View
1
Download
0
Category
Preview:
Citation preview
Workshop 1: Integrative artifacts
Names Pamela AñazcoTania O. Contreras
Class: Assessment Methods & Approachesto Teaching of English as a
Second LanguageTeacher: Katiuska Santibañez
ARTIFACT 1: READING AND WRITING
Just Tell Me What to Do. I'M BEGGINGFebruary 17, 2015 Ask Dr. Love Advice Column
Hey! I'm in high school and there is this boy I've been liking since November! We have been texting for about 4 months now! I know he likes me and he knows I like him! We really click and we can have conversations for hours over the phone! One problem we have......we have only hung out once and it was in a group setting!!! I know he is a VERY shy guy but still..... I ask if he wants to hang out and he always want to but when the time gets close to us hanging out he backs out last minute. For example.... I invited him over and then an hour before he said his dad made dinner and so his family was having "fam" night! I just don't understand!!!!! I like him so much and I just don't know what to do! Do you think he is shy or honestly just doesn't like me?!? I'm getting tired of him backing out last minute! Tell me what I should do and what you think please!!!
Signed by: Desperate for answers
ASK EMILY!— June 3, 2016 —
Dear Emily, My mom yells at me more than she talks to me. I have tried to talk to her about this many times but each time she just yells more. She says that I deserve it and I used to believe that, but I don't think so anymore. She'll yell for an hour or more about how inconsiderate and lazy I am and how she wants to leave and never come back for little things, for example, not putting shoes on the stand or not cleaning out my closet. She does the guilt trip thing a lot too, about how she did so much for me and I'm not doing anything for her, etc. If I do clean the closet, she responds with, "You won't even do it again" and I get no appreciation whatsoever for all the things I do do. I'm not rude, I don't talk back even when she's yelling, I have awesome grades, I don't make a mess, I've never even gotten in trouble at school. I can't even talk to her about things I'm going through anymore because all she does is yell, yell, yell. She's fifty percent of the reason that I'm sinking into depression again, and when I told her this (about three times) she knocked me completely aside. Please help me.— Mean Mom, 14
This artifact is made to assess reading comprehension and writing integrated in one task.
INSTRUCTIONS:
- Students (in pairs) get one newspaper/ magazine advice column.- Students must read silently their column. Dictionaries will be provided to aid
solving any vocabulary related issue they may have. - Students (regardless the type of column they get) they must answer the
questions:What is the text about? Answering this should help them with the completion of the task.
- Students are encouraged to read the text a second time for better understanding.
- After reading and comprehending, students must write an answer/ reply as so if they were the advisor.
- Written product must be at least 100 words. - Students must use modals for giving advice.- If the teacher wants to have a communicative extension of this task:
Students can be asked to perform the column as a role play. One student being the one pretending to call a radio station telling the problem, the other one being the one hearing/ and giving the advice (speaking).
RUBRIC
Outcome: The aim of this rubric is to assess integratively a reading/writing task about an advice column.
Student: ______________________________________________________________
Criteria Unacceptable (1)
Acceptable(2)
Target(3)
Exemplary(4)
Score
Reading Comprehension
Disorganized and provides few, if any, relevant links between ideas of the text. Shows very little or no comprehension
Poorly organized with unclear links between ideas, which show very little comprehension of the text.
Organized with some progression of ideas, missing few main ideas/ points of the text
A well-organized structure touching the main ideas/key points of the text, which shows understanding of the text.
Spelling and Grammar
Writing contains numerous errors in spelling and grammar which interfere with comprehension
Frequent errors in spelling and grammar distract the reader
While there may be minor errors, the writing follows normal conventions of spelling and grammar
The writing is essential error free in terms of spelling and grammar
Content
The column seemed to be a collection of unrelated sentences. It was very difficult to figure out what the column was about.
Ideas were somewhat organized, but were not very clear. It took more than one reading to figure out what the column was about
Ideas were expressed in a pretty clear manner, but the organization could have been better.
Ideas were expressed in a clear and organized fashion. It was connected to the main column.
