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[Sweetsee]

I have covered 3 lessons in our text and want to evaluate the students.

Lesson 1: Where are you from?
Which club are you going to join?
What are you most interested in?

Lesson 2: How do you spend your free time?
What did you do last weekend?
What are you going to do this weekend?

Lesson 3: Do you like watching TV?
What kind of TV programs do you like?
Who's your favorite actor?

Plus, we did: Telling Time


I am asked to grade students yet the results are inconsequential and no one can fail.

I want to reward the good students and help the rest.

I have never had good results with written tests, due perhaps largely to my inexperience at creating them.

Oral vs. Written evaluations?

How do you feel?







Any and all comment are appreciated.

[Glenski]

Sweetsee,
My first suggestion would be to post this in a teacher's forum, not the employment forum. Perhaps the secondary education or the activities & games forum would be appropriate.

Second, did you actually cover all of that material in just 3 meetings with the students? If so, you probably have not done any of the topics justice. Each line is practically a separate entity to teach in a full lesson (in my opinion), so if you diluted them down by covering 3 grammar points in one session, your students are likely not to have received enough instruction to remember & regurgitate.

Third, are you planning to evaluate them all in one exam? How much time are you allotting?

Fourth, why have you been disappointed with previous results? Are your tests too hard to grade? Do the students fail miserably? Clarify this point, please.

Fifth, you have been teaching for 15 years in Japan. How can you still come up with such a basic question as how to evaluate students?

[Sweetsee]

Glenski Sensei,

Thank you for your reply.

Yes, I just realized I have been in the wrong place all along. I suppose I came here seeking help from teachers in Japan. I will try those other places, thank you. Sorry.

I taught the 3 lessons over the course of many meetings. I taught them to the extent that the students should be able to produce all three of them together in the form of a dialog.

I have two 50 minute classes to do the evaluations. With roughly 30 students in a class I could do half one day and half the next. You think?

As my course is oral communication, should I only give oral tests?

[guest of Japan]

Since your class sizes are manageable and you are being given two weeks to do the testing I'd recommend doing both a written and an oral 1 to 1 examination. If you had to do the test during the kimatsu test week then I'd say prepare a listening exam, but that seems unnecessary.

Make the oral and the written tests worth 50 points each. The written test should be short (about 25 minutes), so that you can start doing the oral tests immediately afterword in the hallway. Make sure the students have something to keep them occupied while you are doing the oral tests.

I recommend covering the same information in the oral test as the written test. The written test will actually help the students improve on the oral test. For the oral test, test only the content you used in class. Use pictures to elicit the appropriate response if the students are low level. Create a rubric for your scoring. The oral tests are extremly boring for the teacher, but some students love to have the opportunity to have a one on one private communication with the teacher. Some won't say one word and you'll be screaming on the inside.

For what it is worth, I agree with Glenski. It seems like you covered too much content in too short a time period. Can you learn everything you taught in Japanese in three weeks?

[Sweetsee]

Guest,

Thank you for the concise reply. I will do as you said. Btw,
I taught those 9 key expressions since we started this year. I am sure they are not grasping the grammar points.

For example, if I asked a student, "Where are you from?" and they answered correctly but didn't know what to say or were baffled by the question, "Where are your parents from?" or for that matter, "How is your mother?" (this is a mistake, and I would love to edit)

Does this mean I haven't done my job properly?

What format do you reccomend for the written test? I have already prepared a fill-in dialog based on the content of the material, do you think that is good?



Cheers,
S

[guest of Japan]

As for the format of the test, I'd go with multiple choice or work banks to supply the correct answers from. I see no problem with a limited number of fill in the blank questions. They are good for separating the student scores.

As for whether or not you've done your job properly, that's impossible for me to say.

Let's just take a look at some of the variables of the example you gave.

[Sweetsee]

Guest,



I see what you are saying. Again, good point.


Much appreciation,
S

[hamel]

sweetsy,

i appreciated your humble attitude. we all continue to learn while teaching esl. as an "alt" at a japanese public high school do you teach alone? the japanese teacher does the english grammar stuff?

this term i used group debates (school uniforms and plastic surgery were popular topics) and harry potter role plays/skits. my classes are also twice weekly with thirty students. i began doing group speaking tests while college teaching, and find that it is effective for teenagers as well.
best wishes, and keep up the good work (enjoy the kids too)

ps: i'm in korea, but most people wouldn't imagine how similar korea and japan are.

[Sweetsee]

Hamel,

Yes, I teach alone.

I do have fun with the kids and although I have been doing this for many years, I have a new job I love and want to be a more effective instructor.

Thanks for being nice in your post. The testing period sort of crept up on me and I am up early today and will go in early to crank out a written test.

I have never made a multiple choice or word bank test because I think they are too easy. Then again I have never had good resultes with tests.

I will try. Thanks for the encouragement, it goes a long way with me.



