriculum, i am particularly interested in teacher's response to students' writing, including giving feedback and correcting errors. One of the reasons why this issue captures my attention is because during my process of learning English writing, i've encountered one incidence in which the teacher collects students' papers and returns them graded, but with no major correction or feedback to indicate how good/bad the students are doing. As mentioned in the book, teacher feedback is essential to students' improvement in learning writing and can come under written or oral form. Based on students' linguistic backgrounds and preferences, teachers can choose the feedback type that works best for their students. According to my experience as a second language writer, feedback that is worded under the form of a suggestion or question rather than direct indication of errors seem to work best for me, since they drive me to get back to my paper and try to figure out how i can improve my writing by answering the teacher's questions or following his/her suggestions. Also, in my opinion, the most important and also one of the hardest thing for teachers to achieve is to make sure their feedback has some sort of influence on students' performance. This can be done by making students produce several drafts before the final products, and the teacher makes sure that teacher or peer feedback is given to each draft.

Class reflection - Week 12

This week's class focused on teaching writing and the first activity we did in class was to take a look at a course syllabus designed for a college-level writing class and brainstorm all the principles in teaching writing that we see being displayed. Overall, i think the course fulfills most of the principles, and the instructor is also very clear about what she wants the students' writing products to be like. The text-heavy feature of the assignment instructions, in my opinion, rightly serves the purpose of maximizing the degree of clarity rather than overwhelms the students.

Next came Bekir and Chris presentation. Bekir focused on teaching and learning writing at a global level and brought up very thought-provoking questions for the whole class to discuss. One of the questions that i found interesting was whether to consider writing as a skill or as an art. And i agree that it should be a combination of both. Also, in my opinion to second language learners more emphasis should be placed on the first aspect than on the second one, since it is true that even though many of us can write fluently, it takes more to produce an artful piece of writing. Meanwhile, Chris addressed the issue at a more specific level, particularly he had us deal with some techniques that can be used to teach writing mentioned in the book and come up with specific writing activities.

For the last part of class we did our video tape analysis in groups and i must say this was my favorite part. Kizuna, Lilian and I had a great time watching each other's teaching video and we tried to give as constructive comments to one another as possible. I really valued the class time devoted to this activity, and felt like we were real colleagues who were working together to share experience and help improve each other's teaching performance.