Testing and Assessment/Classroom-based Assessment

Brown chapters 23 and 24 discusses testing and assessment. They give an overview of different aspects of tests and testing. Some examples of these are practicality, reliability, validity, authenticity, and washback. All of these factors must be taken into account when writing a test. In order to construct a good test, it must test what it is supposed to test, have an authentic purpose, and not result in negative washback. In chapter 24, Brown talks about classroom-based assessment. There are many different things to take into account for this topic as well. Specifically, there are many alternative assessment techniques that can be used besides tests. Some of these include portfolios, journals, presentations, papers, conferences, and observations. Some students do not achieve to their highest potential on regular achievement tests, and that is why teachers need to be aware and come up with different forms of assessment in the classroom. Every student should be provided with the ability to succeed.

One big debate in the teaching field revolves around standardized testing. There are many teachers who believe it should be completely taken out of the education system. Because of all of the negative washback effects, this makes sense. However, there are good reasons for testing as well. It gives the schools a good idea of the achievement level of all of their students. I do believe, however that traditional testing should not be used as widely as it is in the classroom setting. When I look back on my years of public schooling, I remember very little of what I was tested on. Many of the classroom tests I took, specifically in junior high and high school, were tests that I studied for, got a good grade, and then forgot the majority of the information. The subjects and topics that I remember the most are the ones by which I was informally or alternatively assessed. For example, presentations or journals or field trips taught me much more than the traditional test. While I understand that in some contexts, achievement tests cannot be avoided, I still think that they are not very useful. When I was homeschooled, my mom rarely administered official achievement test to me upon completion of a unit. Instead, she employed methods such as journaling and portfolios to assess how much I was learning. I remember so much of what my mom taught me during those elementary and early junior high years, and I believe that it’s because she used meaningful techniques in her teaching. As a future teacher, I plan to employ alternative assessment techniques in my classroom as much as I am able.

Is there a place for achievement tests and formal assessment at all? Or are they tools that should be employed on occasion? How do students learn best? 

Progress Report

     The blog posts this semester have been an amazing learning experience. Writing about what I read is very useful in terms of making the ideas concrete in my mind. After talking a little bit more about expectations for the blog, I came to understand it better. At first, I was just summarizing each chapter, instead of synthesizing. Now I get more out of the blogs through picking out main ideas and synthesizing them.
   
     Concerning the research project, I have started a little bit of research. Mostly I have simply been investigating my topic more, trying to learn more about its intricacies. The main question of my research paper is, "How should grammar be taught?" I want to explore the different ways, positive and negative, of teaching grammar. Explicit vs. implicit teaching, methods for grammar teaching, and how culture influences grammar are some of the subtopics that I hope to explore. I also plan to focus on high school ESL students in this realm.

     The first source that I found was a book called "Teaching Readers of English" by John Hedgcock and Dana Ferris. This text discusses the challenges faced by teachers who are teaching ELL's. It talks about different methods and approaches that can be used when teaching reading and grammar. It specifically focuses on theories for L2 teaching of reading and grammar.

     The second source was called, "Teacher's Perceptions about Grammar Teaching" by Tran Hoang Thu. This piece focuses on teacher's beliefs about grammar teaching in an ESL setting. It also talks a lot about the effects of implicit vs. explicit grammar teaching, something very controversial. Grammar correction is discussed as well, having to do with how much to correct students or not correct them.

     The third source is entitled, "The Grammar Correction Debate in L2 Writing" by Dana Ferris. This article discusses the pros and cons of Grammar correction in the classroom. There are some negative and some positive effects of this and there are many different ways to do it. The author also says that this is an issue we have hardly touched on in the language field, there is much left to research about it.

Standard English and Cultural Sensitivity

The discussion of English as a global language and culture in language are two of the main arguments that Kumar talks about in his chapters. There is a huge argument regarding what Standard English is. There are so many regional and international variations of English that it is hard to say what the most “correct” version really is. Many say that Midwestern American English, with no regional accent, and superior education is the most standard variety of English. But doesn’t that devalue all other forms of English spoken throughout the world? Just because other versions aren’t “correct” or “standard” should they be written off as incorrect or uneducated?

In the second chapter of Kumar he goes into the question of culture and how that affects language learning and teaching. One of the most important parts of culture is the language that is associated with each specific culture. Kumar states, “One of the most important aims of culture teaching is to help the learner gain an understanding of the native speaker’s perspective” (268). To understand a culture, one must understand from where the native speakers are coming. Language learners must understand the culture and language about which they are learning. It is so intricate and delicate an issue, understanding culturally appropriate speech and native language culture. How can teachers begin to teach language and NOT bring culture into the classroom in conjunction? It is such an important piece and cannot be ignored.

