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This Blog is for students at UDB enrolled in the course "Testing and Evaluation in Foreign Language Teaching"
Speaking and writing are always difficult skills to evaluate. It seems as if subjectivity is always present in every aspect we look for during an interview or an essay.
ReplyDeleteIt has to do with whether it sounds good to me or it looks good to me. Not like in a grammar test,a true and false test, or a multiple choice test, where there are no chances for second interpretations.
The purpuse, then, would be to reduce the chances of being subjective. Perhaps, using clear criteria during interviews would add some objectivity to our evaluation.
milton
This is a difficult question because there is always a chance for subjectivity in an oral exam. I think that in order to reduce the chances of being subjective in an oral exam or interview the teachers and administrators must have a rubric with clear criteria about the aspects that are going to be grade.
ReplyDeleteFátima Crespín.
Very true... but who designs rubrics? I do. And I do it because I want to be more fair to my students. And I know it takes a long time to follow a rubric. And I know that when we have 30 students in a class, a rubric would take forever.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Professor Lopez. Because it is hard to evaluate 30 students in oral presentations, it takes too much time. There is a web site where you can create your own rubric for speaking or writing evaluations and you have the opportunity to look for specific criateria. Criateria that you as teacher consider it needs to be tested by students. And as Fatima said the rubric can help in order to be objective with the students.
ReplyDeleteAna Maria
The best ways to assess a student's performance are not always the easiest ones.
ReplyDeleteI understand writing rubrics and using rubrics (to guide an oral interview, for instance) may be time-consuming, particularly when we don't have the technological tools, large amount of students, or the expertise. However, in the end the results and the judgement we make will be more rewarding. We will have a sense of satisfaction, that we have done things using a more fair mechanism to assess our students. And our students will also feel satisfied, knowing that the grade they get is the result, not from "under the sleeve", but from a set of reasonable criteria and based on class objectives derived from levels of competence.
milton
I remember a late colleague of mine who used to say "if I only get paid a s@#$ for this, why bother making it spectacular?" And I encounter this behavior in the prestigious State University of New York as well. Colleagues jokingly say that I do what I do because I am young and want to change the world. "Wait until you get tenior and you'll forget all about this innovative activities that require lots of grading." So, here is the dilemma: either we do what is fair for students using a rubric, or we do what is faster and easier for us as educators and forget about fairness. What do you say?
ReplyDeleteI think we all know those kind of "teachers". They just care about working as less as possible. They are not really concern about evaluating the students' work fairly. I think that this behavior reveal the mediocrity of thier work and the poor commitment that they have with their profession. It is true, that our paycheck does not agree with all the work that we have to do, but money is not the only reward of our job.
ReplyDeleteFátima Crespín.
I agree with everybody!!!! I think that if we want to be objective we must use a rubric to reduce the chances of subjectivity... This would be the only way to grade our students and to be objective with them in oral or written evaluations. As Milton said, "using a rubric would be time-consuming" but in the end it will be fair for our students..
ReplyDelete¡¡¡Magdalena!!!
In my opinion we as students or as second language speakers in difficult for us acquired and speak the language as native speakers. so for that reason some of us develop one the four skills faster than the other skills. i know people they are bad in their speaking, but good in writing, or readind, listening and viceversa.besides we have problems even in pronunciation because in our language we dont have certain sounds that either english or another language has.
ReplyDeletesilvia padilla
rubric can help us for measure our second language, but we can not apply rubrics in large groups, due to is limited, as certain teachers i have known they just evaluate our skills just because they have to do it, even in some cases they dont pay attention what we are saying, or just we talk some phrases they said to themselves, this guy/girl does not anything of the language. they judged inmediately.
ReplyDeletesilvia
I remember one time in my job, every 2 days we have to made a oral presentation, and a girl was going to evaluate us. so the girl had her oral rubrics to measure our language skills. the thing was the girl in the whole presentation did not pay attention to me, even she slept during my presentation. so suppostely how was she evaluate me if she did not listen to me. at the end i did not why and how she gave me a X grade, but she is paid for evaluate others. silly rigth
ReplyDeletesilvia
O.k. according to what Silvia says, I share her opinion. However, that happen when raters, in this case the girl she is talking about, are not enough trainned. So far, I understand many people can apply rubric, but not everybody know the importance about that. Just scholars who know the difference among the different levels or a rating scale and try to avoid subjectivity when evaluating.
ReplyDeleteJulio
I think that we as teachers need to be conscious at the moment of evaluating our students and to make rubrics it is a way to be objective. I have been reading the materials and it talks about evaluation and assessment. But I have a question what is the difference between evaluate and assess???
ReplyDeleteAna María
To be objective, we need to use a rating scale. it can be simple but useful at the same time. That rating scale must reflect what we expect students to show and achieve in their performance.
ReplyDeleteAs professor Milton said; subjectivity can in some way be present. Not everybody have the same pronunciation, the same ear. Even, in the United States they have different accents from one state to another, why can't learners of a second language differ in pronunciation. But, with a simple and very well designed rubric we can get the best results and have content to our students with their performance. We should pay attention mostly if our objectives have been acomplished by the students, for me that is what really matters.
It is very important to measure not only what students are learning, but also what we are teaching... I think that the rubric would help us to evaluate both "Students' and teachers'performance". How?... Well I think that when evaluating the students, we as teachers can identify if our objectives were reached...
ReplyDeleteMagdalena...
I want to say that rubrics are an essential tool for grading outside of the traditional multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank assessment, because allow for consistent grading for subjective work and establish parameters for assignments that will look different student to student and therefore allow for fairness in grading. Raquel
ReplyDeleteWhy can't we have a different pronunciation? Of course we can, and we do... but if the interlocutor does not understand what we want, then we are in trouble. Say these two words out loud and see if you can distinguish them: Patty vs. Potty. Then add, where is ____?
ReplyDeleteThose two words are tricky. the difference is just the vowel sound. but you are not going to expect a beginner make the distinction on it, For me, there are more important things to pay attention on, like grammar structure, vocabulary and communication skills. Of course, that is part of pronunciation, but that would be more for upper-intermediate and advance students.
ReplyDeleteJulio.
Well teacher in my opinion it's a litle difficult do't be subjective when i am evaluating mainly i the speaking ability, because i have 8 grades of 35 or 40 students, and i have 3 hours of 45 minutes in the week to develop the topics that i have to teach during the period that it is of 3 months. Tell me how can i evaluate a correctly pronunciation or grammar mistake if the groups are very big and the time is very short. And also when i let son coversations some of them do the exercise and some others are talking of other thing. Also i have to fight that some students are very apathetics,some others don't like the subject and it difficult the teaching process.
ReplyDeleteI forgot my name again. I'm Evelin.
ReplyDeleteAny way i'm doing my best work and when i let a conversation or a performance to evaluate like activity i try to correct the pronunciation or grammar mistakes that the students make. Teacher believe me sometimes i disappointment me to be a second language teacher because in the school and in the private school you have with many bureaucracy and sometimes the autorities don't let you be more demanding with the students an the students to resign oneself with only pass the subject and they don't matter to learn how to speak or pronounce the English.