Portafolio objectives

Santiago Quiroz

1. Try to find assessment methods that are more engaging and enjoyable for students.

Through the years, I have come to believe that motivation and engagement are the most
important part of the learning process. If a student is engaged, he will want to do the tasks. I think
this applies to assessment activities as well. Students may work with more effort when confronted
with the idea of grades, but it does not have to be their only motivation. So I would like
assessment activities to be more engaging and enjoyable.

Because of that, my first objective is to reflect theoretically about what the enjoyableness of tests,
and on a practical level, try to design tasks that are more enjoyable. Because the first theoretical
reflection we must make, is that in general, they are not.

If you hear the word test in any classroom setting, your thoughts are not likely to be
positive, pleasant, or affirming. The anticipation… is almost always accompanied by
feelings of anxiety and self-doubt—along with a fervent hope that you will come out of it
alive [CITATION Bro06 \p 1 \l 2058 ]

The problem arises from several points. On one hand, of course, there is always the traditional
language teaching methods that do not tend to be engagement oriented. We have all seen The
Forbidden education’s portrayal of traditional education (an exaggerated one, perhaps, but born
from truth). Naturally, in such a system, assessment would only be another aspect of the inherent
unenjoyableness.

But it goes beyond that. A good teacher can have good and engaging tasks, even in a traditional
system. But there is also the tendency to see assessment as disconnected from other activities in
the classroom, especially when it comes to summative assessment. Something at the end to check,
but not as a part of the actual teaching. In addition, we have the general relationship we have with
grades: students tend to see passing the subject as the goal. And we have a whole system that
requires grades. All of that causes that assessment is equated to quizzes, and that to boredom and
pain.

This is why today we want to create better assessment tasks, ones that can interest the students.
Alternative assessment’s characteristics include some aspects that should make it more enjoyable,
like the fact it should foster intrinsic motivation, be oriented to process, and allow creative
answers. (Brown, 2006). Other may want to move from a teacher-directed assessment process to
an assessment process in which students play an active role. (Boutz et al, 2012). Other options are
doing activities around texts and tasks that the students enjoy.

Which brings us to the practical aspect of this objective. In this portafolio I include several tasks
that I designed for the school I’ve been working for. They include examples of both good and bad
activities I have created. You can find analysis of them in the sheet titled ‘Inventory’, there is a list
of all of them, explaining what they were, the ones I consider good and bad according to each
objective and the task itself.
 2. Identify good assessment methods for production skills

I have seen that in most language classes, because of the traditional education system that focuses
on structure, there is almost no production. It seems, at least in my experience, that what many
schools call their production aspect of the language is, in fact, nothing more than writing
meaningless sentences, trying to get the correct structure, and also trying to model pronunciation
without trying to do real expression.

Because of this, I have decided to focus on the production skills. Producing is not getting the right
structure, but to be able to express oneself in a meaningful way in the target language. And this is
not something that can be done as many schools do it, simply teaching structures, doing drills, and
expecting that is enough for the students. The proof of this is that speaking and writing is not just
something you have to learn in a foreign language. It is something you have to be taught and you
have to practice in the mother language, because it is not simply a skill you possess when knowing
a language. Writing well is something we are taught. We all had to learn how to write an essay,
and different types of texts. We also need to learn how to best express ourselves when speaking,
the appropriate tone of voice, of register, and the correct way to speak.

And this is only done by practicing. On this regard, the most important thing is that the student
wants to write or speak. For this, I believe the best tasks are the ones where the student can
express himself freely, and the language content is as uncontrolled as possible. The ones that elicit
the most creativity, and the most self-expression. This also applies to the assessment. I believe
there are times and places for more traditional assessment methods, but when it comes to
production, it is definitely best to use alternative assessment.

For example, for speaking, the student can tell a story. And what I mean is giving it as an oral
presentation, having been given at least a month in advance, in which they have to write it and
learn it and practice it. While doing all of those things they will improve their skills, and the
teacher will be able to see that and then assign a grade. It is a continuous long-term assessment,
creative, oriented to process but with a product in the end. It is alternative assessment [ CITATION
Bro06 \l 2058 ].

It is in the vein of this that I made my alternative assessment proposal during the semester, which
I include in this portafolio.
 Inventory

I will proceed to do an inventory, in which I describe all the assessment I created during this
semester, and whether or not do I consider them well designed.

1. Lily’s surprise activity

This one was designed as a short listening, speaking, and writing exercise, done for a class of 4 th
grade girls. Using the popular video “Lily’s Disneyland surprise”, easy to find on YouTube. the
students would watch the video, answer a couple of basic comprehension questions, but mostly it
was an oral exercise in which they could give their own opinions on the subject.

On its own, I believe it is a short little activity, the first point can function as a warm up, and it can
be used as an informal assessment of how fluid the students are when speaking, when they are
saying stuff about themselves, or about a topic. The second point can be used to assess their skills
at writing an argumentative paragraph, or it can easily be adapted into a whole class debate. It is
valid, but it is not very reliable, only used for the teacher to get a general idea of how the students
are, and not to generalize a complete assessment of the student’s skills. Take it as a very practical
way of checking to see how they are doing.

