The textbook talks about assessment as an important component. Describe the assessment component in your foreign language class. What were the advantages and disadvantages to evaluation done in that way? In what ways (if any) did the teacher incorporate both formal and informal assessments?
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The assessment that takes place on a regular basis in my Spanish class consists of quizzes, tests and random teacher checking through dialog, in-class activities and writing assignments. The first thing that the teacher does in each class is to ask us individually (there are only four other students) what we did over the weekend. She has progressed from asking us in the present tense to asking us various questions that require the use of copreterite and preterite tense (that is as far along as we are right now. She assesses the use of future tense by asking us to report on future activities at the end of each class. Usually, she incorporates a question or two that requires use of a certain grammatical or language point, such as 'what is the weather like?' or 'what restaurants are around the art museuml?' for example (use of the Spanish word "hay"). We do exercises in class where we interview each other and then report on the results. Our class is very interactive, and we are required to produce a lot of dialog in each class. This informal means of assessment has the advantage of being immediate, the teacher knows right away if we can use the concepts presented or not. She is able to keep a finger on the pulse of the class that way, and can re-tool the lesson to address any deficiencies that she might feel the students have. This 'real time' approach more accurately reflects a student driven environment where individual students are more readily met. The disadvantage of this is that she has to remember over time which student is struggling with what concept, there is no way to go back and refer to a conversation that was had several class sessions ago. The tests and quizzes are of course the formal components of assessment. The advantage of testing as a method of evaluation is that the teacher actually has a written record of my achievement (or lack of!). The disadvantage of this is that the teacher finds out after the fact whether or not a particular lesson was successful. I think that the combination of both works well for our class, and I think that a combination of both would be beneficial for almost any foreign language class as they are both useful in differing ways.
ReplyDeleteThroughout all of my Spanish classes, both lower and upper level, a wide variety of assessment tools were used.
ReplyDeleteIn my lower level classes, the teachers would use more “tangible”, or formal, assessments. In some classes, we would have a short quiz before every class to review what we did in the previous class. We would also do a lot more “in class assignments” that would be turned in to the teacher at the end of class. This could include, group work that called for written answers, worksheets, or other activities that the teacher would grade. We had formal tests a lot more often, usually ranging between 5-8 major exams per semester. Although most teachers also utilized some informal assessments, such as simple dialogue practice or other group work that the teacher may informally assess, but for the most part everything was formally done.
However, in upper level classes, the teachers used a lot more of what I call “intangible”, or informal, assessments. In these classes, the teachers would have a “participation grade” where the teachers would grade the students throughout the semester on how much they participated in class. Participation could include: openly discussing any reading assignments, answering open ended questions the teacher would provide, or participating in spontaneous debates between students, amongst other things. Formal tests and assignments were also used, but not as often. Usually only 2-3 formal tests were given throughout the semester, usually involving some sort of essay prompt.
In my experience, all of my foreign language classes, both lower and upper level, incorporated both formal and informal assessments into their curriculum. However, lower level classes tended to rely more on the formal assessment side, whereas the upper level classes relied on the informal. I believe the advantages for the lower level classes doing it this way is that it allows an easier way to assess your students at such a low level. The beginner foreign language classes focus more on the technical side of language, and teachers are concerned more with students falling behind. If you don’t know the basics, you can never go on to master the language. However, I believe this is also a disadvantage because some teachers can easily rely too much on the formal assessments. Even at the lower levels, students need to be assessed informally, in a more “everyday life” context, for the teacher to be able to fully assess the students’ abilities. Same goes for the upper level classes. The advantage of leaning towards the informal assessments can allow students to practice more abstract thinking as a way of being assessed. These classes tend to focus more on class discussion, participation and student interaction. Group work is often used and a lot of assignments are open ended. This can also have disadvantages. When relying too much on informal assignments, it’s possible that a student’s reading and writing skills will be left behind. There needs to be a clear balance between formal and informal assessments. I understand why this shift from formal to informal usually occurs when moving from lower level classes to upper level, but a balance needs to be maintained.
