That being said, testing is necessary to see how students are doing. Otherwise we would never know that the quiet student sitting in the back is in fact one of the best students in the class. Testing can be used to adjust the curriculum to review tricky sections, and either slow down or pick up the speed. Obviously if a whole class does badly on a test or quiz there needs to be more work on the section.
As for my own experiences, I was a pretty good tester in high school, so I did pretty well. I think my teachers used pretty standard testing formats. Lots of vocabulary tests as beginners, and eventually we built up to writing short essays. We also ended up practicing listening and speaking more as we advanced. I feel like we should have done more with these from the beginning though. I feel like it would have helped me a lot in the long run despite how much everyone hated speaking and listening tests.
The problem with speaking tests is that they have to either be graded on the spot, which can be difficult, or recorded. Grading recorded tests takes a lot of time, especially if you want to transcribe them so that students can see their errors. Obviously it is important to do this, but finding the best way can take awhile for the novice teacher.
As for listening tests, I guess you just have to try to take the stress out of it. Of course that is easier said than done. I know what some teachers do for lower level students is do read the listening part themselves, so they can control the speed and the students are used to their voice. You could argue that this is too easy, or that it is a building block up to more authentic sounding material. I personally like this method for novice students with general topics like time or the weather.
My last point is that I do not think that tests should be a huge part of the grade. They are important but students need to also be evaluated through other means, including projects and regular day to day work. I also believe that effort should be a section of the grade since languages are not for everyone and some people struggle a lot in language classes.
Kevin - I really like your point about using tests as a tool for instructors to gauge how the class is going. This year my fellow T.A.'s and I have found our exams to be incredibly valuable, as they are a relatively good indicator of how our students are doing and what needs to be improved on our end. In many cases, it also shows us how seriously our students are taking the class. Sometimes students really do struggle with the material, but in other cases it is obvious that they simply did not study. In these cases, the exams also give us an idea of how much more we need to animate our students, and force us to consider how we can make students feel more accountable for the material. I'm curious - what other types of assessments do you guys think are helpful in gauging how a class is going and what the instructor needs to work on/change?
ReplyDeleteKevin, I really like your last point.I think different subjects should have different percentages of the course grade be tests. Whereas foreign language learning is made up of so many different pieces, the course grade should be too. In a foreign language class, there are possibly writing assignments, projects, group work, presentations, class participation and probably many more things that a course grade could and should consist of. Each of these elements listed are viable indicators of how a student is performing in a class. That is why no one is usually surprised when they see who does well on a class exam and who does not. Even the students can usually tell who is succeeding and who is not, so teachers should be able to too without the sole use of quizzes and tests. All of these things should make up the final grade.
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ReplyDeleteI like what you said about tests indicating how people are doing, and how they sometimes show that the quiet student really has it together. I have a student who is fairly quiet in class but does well on exams, but I didn't know he was engaged until I started seeing his assessment grades. I was a quiet kid in high school, and the best high school course I ever took was AP US History. We had a lot of great discussions but at the beginning I didn't take part. I did well on the first exam, and the day we got it back, my teacher told me he wasn't going to let me off the hook anymore in class and he started calling on me more. Essentially, after seeing my exam he realized I was engaged but not saying anything in class, and with some encouragement from him I learned a lot that year about how to participate in discussions. One of the helpful aspects of exams is that they show the progress of people who don't participate as much.
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