Sunday, November 4, 2012
Testing
Personally, I do not feel like most classroom based tests give an accurate assessment of a students ability. Most tests are purely written, and therefore do not assess a students speaking ability. Also, students can easily pass an exam and stuff have no real understanding of the material. My experience as a test taker truly supports that. In high school, my Spanish teacher's tests were extremely easy. Most of our tests were fill in the blank, matching and multiple choice. There wasn't any oral portion or listening. In college, my French professor added listening, but there still was no portion of speaking. I believe the best type of test includes both speaking, listening, reading and writing. This would mean the instructor should ask the students questions, in private, and have them answer orally. For listening, have the students listen to either the instructor speaking or a recording and answer questions. For the reading section, students could read a passage and then answer questions based on the content, not something they can just copy from the text. For the writing section, students should write a paragraph to answer a prompt. The prompt should require them to use the grammar and vocabulary that is to be assessed. I also think it is important to teach some aspect of culture each month,so that should also be assessed using a combination of these methods.
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I agree that including every aspect of L2 acquisition is extremely important when checking a student's performance. Some people may find it very easy to take a written test and do very well based solely on memory or cramming, but when it comes to communication they have huge issues with it. There is no way for a teacher to know that if they are using strictly written assessments.
ReplyDeleteI agree that the current form of assessment is not working well, but I also feel that switching to written responses might not be the best idea. It is very easy to convey ideas while avoiding certain grammar tenses or vocabulary, so it might be hard to actually elicit the required forms and demonstration of skills in that format. Maybe a mixture of different assessment types?
ReplyDeleteIt is definitely necessary to include all four aspects of language (reading, writing, listening, speaking) when evaluating a student, but I don't think that a one-on-one oral exam between the professor and the student would be very effective. I had a teacher who had us do this whenever we took a Spanish exam, and it was one of the most emotionally traumatizing evaluations I ever had to do. I feel like while oral ability needs to be evaluated, it should be done separate from an exam setting entirely. There is no good way to include it into a written exam, unfortunately.
ReplyDeleteI definitely think having an oral portion to an exam is important for assessing a speaker's language ability, but having a one on one portion does not sound ideal. In my Japanese class, we had chapter dialogues we had to recite, but they were a mp3 file we could send to the teacher. It really helped with speaking, and students didn't get nervous since they could re do it if the first file sounded bad.
ReplyDeleteI agree that most of the language tests that I took in high school were written tests and I don't that writing/reading should be emphasized so heavily. When it comes to language I think that it is more important work on speaking skills, so oral skills should be tested on a regular basis. Listening and speaking skills are so important, because language is about communication, so assessments should include all forms of communication: reading, writing, listening and speaking.
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