My foreign language teacher used both formal and informal assessments in our class.
ReplyDeleteOur formal tests had listening comprehension exercises along with reading and writing exercises. The teacher did mention that the requirement of the district was to “identify” vocabulary and proper verb usage, so our tests had a lot of word banks and multiple-choice questions. The advantage to the word bank was that the tests built confidence in your L2 ability. The disadvantage was that in my follow-on class, the next teacher interpreted the requirements differently and my crutch (word bank/multiple-choice) went away. The teacher formally measured our production skills through brief one-on-one interviews with topics that we were given to us in advance. I think this did allow her to (briefly) assess our production skills. Unfortunately, it was time-consuming. Only one student could talk to her at a time, so while the interviews were taking place, students practiced and waited. Once the interview was over, you got to leave. It took an entire class period for the assessment, but your participation took only 5 minutes.
For informal evaluation, we did a lot of paired exercises in class that included a report-out by each team member. For example: Ask your partner about the classes he is taking (when, how many, what). Report your partner’s answers to the class. Sometimes we wrote of our pair-work answers on the board. We did pair-work in the language lab and the teacher would give us a web site and an exercise to complete based on the information we got from the web site (utube video, music video, google map, etc). Although these exercises were informal assessments, they were fun, relevant and the content forced us to use the grammar we were learning. The disadvantage of these informal exercises was that if neither you nor your partner knew the answer, it was frustrating.
Lynn Vara
In my French class, I think the assessment component had several parts. Of course, there were tests, but for example, the test itself was two separate parts. One was oral -the teacher would tell us the topics beforehand, and then the test was him asking questions about that topic and we had to answer. So, for example, if the topic was food, he would ask us what is our favorite food, etc..- all in French and we had to answer in French too. The other part was a written test, and those varied, but there was always a writing portion at the end, also about the topics that he’d tell us about. I think he was always testing us sort of indirectly, because he would always talk to us in French when there was time, and he tried to make us use the words we were taught, or remind us of a certain structure or such. We also had games about the topics too (a bingo game about clothes, etc..), and since the class was small he could easily tell who knew/studied and who didn’t, because they usually wouldn’t participate much. I think that advantage is that there was a formal way of testing us (written/oral), but also an informal way (games, participation, conversation, etc..), one was in a set up environment, the other in a relaxed environment, so that way he can tell if we really understood the material and not just happened to get nervous or go blank on a test. Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages in my opinion. The formal method can help pinpoint things that might only be seen in a testing environment (spelling, grammar, etc..), while the informal method can show how much progress you have made overall, and how well you can connect everything together and spontaneously produce the language(how much actually sticks with you). The disadvantages on the other hand might be that the tests are too difficult, which might sometimes discourage students, or the games and conversation might not be the focus of the lesson (and thus not a good assessment tool). However, I think a balance between both formal and informal assessment methods is probably the best solution.
ReplyDeleteMost assessment in EFL class in secondary school were controlled and implemented by the subject teachers. During the lecture, teachers orally asked some questions in order to check students’ comprehension at any time. Through these asking and answering between a teacher and students, the teacher could control the difficulty of contents, the speed of the lecture, and the necessity of re-explanation promptly in the lecture. Moreover, at the very first or last part of a lecture teachers gave some printed quizzes or formative tests. Through the quizzes just before entering the main lecture, teachers could check students’ memory of the last lesson and the accomplishment of assignments. In addition, through the formative tests after the whole lesson, teachers could check students’ comprehension of today’s lesson, and they could modulate the difficulty of the next lesson according to the result of these formative tests.
ReplyDeleteHowever, assessments in advanced level EFL class (undergraduate class) were different. Because lesson procedures in advanced level class were more diverse than secondary EFL class, students’ grade was evaluated with various ways. In university, although professors explained some chapters or important concepts, students also gave presentation alone or in a team. After a presentation, not only professors but also peers assessed the presentation, and even the presenter assessed their presentation by themselves. In this peer- and self-assessment students could evaluate their performance and proficiency of the target language objectively.
