HOMEWORK (5/3/12)
You are going to go on practicing vocabulary about food that we have worked on in class this week. Please, do the PLACES AROUND TOWN exercise and copy the answers to each item on your notebook. Tomorrow we will correct it in class.
March 05, 2012
July 22, 2009
Communicative language testing
Here's a question for you, guys.
How realistic, in terms of feasibility (actual implementation), do you believe communicative language testing is?
Consider the main tenets of communicative language teaching (here on CLT) and how these point towards the kind of tasks and items that can be designed or selected to assess student communicative competence in the target language.
How realistic, in terms of feasibility (actual implementation), do you believe communicative language testing is?
Consider the main tenets of communicative language teaching (here on CLT) and how these point towards the kind of tasks and items that can be designed or selected to assess student communicative competence in the target language.
What does it mean 'to assess?'
I have just been told today, in a teacher training course about language testing and assessment at Pilgrims in Canterbury, that the verb "to assess" comes from the Latin "ad sedere", which means "to sit next to", with the meaning of sitting next to somebody so as to provide guide or help in whatever this somebody is doing. So, the meaning could not be more positive, could it?
And yet, I wonder, how have we gone so far away from the original meaning of the term? When testing, we don't sit by the student anymore. Rather, if at all, we sit opposite the student. We don't guide nor help the students, but keep as quiet as possible so that they can do the task at hand on their own, all by themselves.
Perhaps, with the more authentic, alternative assessment techniques and procedures that are being used more and more to measure student progress, achievement, proficiency, etc. in the second/foreign language we can come back closer to the student, and closer also to the original meaning of the verb "to assess."
The purpose of this blog is to share ideas about how best to assess the language learning of our students (not the students themselves, for they don't need any type of assessment on our part!).
Folks, my blog is your blog, so, please, feel free to share your assessment ideas or experiences, let us know what works with you and your students and what doesn't. Open the window to your classroom and share whatever goes on in there with the rest of us, as far as testing and assessment in general are concerned.
And yet, I wonder, how have we gone so far away from the original meaning of the term? When testing, we don't sit by the student anymore. Rather, if at all, we sit opposite the student. We don't guide nor help the students, but keep as quiet as possible so that they can do the task at hand on their own, all by themselves.
Perhaps, with the more authentic, alternative assessment techniques and procedures that are being used more and more to measure student progress, achievement, proficiency, etc. in the second/foreign language we can come back closer to the student, and closer also to the original meaning of the verb "to assess."
The purpose of this blog is to share ideas about how best to assess the language learning of our students (not the students themselves, for they don't need any type of assessment on our part!).
Folks, my blog is your blog, so, please, feel free to share your assessment ideas or experiences, let us know what works with you and your students and what doesn't. Open the window to your classroom and share whatever goes on in there with the rest of us, as far as testing and assessment in general are concerned.
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