For my second professional development activity, I decided
to take part in a #langchat conversation with other foreign language teachers
on Twitter a few weeks ago. The conversation topic this time was “7 questions
you should be asking about language speaking assessments.” The seven questions
introduced prior to the chat were:
1.
What kinds of speaking assessments are there?
2.
How often should you have speaking assessment?
3.
How do we prepare students for speaking
assessments?
4.
How do we keep them on task during speaking
assessments?
5.
How do we provide them feedback?
6.
How do we have appropriate expectations about
speaking assessments?
7.
What are some speaking assessment ideas that
really work?
Of particular interest to me during this conversation were
questions 3 and 7. I would have liked to try and keep track of all questions
being discussed, but in the world of twitter it is often hard to track all
tweets about a conversation without following all the right hashtags. When I
was following question 3, two strategies stuck out to me: providing daily
speaking warm-ups, and allowing practice with scripts. I believe warm-up
speaking exercises are an important part of every lesson, which I pointed out
in some of my tweets, and others pointed out that this is a good way to
activate students’ prior knowledge to get them ready to use their speaking
skills in the classroom. In addition this helps prepare them for a summative
assessment that could be taking place. When teachers first mentioned that
students using scripts was okay, I was a bit weary, but then it was made clear
that this is really only for practice and formative assessments, this is okay
and actually helped student learning. In regards to step 7, teachers tweeted a
lot of activities that like students to complete for assessments. Some of my
favorites were:
·
Speed Dating
·
Matching Games, a student has to get three of a
kind by asking other students questions
·
Show and Tell presentations
·
Debates (the specific example was on school
uniforms)
·
Giving students a scenario and asking them to
record it using technology, then sending it to the teacher for assessment
This activity was a very enriching experience and I look
forward to participating again in the future!
Hi Mike,
AntwortenLöschenThis is a tough topic. My CT uses her speaking assessments to show student growth so her effectiveness score can be high, thus making her unlikely to be terminated. In this class, it is less about learning the information because it is important. After they completely fail the first test and memorize their speaking assessments to get a high score, the teacher is rewarded. This data obsession is worrying me--especially since when we become teachers the importance of data will increase.
These tips you share seem to focus more on a students' comprehension of the speaking, rather than simple memorization or reading off of a script, although that can help them remember what to say or how to say it, because readings words as symbols allows us to make connections and learn them better in our mind.
Thanks for writing these hints and tips, it looks like your PD was pretty helpful!
Caitlin
One thing to keep in mind is what mode you want to assess. Some of these are interpersonal activities and other are presentational. Assessment of both modes are informative and necessary, but often the interpersonal can be the more difficult of the two. As such, scripts during the initial stage might be helpful for form, topic, etc. Be mindful during interpersonal assessments/activities, that it truly is spontaneous and not rehearsed.
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