The Challenge of Assessing Young Learners

The Challenge of Assessing Young Learners

Apparently, most schools and institutions think of young learners as an easy issue to deal with. In terms of knowledge, it is thought that due to the fact that the topics taught during the first six or seven ages do not require much knowledge, but is it true? Talking about assessment happen the same situation: people think that evaluating young students performance is an easy task. Well, I have to say that teaching and assessing young learners require a lot of capacities and strategies as teachers in order to achieve the development of three important educational aspects in children: social and emotional, cognitive and physical growth. 

The first aspect is social and emotional, which students are just learning. Socially, the first encounter students have is school and this experience will influence their idea of society and people outside their homes. Sometimes, school is called a second home, what is true in some way. Teachers can be taken as second moms or dads and even other students second brothers and sisters, in this way it is important the students understand their role at school. Through the first classes, teachers build the emotional respond that students will have against the class, consequently to your class, students will feel excited and happy in your classes or reluctant to come back next class, so it is important to be sensitive in the way we provide feedback.

The second aspect is related to cognitive development, which is a serious task. The first years of instruction are the bases for oncoming knowledge. The topics, instruction and assessment should be planned carefully because if one them fails, this gap will be reflected in the future. None of the steps to develop a class is important, specially assessment. In a second language subject, some teacher do not pay attention to students skills performance and it is essential to be aware of the progress that students are following. According to the age, receptive or productive skills are evaluated and if it is not followed such process, it will have a noticeable effect in students.

The last aspect refers to physical growth. In this stage, students are developing their gross and fine motor skills. The activities planned should include this aspect, developing handcrafts students will practice their ability for cutting and pasting. The importance of this assessment lie in detecting possibly motor-skill problems. 

Finally, even though people think of teaching young students as a task that everybody can do, they are wrong because all the responsibility of future educational problem will fall back into these first ages and the not well-oriented classes.

Designing tests

Designing Tests

This entry will present a personal reflection from the chapter read.
Testing is a tool used for all teachers to evaluate students' learning process. But, even having a good test, there are some factors that can affect our students' performance. 

Designing effective tests required the principle of practicality, reliability, validity, authenticity and washback. With all these elements, we will ensure that tests are well-designed and our students will be asked to respond the appropriate content. But, answering a test causes different emotions on our students. 

There are several situations that can emerge the day of an exam. The first element would be anxiety, which can block students' minds and even they had studied this feeling will not allow them to perform in the same way. Another element would be personal background, which could be related to social or economical issues of the learner. Taking a test while there was a huge fight at home the day before will affect students' scores. Finally, I will mention that the presence of ambiguity on tests will generate confusion on the learners, but this issue can be solved giving clear instructions and solving all kind of doubts in exams.

All the elements mentioned before are present while learners are taking tests. Excepting for the final aspect stated, the others are big dilemmas when teachers have to give a score or grade. How can we as teachers deal which such problems?

Teachers and students perceptions regarding portfolios

What should we avoid in assessing portfolios?

Portfolios are tools that allow professors to use an innovative technique of assessment fostering students' responsibility, motivation and learning. Nevertheless, if teachers do not establish specific criteria and plan carefully how to assess a portfolio, it will come up an unwanted result.

According to Soruç, "...an incoherent and disorganized alternative assessment tool may progressively reduce students' enthusiasm and enervate portfolio's authenticity and tendency to promote autonomy of learners". Portfolios that are not well-planned can turn up into impractical exercises. In order to avoid this impracticality, several aspects should be considered: time, objectivity, trust, teacher's knowledge about portfolios, carrying out the material, and finally the content of the portfolio. (Soruç, 2011)

Teachers should include the use of the portfolio in their curriculums giving appropriate time to work in class. This does not mean, that all classes will be used to work portfolios, but unless there should be two hours per week in my opinion. Also, the importance of considering assignments will help to students not feeling overwhelmed by much work. 

Establishing criteria will avoid subjectivity in grading. Some teachers tend to grade just by remembering the student's behavior and commitment, giving no chance for students to improve their works. Even though, it is difficult to think that a students can change their attitudes, motivation can change these perspectives towards school. A grid will avoid such subjectivity being fair enough with all of them.

A portfolio should be used as a tool to check students' learning process. Grading is necessary but it is not the main goal of this assessment. There will be students trying to do plagiarism and cheat, but once students understand the real value of this exercise and teachers show interest in their processes, this view will change.

Teachers that decide to carry out such technique should have enough and clear knowledge of this. Assessing portfolios requires organization and objectives to achieve a successful exercise. Also, arranging the closest place to keep portfolios will reduce teachers' work.