Length
The column is significantly shorter than required.
The column is 20 words short of the limit.
The column is from 10 to 15 words shorter than the requirement
The column fulfills the minimum 100 word requirement.
Justification
This artifact follows the integrative and communicative approach
respectively. Nevertheless, this artifact does not relate to all Chilean schools
contexts or educational practices by teachers of English. In our educational reality,
most skills are assessed in isolation, in other words: discrete point-testing
oriented.
In the Chilean context, reading is hardly ever assess according to integrative
or communicative principles. When it is assessed, students are asked to read for
gist, then answer precise questions or multiple choice, which meets practicality. However, this method does not provide opportunities for developing critical thinking
since students do not have to come up with their own answer.
On the other hand, writing itself is mostly assessed by filling the gaps or
producing non- authentic writing products, which do not meet communicative
goals. In Chilean educational context, students rarely get to write pieces of their
own, mainly due to their lack of vast vocabulary to achieve such task. Although this
is not impossible to achieve.
Consequently, this sort of integrative artifact could be carried out only if the
level of English of the students were upper-intermediate and upper levels.
Particularly, since producing the written product requires a higher level of language
competency.
Unlike the still prevailing Discrete-point testing, which is based on the
premise that language can be broken down in parts; integrative assessment seeks, as its name states, the integration of the set of language competence
abilities, hence skills are not assessed in isolation.
Integrative activities or task enhance the learning process because they
provide a much more meaningful context for students, rather than just presenting
an exercise in isolation. Integrative activities resemble real life situations, which
makes them, depending on the task, somewhat authentic and communicative.Additionally, by providing integrative activities, students can acknowledge a
meaningful connection between skills. In this case, why read this column? So I can
give/ provide advice. Likewise, integrative tasks convey a clear compelling purpose
to students, linking actions and learning to life, in this case giving advice about a
problem or situation.
On the other hand, this artifact meets the principles of communicative
approach to language learning, since the basis for the communicative approach
requires students’ interaction with each other and exchange ideas, while
developing the task. Students are free to use the language they possess. The
reading comprehension part is not subject to fixed answers or multiple choice. By
combining or integrating to skills (reading and writing) students’ comprehension of
the text is shown or checked with the final product of the artifact, which is a writing.
Hence, if they understood the text, they will be able to write/provide a coherent
advice. In addition to this, if the artifact is later presented as a role play that would
make it even more communicative and integrative of a third skill.
Artifact 2: LISTENING AND SPEAKING
This artifact is made to assess listening and speaking
INSTRUCTIONS/ GUIDELINES FOR THE ACTIVITY
- The map is projected/ shown on the board for the students.- Teacher provides students with a series of situations.- in pairs, one student will read the situation, while the other listen to the
information provided to:● First: guess where the person is.● Second: Give the directions needed for the speaker to the specific part of
town.
I have a big party Saturday night, so I came to this place to get a new dress. I am meeting my friend for coffee in 10 more minutes. Can you give me directions from where ( right now) I am to where I need to be?
I just got today’s newspaper! Now I need to get freshly baked bread. Yum!Can you give me directions from where I am to where I need to be?
I ran out of milk, so I came to get some. Now I need to send a letter to my sister who lives in New York.Can you give me directions from where I am to where I need to be?
I just got my nails done! they look amazing! Now I need to eat something, I am starving!Can you give me directions from where I am to where I need to be?
I came to see my friend Jenny, before I go work out.Can you give me directions from where I am to where I need to be?
I came to this place to do my laundry.I need to get home, which is only a subway station away! Can you give me directions from where I am to where I need to be?
I am buying postcards from my city to send my friend in Germany, so I need to buy stamps and send them.Can you tell me where I am to where I need to be?
I came to this place to get in shape! However am getting hungry. Can you give me directions from where I am to where I need to be?
- The situations can be used more than once, however, students need to provide different routes.
- This is an integrative activity combining listening (listen to the situation. requires listening comprehension of the situation) in order to use speaking to provide the directions.
