Job Discussion Forums

[Sweetsee]

I am a new HS teacher.

How best to evaluate the students?

I am asked to grade them yet the grade is inconsequential and every one passes.

I have no experience in making written tests and question their reflection of the students communicative ability in English.

Can students be tested orally and how?

Which is best?


Any and all comments appreciated.

[anthyp]

I don't know which is best, written or oral exams, but since I taught oral classes, I went that way with their exams.

This probably only works for smaller classes, but I divided my classes into groups of 4 - 5, and assigned each group a different topic:

Holidays
Work
School
Family
Sports

and so on. They had to write dialogues and present them on the day of the Exam. They could either do one dialogue involving all the group members (1 minute), or two involving two or three in turn (30 seconds).

Or, you could give the students a list of topics, and tell them they will have to speak on one of them for 20 or 30 seconds.

I also had my advanced students sit down with me in a one - to - one mock interview, after giving them a week to prepare answers to the questions.

Yes, you have to question the point of assessing your students' progress when the assessment doesn't really matter. But it will be good for you, at least, to practice giving grades, so that when it does matter, you'll know how to do it.

[Sweetsee]

Dear Anthyp,

Thank you so much.

I have a couple of small classes but mostly large classes, say 30 students.

Testing orally I get to listen to 75 pairs of students regurgitating the same dialog, pretty much every one saying the exact same thing. On one hand, that's what I wanted, in as far as they have acquired the key expressions of the target language and on the other hand, how do I evaluate the students ability to use the language in practical terms?

I like your idea with giving them topics. In smaller classes I will try it. Though, I am afraid that many or most would be very hard pressed to think on their own.

In truth, I already know what grades the students earned; based on attitude and participation.

What I want is a chance for the good students to shine and the slackers to sweat.


Thanks again,
S

[Roger]

Generally, I prefer written tests over oral ones for various reasons. But the few "oral" tests that I had to give were with students who had had enough exposure to English to use it as adults, i.e. graduates from normal schools, but also middle-school students.
Since the purpose of "oral" English is to use it in a two-way communication, I expect them to function without much advance notice. I deem it a logical mistake to tell them "to prepare for topic X" in two days' time since in any regular conversation your opposite number doesn't know how you are going to respond to his or her elocutionary acts.

If I was familiar with their English level, then I would engage them in a dialogue one by one, on topics related to the weather or their biography or their home place or something similar that's not too personal, yet interesting enough for both sides.
In an oral exam I did with 19-year olds, I wrote keywords on small pieces of paper, like "work in the UI.S.A." or "married woman in America", which they knew related to the plot of a VCD we had studied, called FAMILY ALBUM U.S.A. Thus, these students could voice their impressions and opinions and regurgitate a few memorised facts.
Personally, I abhor listening to merely memorised phrases and similar rehearsals as this reminds me of Pavlovian reflexes.
Teaching is, after all, about making them to function autonomously.