Cheers,
S

[Glenski]

I've done one on one oral interview tests, and in classes of 40-45, it was best to design a test that lasted no longer than 2 minutes. As guest of Japan advised, when you are in the hallway, have something for them to do in the classroom. BEWARE! If you give them the exam, they will cheat when you are outside, so either have a partner monitor the room, or finish the test first and collect papers. Even in two fifty-minute classes, you are going to be pressed for time to finish oral exams on thirty kids. Been there, done that.

You could substitute something for the one on one interview, however. Make a tape recording, or just speak the oral section yourself live. Play the tape or do the oral part yourself to the whole class. In my school, our major exams have a section like this, and when it is through, kids are allowed to do any other section in any order they like. The oral section itself consists of two parts:
1. Writing answers to oral questions. (Not always easy to design, but possible. Just give them time to write answers.)
2. Choosing from multiple choice questions after hearing a short story and questions twice.

[Sweetsee]

Glenski,

Darn good advice. I know I will get out there in the hall and be getting the same thing over and over forever. I don't think it is an accurate assessment.

I like your idea on the live presentation followed by questions. I think I will try something like that.

As I said before, I have already made up a fiil-in using the three dialogs. Do you think I need to provide the answers to the fill-in, either word bank or multiple choice? I think it's too easy, though the results usually prove otherwise.

Thanks Glenski for being there in the early morning. Since I have joined this forum I always boot up when I get up and I am always more than a little surprised to receive replies so promptly.

Cheers you guys. Let's have a good week and get past the tests and into the vacation. YEAH!


S

[Glenski]

If you don't provide the answers after the test is given back, you do the students a disservice. That should be fairly obvious, whether you give homework or tests.

If you mean providing a source of possible answers for the kids to select during the exam, it's up to you and the level of the students. Some sections of our major exams work that way. If your kids can't even get more than half of those types of questions right, you need to reevaluate yourself and the teaching methods, as well as the study techniques of the kids.

This year, my school change the curriculum, as I have mentioned a few times. Students in the second year did miserably on the first test. When asked if they even looked at the handouts we'd given them in class as practice drills, they said no. From day one, we've been after them to buy a 100 yen ring binder to store their handouts (which we punch holes in for them), yet the vast majority just cram their handouts in the book or their desk. We're going to try two things to overcome these study problems.
1. Offer to buy them each a 100 yen binder, if they pay us first. This means teachers will have to visit a 100-yen shop because our school store sells the same binders at 350 yen.
2. Provide them with a one-page review print. It has the lesson number and page number on it, a description of the topic/lesson, and a general formula for how to use it. Every time we start a new lesson, we tell them to pull out this document and write this information on the paper. We start them with the first one.

[Sweetsee]

Thanks Glenski,

For the written test, I am thinking to do a correct the mistakes format using commonly made mistakes and asking them to correct them.

For the listening part, do you think asking them to write the answers to the key expressions I say twice is a good idea?

When they finish that I want to have them fill in a dialog based on the 3 lessons, which was my original idea. I thought it would be too difficult for them and I have never had success with it but I gave it to a couple students for a trial run and they did quite well.

Basically, I don't think we covered a whole lot of material so far and the students who are on the ball will do well with anything.



Cheers,
S

[Glenski]

I've never seen a test where students correct mistakes, except on a test that **I** took for an eikaiwa. I would suggest avoiding it.

If your goal is to teach them conversation, then I would definitely give them an oral test of some sorts where you (or a tape) asks a question or gives them a statement to reply to. Just give them enough time. In our exams, we give them about 7 seconds the first time and 5 seconds the second time. Then, we move on to the next question.

Beware of the creativity in the possible answers. In our school, such answers must be 3 words or more. I still think this is too short in most cases, but I can't change school policy. You need to set a standard for yourself and let students know what that is. We also give partial points.

For example:
Did you get enough sleep last night?
Acceptable answers: Yes, I did. No, I didn't.
Unacceptable answers: Yes. No. No, I did. Yes, I didn't. I didn't.
Partial answers: Yes, I can. (they used yes/no and didn't mix positive and negative, but they screwed up the verb they were supposed to use, as well as its tense)

At my school, the JTEs make sections similar to your fill in a dialog one. I personally don't like them because students figure there is only one way to speak. That is, they memorize dialogs instead of learning English as a tool to be used flexibly. And, in a recent exam, I was asked by a JTE if a student's answer was acceptable. I said yes, and he grumbled because another teacher had written that section and demanded only one specific answer. Unreasonable, inflexible, and impractical.

Can't tell you how much it grates on me to hear a student who has studied for 5 years answer, "How are you today?" with a robotic "I'm fine, thank you, and you?" All I have to do is change my question to "How are you doing today", and they get totally confused. They either freeze, become puzzled, or start telling me what they are going to do today. If I say, "How's it going?" , they tell me where they are walking that moment. Or in any situation, they may simply just say "yes" or "no", even if the question was an information question.

[Sweetsee]

I am the worst at making tests.


A colleague once told me to dictate questions and have them write the answers. This I can do. You get everything in one go. Do you think it is a fair assessment device?



Cheers,
S