- This activity can be adapted to lower levels of competency by adapting the situations. For instance, instead of having the student to guess the place in the city where the person is, provide it and just ask for the directions. i.e. I am at the flower shop, how can I get to the subway station.
Justification:
As in the previous artifact, this activity fulfills both integrative and
communicative approach to assessing.
It is important to highlight the fact that in the Chilean context speaking and
listening are seldom assessed, particularly in the public school system. Most
assessment plans are grammar oriented, which hardly ever include listening or
speaking. Needless to say, integrative or communicative oriented assessment of
these two skills is barely present in public school systems.
On one hand, speaking in our educational context is merely reduced to
some repeating words or sentences drills. Memorized dialogues are also very
popular in Chilean classrooms as class activities, although in most schools,
students are not formally assessed on this important skill.
On the other hand, when it comes to assess listening in our national context,
students are, most of the time, asked to fill in the gaps either of dialogues or texts
that are almost never authentic. Nevertheless, fill-in the gaps proves to be very
practical. Teachers can easily check this type of item.
The assessment task proposed above is more likely to be used as an
activity in Chilean classrooms. However, due to the density of most classes (some
have up to 40 students per classroom) makes it difficult to administer as
assessment in a 90 minute class, which makes this kind of assessment impractical
in most of our educational context. It also violates security, in case this
assessment was to be administered on a different day to the remaining students.
According to Bachman and Palmer (1996) one of the basis for language
testing is the necessity to correspond language test performance with language
usage. In other words, a particular language assessment objective must mirror
language use in real life. This particular integrative and communicative assessment
fulfills that premise, since “giving directions” situations occur in daily life situations.
Having students performing real-world tasks can actually aid to achieve higher
content validity because students are measure in the process of carrying out a
targeted linguistic act. Performing tasks, such as this particularly to give directions,
students are assessed at the moment they are performing the task or activity. In
this case, students are assessed combining listening (they have to first hear the
scenario), and speaking (when giving the directions), thus eliciting a
communicative performance. Undoubtedly, this type of activities relate to the
authentic real-life language use.
On the other hand, this artifact as an assessment tool achieves the main
principles for practicality, since it is easy to administer and easy to check/mark. It
can fulfill validity, if the objective of the task/activity is congruent to the objective to
the unit or lesson. For example, if this task was never practiced or the main focus
of the lesson was on writing or reading, this task would not prove to be valid as an
assessment. However, if the classes were focused on listening and speaking, this
activity achieves validity criterion.
RUBRIC
Outcome: The aim of this rubric is to assess speaking performance and understanding of the information given by another speaker.
Student: _________________________________________________________
Criteria Apprentice(1)
Developing(2)
Proficient(3)
Exemplary(4)
Score
Comprehension
Student is unable to accurately answer questions posed by classmates about the topic.
Student is able to accurately answer a few questions posed by classmates about the topic.
Student is able to accurately answer most questions posed by classmates about the topic.
Student is able to accurately answer almost all questions posed by classmates about the topic.
Language
Several and critical problems observed in grammar and vocabulary that leads listener to misunderstandings
Many problems observed in grammar and vocabulary that leads listener to misunderstandings
Few problems in grammar and vocabulary. Non effectiveness in the message
No problems in grammar or vocabulary. Highly effective and understandable message
Content
Does not seem to understand the topic very well. He/she says almost nothing.
Shows a good understanding of parts of the topic. He/she says few words connected to the topic.
Shows a good understanding of the topic. He/she says many words connected to the topic.
Shows a full understanding of the topic. He/she says almost all words connected to the topic.
Speaks clearly
Often mumbles or cannot be understood OR mispronounces more than one word.
Speaks clearly and distinctly most ( 94-85%) of the time. Mispronounces no more than one word.
Speaks clearly and distinctly all (100-95%) the time, but mispronounces one word.
Speaks clearly and distinctly all (100-95%) the time, and mispronounces no words
References
Bachman, L., & Palmer, A. (1996). Language Testing in Practice: Designing and Developing Useful Language Tests. New York: Oxford University Press.
Recommended