I learned English in formal settings, mainly in public schools where assessment was mostly formal. We had to do certain assignments in order to pass. Many students could progress to the next grade without actually being qualified, but they managed to finish the work. Participation was one of the assessment tools, but had no heavy weight as the written assignments and exams. Teachers could tell the level of the students, but they could not care less about their progress because students were not serious about learning. Even in the university, we were evaluated by accomplishing a number of tasks and projects. For me that was not horrible because it reduces the risks of the learning process, and increases the students’ confidence of their ability to survive a language class. However, I heard that a lot of Saudi students at Eli are in level one although they have taking English classes since the intermediate school. This means that they have done their homework but they did not understand it or they were not interested enough to expand their knowledge or at least maintain it. I believe that formal assessment could determine students’ weaknesses in some language skills, but it could not evaluate their understanding of the language. Thus, teachers should take both techniques into consideration to be able to use the best tool for the best task. They could use formal assessments to make sure that students know the rules, and informal assessments to make sure that they can apply the rules in certain circumstances.
ReplyDeleteSince my foreign language classes occurred about 50 years ago, far beyond my accurate memory, I will instead write about assessment in the ESL classes I teach at North Lake College.
ReplyDeleteI usually teach non-credit ESL levels 1, 2, 3, and 4. In these courses we use a provided curriculum. An assessment of each student is made at the end of the course to determine if the student is ready to go on to the next level. This final assessment is based 70% on a final test over the chapters covered during the course. This test is written and multiple- choice. My students are almost always adequately prepared to pass this test. The remaining 30% of the grade is subjective and based on homework assignments and class participation. While this method gives a documented reason to pass or fail a student, its disadvantage is that it does not accurately assess what the student’s writing, speaking and listening abilities.
Because these courses involve so much communicative language teaching, the teacher is constantly assessing students’ progress based on their interaction and written performance. Each lesson involves listening, speaking, reading and writing. The teacher‘s assessment determines when a lesson has been satisfactorily learned by the students and it’s time to move on to the next topic. Obviously students vary on their achievement, so the teacher is also deciding who needs additional attention. I give written quizzes two or three times during each course primarily so the students can gauge for themselves how well they are doing. After their time in silence to take the test, I usually let them pair up to discuss the questions before I tell them the correct answers. This process seems to help them digest the correct answers. The assessments in the classroom are always designed to encourage and enable the student to gain confidence in their language ability.
In conclusion, at these levels, my in-class assessments are primarily designed to ensure a) that I have done my job in helping them learn and b) provide positive reinforcement. I feel it is just as important for students to realize they can learn and have fun doing so than to measure their grasp of the material.
In my memory, my English teachers in middle and high school assessed how we learned by assigning homework, small quizzes, repeating the previous knowledge, asking and answering and formal exams. For homework, sometimes the teachers would let us ourselves correct for each other and after that they could do some comments and explanations for both original work and correction work, which I think was a effective way to assess students’ abilities because they could clearly know what our errors were and how to improve them. Asking and answering questions were also a good assess measurement. It directly reflects students’ whether they truly understand the knowledge and how they think about it. And it’s suitable for reviewing the previous knowledge. They need to remember and say them again and again so that they master these important points. And this way can easily strengthen students’ confidence and ignite more interests to learn. Although small quizzes and final exams are so formal ways to assess, I think sometimes they cannot be the only authoritative ways. Most students will always be nervous about exams and besides, some exams need more exam skills more than the true knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThe incorporation between formal and informal assessments is very necessary and I think if teachers know their students’ abilities first through the informal ones and then give them a formal assessment, it would be better. Although the motivation from the failure can be important, the consistent confident is more important to keep.