Finally, Brown talks about socially responsible teaching in his chapter, which ties in with the idea of taking politics and culture into perspective when teaching a language. Teachers need to be agents of change, teaching their students about current events and issues that are going on in their respective countries. If a teacher ignores these issues, it is very difficult for them to teach affectively. Going along with this, they need to be sensitive to all kinds of diversity in the classroom. If they are not aware of this in their teaching, so many important things will be ignored. Teachers need to know their students in every way; otherwise they will not be able to teach them well. Obviously, it can be difficult to maintain a good balance between bringing up issues of diversity too much versus completely ignoring them. How does a good teacher attain this balance in a healthy way that develops their classroom positively? 

Integration of language domains

Integration of the four domains of language is imperative to proper learning. However, linguists and language teachers did not always view this to be true. Reading, writing, listening, and speaking used to be (and still are in many places) taught completely separately, sometimes having specific courses for different domains. “Such an artificial separation of language skills, however, is quite normal in most language schools”(Kumar 225). Research has shown that integrating these four domains is much for beneficial for learning outcomes. Obviously it is much easier to compartmentalize when teaching a language, but there are effective ways to carry out integrative teaching. Brown and Kumar both discuss these methods in their texts. Brown focuses on Content-Based Instruction, Task-based learning, theme-based instruction, and experimental learning, all of these being different ways to integrate language learning. Kumar, on the other hand, discusses more specific activities for promoting this idea. Interactive scenarios, problem-solving tasks, and content-based activities are a few that he mentions (Kumar 229). These tasks all involve students using integrated language skills while completing them. Kumar also discusses linguistic input in chapter 9, which is the idea that context is extremely important. There are four realities of the linguistic input; linguistic, extralinguistic, situational, and extrasituational.

                One of the approaches that stood out to me when I was reading Brown was experiential learning. Experiential learning is similar to content-based and task-based, but it has an added dimension (Brown 291). It focuses on real life, concrete experiences. Most of this learning is inductive; the teacher is not explicitly teaching their students the information. They give students situations to work with and then guide them from there. I love this approach because I think the student learns so much more when they are given control of their learning process. He talks about some of the techniques used in this approach, such as research projects, cross-cultural experiences, role plays, and field trips. All of these things are activities that give the student control. Ownership of the learning process is essential if students are ever going to learn. I personally experienced this type of learning growing up, although not necessarily through language learning specifically. I was homeschooled and my mom took this approach when teaching us. She guided our learning experiences but also provided a lot of free exploration time and activities that were out of the box. We went on a lot of field trips, did creative research projects, and learned about other cultures. This type of approach really encourages students to take ownership of their learning.

Teaching Grammar

In language teaching there is always an argument over naturalistic teaching and focus on form. There are pros and cons to both approaches and that is what Brown talks about in his chapter. Specifically, he discusses how to teach grammar. Grammar has long been a touchy subject when it comes to naturalistic acquisition due to its rote quality. However, it’s important to note that grammar can be taught in an exciting and positive way. After all, it is essential to learning language, whether the learner acquires it naturally or explicitly. There are some ways to make grammar accessible to students. The teacher should make sure that grammar is within the context of meaningful communication, that it contributes positively to communicative goals, that it promotes accuracy, that it doesn’t overwhelm students with the linguistic terminology, and that it is as intrinsically motivation as possible (Brown 421). This ties in with the idea that Kumar presents of general and critical language awareness. Teachers need to be aware of language when teaching it to their students. He talks about how they need to engage the students in language awareness, making things like grammar and syntax interesting and motivating. Even though explicit language and grammar instruction has been frowned upon, Kumar makes a point for it in this chapter. During class time, questions may arise that students want the answer to, and sometimes they deal directly with grammar or vocabulary. Self discovery is an important tool that students can use when learning grammar. Kumar states, “The logic of preferring reasoning over rules appears to be fairly simple” (178). This promotes the idea that grammar should definitely be taught, but not in a formalized lesson plan. Grammar and vocabulary points will come up in class and then the teacher can use those opportunities to teach about it. These instances are more beneficial due to context.

                When it comes to teaching grammar, it is difficult to know how to approach the subject. Generally it is said that an inductive approach is much more beneficial to the students. Because it’s more naturalistic and communicative, most students learn very well with this approach. It helps them learn while they’re speaking instead of explicitly teaching rote mannerisms. However, I’m not sure I completely agree with this statement. I see the benefits of this, and I myself learn well with this method in certain contexts. But a deductive approach isn’t necessarily bad for all students. I believe that beginners should have some sort of structure given to them of the grammar of the language they are learning. This structure helps them begin to structure their own discourse and in turn become more fluent. I think that using inductive methods in intermediate or advanced stages is very beneficial because at that point students already have a clear understanding of what they are learning and inductive teaching is much better. If students are making clear mistakes when you are teaching them inductively, should you switch to a more explicit method? Although inductivity is seen as better, couldn’t there be some instances where deductive methods are better? How does a teacher know when to use each approach? 