In regards to the first objective, I do think it is an enjoyable activity. The children really enjoyed the
video when I used it, and they liked talking about it. On this case, it is creating an activity around
an enjoyable text and letting the students express themselves and their own point of view what
helped make it enjoyable. In regards to the second Objective, it encourages an active production,
and for them to use the language to say what they want to say, producing authentic utterances,
making it a less controlled production that allows them to express themselves, their ideas, their
opinions and their feelings.

2. Next to me exercise

This is another listening exercise, this time done around a song, next to me, by Emeli Sandé. It is a
fill in the gaps exercise for 4th grade students, both girls and boys. The second point is to identify
parts of the speech within the song. It can serve as an assessment of the students listening skill,
specifically, their ability to understand certain words, and also assess their grammar knowledge of
parts of the speech.

On its own, while it is possible to do it, it is not very well designed. The gaps contain variable
number of words, and the students might get confused. There are also too many gaps to close to
each other. It is too hard to answer on a practical level. And on a content level, it is too easy,
because most of the gaps are the same phrase repeated over and over again. Because of this, it
cannot be very reliable, because it is not designed in a way that gives absolutely the full capacity of
the students. The second point is practical, though.

On regards to the first objective, it is an enjoyable activity, because it is built around a text the kids
may like, a pop song, but only if the design was improved. The second point can be tedious,
though. The second objective does not apply.
 3. The selfish giant

Another fill in the gaps exercise, this time with the past form of the verbs in parentheses, although
I did not include the instructions in the paper itself, so the teacher has to give them orally and it
can become confusing. It is an adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s famous story, and can be used as
practice and assessment of the past tense. It was designed for 3 rd grade boys.

On its own it is a mechanical procedure, therefore more apt for practice than for actual
assessment, but there is an aspect of mechanics in grammar, so it can work to assess how well
students know their past tenses. It is not a very good test because of how mechanic it is, but it is
not a terrible task either. It is important to practice the grammar, and they can do it in a
contextualized way by reading a nice story. It is also practical to check and do.

On regards to the first objective, this is a very enjoyable text, and reading it should be enjoyable.
However, the task itself is mechanic and it becomes boring fast. The second objective should not
apply, unless you see this as writing, but it is not. It is grammar, using reading. Seeing this as a
writing task and assessment is exactly the wrong way to look at production assessment: as a
mechanical producing of meaningless structures. Here they are only reading and giving the right
structure, but they are not producing anything.

4. Will and Going to exercise

By far the worst task on this inventory. It is really a practice exercise for ‘will’ and ‘going to’, not
really an assessment. It was designed for 4th grade. As either, it fails. It is a poorly designed and
confusing attempt to create a context for the use of the two alternatives that they are trying to
learn. The instructions are not clear, nor are the gaps, and the students would surely get confused.
Therefore, it cannot be valid, reliable or practical, because it does not work at all. On regards to
the first objective, it is an extremely boring task. In regards to the second objective, like I just said,
this should not be seen as writing, and if it is, it is the exact misconception of writing as mechanical
grammar that we should try to end.

5. Happy birthday Dr. King Vocabulary assessment

This one was designed as a formal assessment of a vocabulary list, to write the correct word in
each space, using each word only once. Pretty straightforward, practical way of evaluating. It is
valid, because students need to understand the words to use them, and there are too many of
them to just guess. On regards to the first objective, it is not a very enjoyable activity, it is mostly
mechanical and boring. But it is also practical, so for a student that knows the words it should not
take long. Again, the second objective does not apply.

6. Chinese new year.

There are two versions of this listening exercise, based on the listening from watchmojo.com’s
video on the subject. One is the one I did for the school, and the other one was the one I tried
adapting for the class and that has already been corrected by the teacher. The main problem with
the first one is that it mixed several different types of tasks without any distinction between them.
That makes it confusing and the instructions are not very clear. The problems with the other
version are already written in it. Neither of them is a very good assessment.
However, in regard to the first objective, it is an interesting text that connected to the activities
the students had been recently doing, so it can be an enjoyable activity if the design is corrected.
The second objective does not apply.

7. Listening: The happy Prince

This one was designed for 3 rd grade students as a listening and vocabulary exercise, and as a
formal assessment. I chose a famous one adapted from Oscar Wilde into a short video (5 minutes)
on YouTube, “the happy prince”. I was assessing their ability to listen for details, even if it is only at
a very easy level: listen for specific words in a gap filling exercise. But mostly, I just wanted the
students to practice their general listening with a nice story. On its own, it is a very easy activity,
which probably takes some validity from it. Most students got 100 out of it, because all they had
to do was recognize the correct word when they got to a gap, and there were only five options. It
is, however, practical and reliable.

But most of all, in regards to the first objective, it is enjoyable. The students loved the activity and
the story. It was a simple activity, and that gave them some extra confidence. They could relax
with it and enjoy the story for the story, after proving they could listen without major issue. That
also gave them a great confidence in terms of the washback.

Bibliografía
Brown, D. (2006). Language assessment. White Plains: Pearson Education.

Boutz, A. L., Silver, H. F., Jackson, J. W., & Perini, M. J. (2012). Tools for thoughtful assessment:
Classroom-ready techniques for improving teaching and learning. Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ: Silver Strong &
Associates.