Korean Job Discussion Forums

[gregoriomills]

2 words: Speaking Test

If you're like me, there's no realistic way to gage all 40 low-level students. And this semester, my coteachers decided to give me power over the "speaking" grade associated with English for all 1st and 2nd graders at my Tech HS. So how do I grade them?

Speaking test -
The class before the test, I write down 5-10 question, responses that I have been covering in class. I did "What's your name?", "What's up?", "What's your favorite movie?", etc etc, and a few random one's I made up for fun. THen hand out an activity or do a game, this takes a whole lesson. Then the next period with that class, put on a movie (if they agree to be quitely studying, which they will) and pull one kid out at a time, quizzing them for about 2-3 minutes, while your co-teacher stays in the room. My teacher thought it was a great idea, and I get to play a movie without looking lazy. The whole process lasts about 3-4 class periods. It's gold. It's also great to actually talk 1 on 1 with all the students for a couple minutes. Quite different from the classroom. A couple of them are actually quite funny. Thinking of doing it again for the final. Call me lazy if you want, I think I'm an innovator. Thank me later.
Cheers~

[Yu_Bum_suk]

For technical HS that's not a bad approach by any means. For academic HS or a half-decent MS 3-4 lessons of that twice a term would be a pretty poor use of time.

[gregoriomills]

Yeah, what it usually boils down to is 1 lesson of prep, with 2 full lessons of speaking testing.

[D.D.]

I do a lot of speaking groups and speaking tests. Just some advice here: 1 student at a time is a waste of time. Do the test in groups of 3- 5 students. Don't ask canned questions as they will tell the other students. It only takes a short while to tell their abilty if you do this kind of testing a lot. You should be able to finish a class of 32 students in about 60 minutes.

Also don't throw on a movie. Write up some tasks for them to do and get the Korean teacher to go over it with them.

[BS.Dos.]

I've been doing speaking tests with my HS boys for the last 3 semesters. I personally find repeating the same questions over and over to be extremely boring (I've got the next 3-weeks devoted to them. One grade each week), but in my school, the students have to be assessed once a semester. The first grade used to have two speaking tests per semester, but thankfully, the Principal has reduced it back to one test per semester.

Despite giving the students (academic) plenty of help and preparation, some still manage to perform appallingly. They know that they're scores don't count for anything, so they don't really put any effort in.

In terms of the grading itself, as you don't really have the time to be that thorough, my marking schema, which is largely based on intuition, is something like this:

A - Student is able to articulate himself confidently in response to the questions and is able to construct and articulate his thoughts using reasonably complex sentence structures. Student also demonstrates a capacity to deviate from the set questions and/or is able to ask questions of his own.
B - Students demonstrates some fluency/confidence and is able to answer question and articulate his thoughts using simple sentence structures. Student is also able to demonstrate use of the correct tense.
C- Student attempts to answer questions using basic sentences, but vocabulary and understanding of structure is limited.
D - Student is unable to construct basic sentences. Typically offers Yes/No responses or single word answers or doesn't say anything.

I subscribe to fluency over accuracy and so students who at least attempt to respond/converse will score higher than those who only offer prescribed responses. I also make mental notes of general confidence, pronunciation etc and also award + scores for each grade if they fall between one of the four scores.

[Draz]

[Goku]

A really good idea really,

Actually I may do this before finals time. I do this with my afterschool program but the kids take SO DAMN LONG to think of a single word usually something in my brain blows like a fuse before the end of class.

1 minute per student isn't enough though, I would probably have to distribute to something like 3 classes for the listening test. It would take an entire month to get through one grade. However, I think writing up speaking evaluations would be enjoyable. I could give it to the homeroom teacher and have them attach it to the report card.

[dporter]

I used to do what I called 'Walk and Talks.'

I would show the first half of a movie during one class. I found October Sky to be a great movie for this.

During the 2nd class I would show the second half of the movie while pulling students out in groups of 3. We would do a quick walk around the building while I quizzed each one about things that happened during the first part of the movie. My questions were more difficult with advanced students (What do you think of the dynamic between Homer and his father) but basic with low level speakers.

As an aside, I think October Sky works on many levels in the classroom when talking about western culture.

[espoir]

Yea my speaking test is basically the exact same format as the OP's.

This week my students had their standard midterms and for the next 2 weeks I will be having a speaking test with them. For this test, which is apart of their final grade and so they must study for it, they were given 4 pages of questions and answers to remember. Each page is a different category (such as telephone, restaurant, job interview) and there are about 5-6 questions on each page.

For the past week I've just been going over these questions with my studnets to mkae sure they understand everything and tried to encourage them to think outside the box and not just memorise answers (because some of the answers were way to long for what was really needed)

So for the next 2 weeks, I will just be playing a movie for the students and pulling students out for 2-3min at a time and asking them up to 5 questions from 1 of the sections. Quick easy and straight to the point.

Is there a better way maybe, but I see no problems doing things this way.

[Demophobe]

[dean_burrito]

I'm at a technical High School myself. I'll be doing pretty much the same thing for the final grade.
I envy those at academic high schools. I teach at one on Saturdays and absolutely relish in the fact that learning is happening in the classroom.

[gregoriomills]

[tenchu77491]

I just did midterms today in elementary school. One of the main speaking questions was 'is 6 greater than 11?'. Of course majority of kids just spouted out a yes or a no. However some spouted out a yes or no and then stated '6 is less than 11' or '11 is greater than 6'. Some kids just said nothing at all and couldn't even form a sentence.

I think more focus should be on speaking, but in the low levels it's quite difficult. I assume it's no different in MS or HS if the English levels are the same as elementary.