Finally, the content of the portfolio should be negotiated. Both parts, teachers and students, should participate in the selection of what is going to be included in portfolios. If only the teacher decides the content, student will feel impositions on their works and lack of motivation.

Alternative Assessment

Alternative assessment gives students the opportunity to show their learning process without the pressure of traditional tests. It is seen constantly, cases in which although students make a great effort studying, once they take the exam, results are not the best because of  being nervous. This way of assessment is not always graded which gives a starting point to make students do not feel afraid of being wrong and show how much they have learnt.

More advantages include the fact that language is used for real purposes, which shows the students the use of the language in real contexts, the increase of motivation and the possibility to show student's progress to the school community and parents. Showing students that language is important for real life situations makes them see how practical and important this is for life.

As teachers, it is necessary to take advantage of these alternative ways of assessment considering all the advantages they provide to students and teachers. Among all the choices: portfolios, conferences and interviews, self- and peer-assessment, observations and journals, teachers can apply one or more strategies in classes. 

Sometimes, time and low practicality avoid the use of these techniques in classes, even though is good idea to consider using them more often.

What do teachers and students expect in assessing writing?

Talking about writing is difficult for me to think of a way of assessment different to correct grammatical structures, punctuation and connection between the ideas in a passage written by the student. Well, that was the first idea I had before I read the chapter. But, what is the goal of assessing writing? I would have to say that it depends on what you want to evaluate and this just can be known once the purposes and objectives of the assessment are established concretely.

Assessing writing is a production skill which requires all the knowledge we have of our foreign or even native language to perform correctly. It is noticeable that students don't like much writing and this reluctancy increases the problems to improve this skill. In my opinion, the importance of motivation and  the creation of dynamic activities to increase writing practice will give forceful results. Of course, we as teachers will have the task to achieve this change of perspective in our students.

Once the students are motivated they will expect to write correctly in order to express their ideas. Here, this chapter is really useful, because the aspiration of professors and students is to write perfectly. So, what the students expect is to receive detailed feedback in their compositions and learn specific strategies to improve their written style.

We need to be aware of the role we are playing in our students learning process. The importance of establishing precise goal in writing assessment will influence how significant and effective is our teaching and more important, the student's process.

Assessing Speaking

Assessing speaking requires to consider several elements of the process of learning. Not only pronunciation, but also grammar, vocabulary and of course listening are aspects that take part of the speaking performance of a student. The last mentioned (listening) is directly related to speaking, according to Brown, " No speaking task is capable of isolating the single skill of oral production. Concurrent involvement of the additional performance of aural comprehension, and possible reading, is usually necessary". This means that, oral performance is supported by aural performance. 

Another aspect that is necessary when we assess speaking is the specification of criteria. Once we design a task is important to consider that test-takers can provide an infinite number of options to a question. For this, the objectives of the assessment need to be clear and easy to guarantee dependable evaluations.

The last relevant aspect in assessment speaking is related to the effectiveness of the scoring the procedures, which should be reliable. In order to accomplish this, Brown states, " Because of the above two characteristics of oral production assessment, it is important to carefully specify scoring procedures for a response so that ultimately you achieve as high a reliability index as possible".

PRINCIPLES OF LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT

Some people think of testing as an easy and funny activity for professors, but contrast to this, testing is an important tool for assessment and it must be applied effectively. The big question for most of us is: when is a test effective? According to Brown, the only way to recognize this efficacy is "testing a test", which means to analyze the following principles: practicality, reliability, authenticity, validity, and washback.

Practicality conveys that a test has to be functional as for professors as for students. Long tests that require a lot of time to be evaluated are impractical for professors, who most time have to score more than one group of test-takers. It is similar, when a test can only be scored for a machine, what about if this machine got broken?A practical test must not be unreasonable expensive or take so much time, it must be easy to apply and score.

Reliability is another important principle for a test. As humans, we are not exempted from committing errors, so before an exam is applied, it is necessary to check twice and avoid the affections from external factors, to score all tests with the same criteria and well-judgement. On the other hand, validity implies to evaluate what has to be evaluated. For instance, present simple structures are taught in a class lesson, but the professor evaluates simple progressive; obviously, the student would get lost being tested about a topic that have not learnt. 

Two other principles are significantly mentioned by the author as part of a well-done test: authenticity and washback. The first one refers to the real-life contextualization that a test must have, meaning, the test must contain an everyday language, present real situations and be interesting for the student. The second one also called feedback is the ideal finish for each test. Once, the exams have been received, students need to know why they got a good or bad scored, providing this washback, students will have meaningful understanding of their mistakes and can solve final doubts.

All the previous elements need to be incorporated in our tests to diminish our constant waisting of time and provide fair exams to our students.