Assessment is absolutely vital to gauge progress of L2 acquisition. However, assessment does not always mean a physical written or verbal test. Assessment can be observing casual conversations in L2 and noticing a student using a correct tense or an incorrect vocabulary word, in order to know the student's progress. Written tests can only show what is "learned" versus what is "acquired". Many people can choose the correct word from a word bank. But, can they choose it from their brain automatically in the context of spontaneous conversation?
ReplyDeleteIn my foreign language classes, we had the standard tests that were necessary. However, often even the most communicative students made grammatical errors. As a student, seeing my errors were helpful to a point, if I couldn't remember a word or kept getting a spelling error. Also, my teacher obviously made informal assessments based on how much we were able to communicate, whether through her questions or through L2 conversations with classmates.
I think asking questions informally such as "What did you do this weekend?" can be very helpful in assessing a student's ability depending on the follow-up questions that force the student to be creative and use the language, but choosing the subject matter they want to talk about.
Assessment in my second language learning experience has been a mix of written evaluations like tests, quizzes, homework, and observational assessment. In the beginning levels a lot more written evaluations were used, and professors that have required oral proficiency tests basically just had us reciting a paragraph we had written and memorized, so I don't feel that's a very good gauge for assessing fluency. In more advanced classes like Conversation, we were assessed on in-class spontaneous speaking, like debates and class participation. Formal assessments are a necessity throughout L2 learning, but don't truly reflect an individual's ability to use the language in a meaningful, communicative way, as many students cram for language exams just like any other exam and quickly forget the information. Informal assessments such as requiring students to give input in class discussions are a more accurate indicator of the command a student has over the language.
ReplyDeleteIn my current Spanish class, formal assessment consists both of quizzes and tests, as well as short essays and verb analyses. Informal assessment take place every day as the professor poses questions and pair students up to do activities. She listens to the students as they do activities, notes constructions or individual words that may be giving multiple students difficulty, and then addresses them in front of the class. A daily participation score increases students’ motivation to interact.
ReplyDeleteSome of the advantages that I have observed in the formal testing component are that the tests and analyses are relevant and useful in reviewing verb constructions. They do not focus on a specific situation, but practice general grammar rules that are applicable in many areas. The informal testing component has the advantage of being simple and allowing the teacher to monitor student’s progress. However, I personally find being given daily score to be a source of stress, feeling like I am constantly taking a test. The essays can be a great learning opportunity for students, since they are less structured than tests and require students to use much of their knowledge in concert to produce final texts. They are focused on communication, but grammar mistakes are given due notice. While these are a very good learning opportunity, I think they may be a more difficult method of assessment for the professor to mark, since there are not always right and wrong answers. However, compositions can be a great method of assessment that not only measures students’ current knowledge, but pushes them to new discoveries and challenges.
Stefani Goode
ReplyDeleteIn my last three language classes the use of written exams and oral interviews as a way of officially assessing the students (formal assessment). Daily assessment was in the form of question and answer sessions or pop quizzes (informal assessment). I think the advantage of the written exams and oral interviews after each unit for Italian were a good way for the instructor to assess how much we know and how well we produce.
The disadvantage to this is if the teacher only uses written tests supplied from the text then all the students need to do is study that unit its not really assessing how much they learned but only that they can memorize the information for the moment. I had smart instructor and she chose to create her own test and oral interview so we as students were always challenged. Again this can also be a disadvantage if you can't create a proper exam or test material. I think my instructor did fairly well.
When I was learning Chinese, the main assessment component was reviewing past weeks’ material. The teacher would go over previous vocabulary, reading the English and students would have to respond with the Chinese equivalent. Sometimes she would ask questions in English that would force us to give different variations of a word or stretch us to speak more Chinese. The advantages of this method is that it was informal so students didn’t feel pressured, low-maintenance so the teacher didn’t need to prepare anything beforehand or spend time afterward correcting tests or papers, and group-oriented so that we were listening and speaking Chinese together and could help one another learn. The disadvantages were that we weren’t really held accountable for our learning (meaning we didn’t have to study), didn’t have concrete measures of our progress, and it wasn’t communicative as much as vocabulary memorization.
