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.