Job Discussion Forums

[RichJud]

Hello all!

Recently, the foreign teachers at my middle school reached an agreement with the school that 30% of each student's final English grade will be determined by the foreign teacher. This move was made in an effort to create a greater degree of learning accountability in what was formerly a"non-credit" class. So, my problem is that I teach 16 classes a week, each class with 60 or more students, and I am expected to both administer an exam AND issue a grade. Any ideas? Has anyone done something similar at thier school? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[go_ABs]

Sorry, dude, I've never done anything like this. Just wanted to wish you GOOD LUCK!

All the best,

[Super Mario]

A farcical situation. There is no way you can meaningfully assess 700 students. There is no way you can "teach", "instruct", or whatever, 60 students at a time in oral English.
Pass those who have attended 70% of classes.
Credit to HD those who have engaged in intelligible conversation with you.
Alternatively, you could have the whole class recite the well known piece "There are three people in my family".

As you have gathered the system is, by and large, a joke.

[tw]

Get them to do group presentations on topics you pick then score them.

[Super Mario]

To elaborate a little: The only fair exams I was able to give in China were when class sizes were under 20 and I allocated 15 minutes per student for an assessment based on the IELTS model.
Check their website for details.

[burnsie]

[wonderd]

I've been in this situation before, and it wasn't easy, in fact almost impossible. Group work and projects might help a little. How much time do you have with these students? A checklist for each class with participation, attitude, attendence helps. I had a little bit of the mark from some written homework assignments. I don't know if you have the option of that though.

Oh, wish I had more time to post, but my class will start soon.

Good luck

[kev7161]

For a class of 60: divide them into 10 groups of 6 or 12 groups of 5. Make sure you have boys and girls in each group as well as different levels of English abilities. Create scenarios for each group to enact. You give them the idea, in other words and they come up with the "script". Create a criteria they have to follow on which their grade will be based: clarity, diction, vocabulary usage, verb usage, creativity, etc. Create a scoring sheet that has each bit of criteria on it and numbered one to five below. "5" being Excellent, "1" being very poor. Give them a time limit of no more than 5 minutes to give their presentation (no reading! - they do it from memory). Make sure you share with them what you are looking for, before you let them start working on their presentation. Basically, each group "chooses" what grade they want - - the more they work on it and the more creative they are, the better grade they will probably get.

If you really want to test them, you could have them do it "off the cuff" or you can give them a day or two to practice. Everyone in the group gets the same grade. Be sure and grade on whether or not everyone participated equally as the group may try and give the poorer speakers less to do or say. This may take one or two classtimes to get everyone through the presentations. Be careful! Other groups like to "practice" while one group is giving their presentations. Can you find a "testing" room where only you (and perhaps other teachers - - see below) are watching or can you control your students well enough to prohibit talking while one group is performing?

Here's a sample of some possible criteria:

[Roger]

When you accepted your job you should have set objectives for your classes. These objectives should be measurable in terms of PROGRESS on the part of your learners. What have you done in this regard?

Your job normally is to remedy their faulty pronunciation or speech. I take into consideration the fact that they haven't learnt to function as INDIVIDUAL speakers; they failed to develop adequate listening skills.

This is because their own teachers regard a class as one body, no matter how many individuals get packed into it. You will never hear Chinese complain about crowding in their classrooms! They think these students can all work in unison like robots.

In my tests or exams I want them to make significant utterances that I prompt them into; either I test their response, or I test their pronunciation, or a combination of both.
Thus, I would listen to each and every student as a single speaker without any witnesses around. OK, this takes a little organisational skills and costs me extra time.
Things I often do: a situational dialogue (acting parts of professionals and their customers);
- asking them to write down a word I spell;
- dictating a single sentence (tests listening and reproduction).

There are many, many possibilities, of course; I have of late developed their phonetic recognition skills (after I found their pronunciation to be substandard). I don't go into long presentation - I did test my students on how they make short speeches based on a newspaper article but I found it was a major challenge to stop them from simply memorising the text; I would frame a question in a way they could not get the answer from the text per se, but I often found that they don't listen carefully enough to your instructions...

[dalong]

[burnsie]

[kev7161]

The OP said he has around 60 per class, not 700 all in one class. Will this take some time? Sure it will. As teachers are we not obliged to do some testing to see how well our students have advanced? In China, I'm not sure, but I will hesitantly say, "yes". I don't have near the OP's number of students and my classes are about 1/2 his size, but I went ahead and started my spoken tests almost 3 weeks ago, knowing that they were to be done. Whether or not they really matter is none of my concern - - I get paid the same regardless of their scores. Some students have been just as good as always and some did, surprisingly, very poor and a couple of them did, surprisingly, very well!

[Susie]

If I may offer my ideas on how to go about testing 700 middle school students for 30% of their overall English examination.

Time: 700 students - test 20 students each testing session over 35 days.

Verification: make sure that the student you are testing is actually that student and not someone taking his/her place for a price!

Variation: many different topics for them to be tested on based on the topics covered in the book you used during your lessons

Student's name________________
ID Number ___________________
Photograph __________________

Marking Scheme for Spoken exam:

A. Language : 15%)
B. Content : 15% ) 35%
C. Presentation: 5%)

A. Language (L) : Accuracy in the use of language (15%)

Marks Equivalance Comments

0-10 Poor Difficult to follow, gibberish, large proportion of meaningles words

11-20 Weak Lacking in clarity, roundabout expressions, limited range of vocabulary

21 -30 Satisfactory Expressions of ideas generally clear in spite of some clumsy expressions, not much variety of patterns and sentence types

41-45 Excellent Very fluent, ideas well expressed, good range of vocabulary, appropriate choice of words, showing excellent command of the language

B. Content (C) : Relevance and interest of ideas (15%)

Marks Comments

39-45 Clear and intelligent development of the subject matter; good continuity; good sense of proportion; sentences used to support each main idea good.

31-38 Subject matter well-developed; a fair degree of continuity and development; proportions generally well judged; sentences used to support each main idea generally good.

23-30 Subject matter adequately but not necessarily imaginatively dealt with; some gaps in continutiy; reasonable sense of proportion; some sense of planned sentences to support main ideas.

More later

[burnsie]

[tofuman]

Oral English exams? No problem. Whether it's seven or seven hundred.

What you do need is TIME.

I had to do about 150 exams a couple of weeks ago. In advance, advise the students of the exam. Give them a choice of topics.

Exam day, find a quiet room. Give the students in the class an assignment from a book of oral dialogues, etc.

Take the students in groups of five. Emphasize that when one student returns to class, another must come to the test room. This is vital. If you can not get a flow going, it will become a hassle. I write numbers 1-50 on the board and when a student returns to class, they cross their number off. Students can look at the numbers and see when to be ready.

The students are given one minute to tell me about their summer plans, career goals, favorite pet, etc.

The marks are very subjective. Can I understand what they are saying? Is their grammar decent? How about vocabulary? Use of "mouth fillers" Nige, nige , nige? Do they talk a bit in Chinese? Are they reading a text they or someone else prepared? Have they improved?

I can usually do 50 students in one class of 2 forty minute periods.

I avoid group assignments because the slackers do little but memorize a text prepared by a better student.

One on one is the most effective way to get a feel for their language ability.

Perfect system? No. Works well in these circumstances? Yes!

They have had prior practice doing this. During the course I recorded and then played back so they could hear themselves. Most of my high school age students have never heard themselves speak English.

It told them more about their ability than anything I could say.