ReplyDeleteMy Greek (and Hebrew) classes were on the other end of the spectrum, where the professor would ask one student to walk him through a passage in Greek, translating, parsing verbs, and defining words. This was spectacularly scary but the pressure and fear of getting called on was fine motivation for pre-class study and preparation.
I've had two totally opposite experiences with assessment in my language classes, so I'll talk about each experience separately:
ReplyDeleteFirst, in my Spanish language courses in high school and college, assessment was both formal and informal. We were given written exams and daily vocabulary quizzes, and because we usually knew exactly what would be on them it was possible to memorize the answers without actually doing much in the productive or communicative sense. Although we did have some other types of assessment, formal exams were the most common tool used, and they normally contained a vocabulary section, some fill in the blank questions, and a limited amount of short answer. In my upper-level Spanish courses in college, however, informal assessment was more frequent, with a high concentration of oral interaction between students and the teacher. We were tasked with doing a lot of productive activities such as writing skits or doing group presentations which allowed for a pretty complex evaluation of our abilities (both written and oral) in the language.
Second, I learned Korean in a very informal tutoring context in which there was no formal evaluation tool used at any time. All instruction took the form of conversation and dialogue practice. Any memorization or book-study was assigned outside of class, and the class time was spent only in teacher-elicited oral production. It seems to me that this must have been helpful for the instructor in the sense that he always knew whether or not we had learned what we were being taught. Unfortunately, this method of teaching had a downside, which was that since no formal evaluation was done even in the beginning of the course, the instructor wasn't aware of any of the knowledge gained by the student before they entered the course or during personal study while the course progressed. Because of this, I frequently found myself in situations where I had actually learned information beyond what we were studying in class but didn't have any way of demonstrating what I had learned to the instructor. The instructor thought I was doing well because I could function within the structured rote conversations given in class, but I felt handicapped because I was still focusing on material that was actually lower than my knowledge level. For this reason I feel that although formal assessment shouldn't be the only tool used in learning contexts, it is still a necessary piece even in ESL programs which aren't technically academic in nature because it enables the instructors to have their fingers on the pulse of the students' actual knowledge levels and abilities.
In many of my spanish classes there were of course the usual tests, quizes, short essays etc. (Which everyone has experienced)These are just so boring and dreaded! Now, they are effective sometimes when learning a certain grammar rule but they dont seem to really make me reatain the knowledge. I find myself taking in so much knowledge just to expel it all on the test sometimes. Now I love foreign languages so I tried my hardest in the classes not for good grades but for the opportunity to be able to communicate with a whole different community! But in American classrooms where all the kids want is a good grade and then move on this can be an issue. Of course we arent teaching to these groups of students and our students will probably be learning English either to survive or for another reason that is a necessity.
ReplyDeleteIn other classes I have had oral exams. Now these were a little more communicative because we could practice our speaking which is the hardest part for me. These were also pretty effective. The only issue I would have with these is that the teacher chose the topic and told us weeks before what to study. As nice as that is, that doesnt happen when you go to speak to an actual speaker of Spanish. Maybe if it was just a little more random to keep answers creative instead of rehearsed.
The last assesment is a little bit more informal than the rest. I had one teacher (my best spanish teacher) who would have us look up articles that interested us in spanish, read them and then write a summary about the article. To me this is genuis! We would get to learn more about a subject interesting to us, test our comprehension and then test our skills of being able to recommunicate in a different way what the article was about. On top of that, she would ask us about our favorite article from the semester during our oral exams. So you also had to be able to communicate the information oraly! I learned so much just through this evaluation and the teacher got to see in our papers what concepts of the language we werent understanding! This I will definitely follow!