Reading and Writing Strategies for ELL's

Chapters 20 and 21 of Brown’s book talked about reading comprehension and writing for ELL’s. One of the things that interested me was learning about how much goes into reading and writing in a second language. ELL’s have to remember and learn so much about genres of literature, cultural norms, and academic language. They also have to learn a different culture of academics and reading and writing if they are old enough to have attended school prior to coming to the US. Additionally, the academic nature of school is very different than the slang English they may hear other places. As teachers we need to teach them skills to help this transition easier. Such as skimming texts or reviewing their writing samples before turning them in. Then there is the question of authenticity. How authentic are the tasks we are giving our students? What types of writing tasks do ELL’s really need to know about? That is when real writing and display writing come into play. “Real writing […] is writing when the reader doesn’t know the answer and genuinely wants information […] Written exercises, short-answer essays, and other writing in test situations are instances of display writing” (Brown 395-396). I think that we should try and incorporate more of real writing into display writing tasks, for ELL and native speakers alike. We don’t get enough instruction on real life writing skills during high school. This is not to say that academic writing and research papers aren’t important, but shouldn’t we try and teach what is going to be employed?

The question is, how do we really teach the students these skills effectively? Ferris discusses this in his article. One of the simple things that he states is this, “Second language acquisition takes time” (Ferris 92). Although this truth seems trite, it is very true. We can’t expect our ELL’s to immediately flourish into amazing readers and writers of English when they’ve only been in the country a short amount of time. It takes a long time to perfect a language and we can’t get hung up on that. Some things that we can do to help them are very realistic, such as giving them more time to complete work, teaching them the importance of editing and revising, and teaching them to self-edit (Ferris 96). I personally believe that one of the best ways to become a good writer is to be a reader. Research has shown this in native speaking children. When they spend a lot of time reading books, their writing generally improves. I really believe that one of the ways we can improve overall literacy rates in ELL’s is by promoting reading. And we need to provide them with authentic and culturally relevant literature that they will enjoy. Brown discusses this in his chapter about reading. What are some other ways that we can improve literacy skills in ELL’s? How do we reach them where they are in reading/writing level? If we become discouraged about strategies not working, what do we turn to? 

Week of October 8

Interaction hypothesis by Kumar is the idea that you can learn language entirely through the “process of interaction”. As he states in the text, “Oral interaction in which communication problems are negotiated between participants promotes L2 comprehension and production ultimately facilitating language development” (106). I like this idea but I don’t think it’s necessarily revolutionary or original. It really relates very closely to the method of CLT. It’s all about communication and learning the language through speaking it. Brown touches on this subject as well in his chapters about listening and speaking. He says that although communication as a whole is important, perfecting our skills of listening comprehension and speaking are possibly even more important. “Much of our language-teaching energy is devoted to instruction in mastering English conversation. However, numerous other forms of spoken language are also important to incorporate into a language course, especially in teaching listening comprehension” (Brown 303). This is the opposite of the class in Cary’s article. Although the teacher employs conversation as a tool for learning, she adds other things to enrich the conversation, she gives it direction. Although the interaction hypothesis is valid, I believe that we can’t teach students English through conversation alone. There needs to be more things to cater to all students. Some students need more than speaking to learn. They need activities or visual aids or hands on projects. Even if that theory sounds good, we need to make sure that we are aware of all of the students in our classrooms and we are doing what is best for all of them.

I loved the article entitled, “How do I support a student’s first language when I don’t speak the language?”. I thought that the teacher portrayed was such an awesome role model and had so many great ideas that I would love to employ in my classroom. One thing that really stood out to me was the idea of language diversity. Giving the students a chance to teach their native language to the whole class was so unique and fosters a sense of cultural pride while still benefitting the entire class. It was also really neat because as stated, “[it] gave native English-speaking kids a taste of what their second language learner classmates experienced daily” (Cary 139).  I love this because it gives the native speaking children such a perspective on what their peers have to go through every day. The argument to for English only education is definitely a growing one in the United States. I wonder how the legislators or adults who are for full immersion programs would feel if they were put in this situation. Would they still be an advocate of English only? Or would they realize that it makes sense to foster a child’s native language alongside their acquisition of the L2?