Debby Adams
ReplyDeleteFrom elementary school to high school, I had the typical Spanish class experience, as many of you have described above. We had both formal assessments in the form of tests and quizzes, as well as informal assessment done through conversation in class. The higher the level I was at, though, the fewer assessments there were. My senior year of high school, for example, I was in a Spanish literature class where all we did was read books and discuss them in class. There were TWO students in that class, so there was little need to do much formal assessment because we had to participate in every class. It was easy to tell where we were at and what we were understanding. We'd occasionally write essays or chapter summaries to evaluate our writing, but other than that all other assessments were informal because our abilities were self-evident.
When I studied abroad in China, my Chinese class was the total opposite experience. All assessments were formal, through the form of dictation or quizzes, and there was little in-class spontaneous production (though this was something I got plenty of practice on outside of class!). The good side was that we got constant feedback on how we were doing on getting the basics. The downside was that using strictly written formal assessments played to the strengths of only some of the students. There were others in the class who could communicate well with good pronunciation but didn't do as well in terms of grades as the students who had the grammar down or could write well (but couldn't use tones).
In my final language experience, Khmer, it was completely the opposite; all assessments were informal. There were no tests or quizzes at all, except for annual taped conversations that were scored. Frankly, it drove me nuts! I wanted to know my progress - and more than once a year. Of course, it may also just be because I like getting grades :)
The decision of informal vs. formal assessments (and frequency of assessment) is not one that can be answered the same way for all classes and is dependent on a number of factors. If the classes are smaller, then there is less need for frequent formal assessment on the teacher's end because the students' progress will be evident. In that class, formal assessment is very often more necessary for the students' benefit than for the teacher's. In bigger classes, and especially in lower-level classes, more formal assessments are important for the teacher to know how much the students are getting the concepts being taught.
In all of my foreign language classes, my instructors were required to give very formal assessments in the form of quizzes and exams. I've had classes that had quizzes everday and exams every week, which can be frustrating to a lot of students and can (and does) lead to information dump. As has been described by everyone else, the higher level my classes went(at least as far as high school), the less frequent the formal assessments became.
ReplyDeleteIn my military training however, the higher level we went, the more often we were recorded in speaking conversations with the instructor and graded based on our production.
In either case, (formal or informal assessments), I think that there is a lot to be dicussed and that each method has its' up and down sides. Formal tests, (grammar quizzes and the like) can be good for the student to solidify the in-class concepts, but too many can just lead to student cramming and dumping the information after class. Informal assessment is a great teacher tool to gauge how your students are producing, but again, too much or too little isn't good.
There needs to be a balance between the two forms in the classroom to keep the administration and the students happy.
In my language classes, assessments were always done very overtly as tests and quizzes. Most recently, my German classes relied heavily on weekly vocabulary quizzes, as well as major tests, outside the standard midterm and final. This type of assessment, in my experience, had its uses. Not only does it help with L2 literacy, but I for one kind of benefited from the vocabulary quizzes, simply because I don't know that there would have been a better way for me personally to remember all the different words for things.The tests helped me, personally with some grammar and literacy with German. The only issue I saw with these tests, is that it was really easy to infer the correct answer from the context, without actually knowing the meaning behind it. Another form of assessment in my German class was the online homework. This has value, as it is practice outside of class, but the problem here is that the answers were provided in the back of the work book, and at lower levels, the program would actually give you the answers when you got them wrong. This made it just so easy to look up the answer, and not really know what you were saying.
ReplyDeleteThe oral exams were also helpful, if only because they provided an opportunity for me to practice forming proper sentences in German, as well as aided in building my vocabulary. The advantage is that I had to speak continuously for a few minutes, the disadvantage of course being that it was pretty much scripted, aside from the questions the professor would ask at the end of it.
There was some informal assessment as well, just through conversing with the class, and the activities we completed.This was beneficial in that we got immediate feedback on our accuracy, but it did have drawbacks as well because, when the students were left to their own devices, we weren't always sure if we were correct or not.The professor was there to offer guidance, but she tried to hang back so as to allow us some freedom to find the answer ourselves first. This led to us trying to find the answer, and being reluctant to ask her.