4

LESSON
EVALUATION IN THE TEACHING
OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES IN
PRIMARY EDUCATION
 FOREIGN LANGUAGE EVALUATION

EVALUATION in a L2 requires to the assessment of the whole teaching process

▪The students (individual involvement, group interaction)
▪The type of materials
▪The teaching methods
▪Interaction between the class and the teacher

It is a process that involves all members of the educative community

▪Parents
▪Teachers EVALUATION
▪Students ▪Student Evaluation
▪School ▪Teaching process evaluation
▪Curriculum ▪Teacher self-evaluation
▪Materials and resources ▪Students’ self-evaluation
▪Co-evaluation
▪Materials and resources’ evaluation
 FOREIGN LANGUAGE EVALUATION
EVALUATION of students in Primary Education must be:
▪Formative: Continuous and global (all areas of the curriculum)
▪ Didactic objectives
▪ New knowledge acquired in each area
▪The teacher will design Educative follow-up/remedial measures to check & reinforce
the progress of students when necessary

EVALUATION of the teaching process:

▪Evaluation of the teacher/our role
▪ Activities developed
▪ Level of difficulty
▪ Curriculum adaptations
▪ Students’ engagement
▪ Materials and resources

EVALUATION of the teacher’s

self-evaluation:
▪Research into teaching & learning
(on-going formative perspective)
▪Set up objectives, motivation and attitude
strategies, analysis of results, etc.
 FOREIGN LANGUAGE EVALUATION
STUDENTS SELF-EVALUATION
▪Students think & reflect about what they are learning.
▪Teacher’s role is to stimulate student’s share their own opinions about the learning
process:
▪ Improve teaching process
▪ Overcome possible deficiencies
▪Progress Diary

CO-EVALUATION
▪Dialogue between students and teacher
▪ Mutual understanding of the learning practice,
decisions to take, etc.

MATERIALS AND RESOURCES

EVALUATION
▪Materials for the teachers vs. materials for
students
▪Materials must have:
▪ Didactic objective & values
▪ Scale: page 4.
 ROLE OF EVALUATION IN L2
EVALUATION
The importance about evaluation is not the process itself but to put the evaluation to
the service of the improvement of the educative process.
ROLES OF EVALUATION
▪Evaluation as diagnostic
▪ Cognitive state of our students
▪ Student’s characteristics (previous knowledge and expectations)
▪Evaluation as selection
▪ Students receive marks/grades
▪Evaluation as hierarchy
▪ Mechanism of control (reports, grades)
▪ Teacher’s capacity to decide what to evaluate and how
▪Evaluation as checking
▪ Daily activities to follow-up, remedial work → Individually & collectively
▪Evaluation as comparison
▪ Apply same evaluation criteria to all students
▪Evaluation as communication
▪ Academic results of the students
▪ Communication with students throughout→ method, teaching and evaluation
▪Evaluation as orientation
▪ Evaluation is used as communication to develop/modify the teaching
▪Evaluation as motivation
▪ Recognize efforts from students & acquisition of new knowledge
▪Evaluation as formation
▪ Pay attention to results & feedback of teaching process
 INSTRUMENTS OF EVALUATION
BACKGROUND
▪In the case of Formative Evaluation, we will use mainly systematic observation
▪There may be some subjectivity in the observation, so we need instruments (or
scales) to judge

INSTRUMENTS
•Observation scales – list of phenomena we want to observe.
•Student’s diary – all students complete a diary with comments and daily classroom
practice
•Estimation scales – use/repetition of list of phenomena:
– Numeric scale: 0-10
– Frequency: never-usually-sometimes-rarely-always…
– Etc.
•Control lists – presence or absence of the list of phenomena (regardless frequency or
intensity)
•Anecdotal register – Indicate incidences about behavior, learning, etc.
•Questionnaires – quick information. Handed out periodically.
•Workshops – easy way to observe how students put into practice different activities
•Contract of learning – created between students and teacher.
•Debates – small groups to observe students’ capacity to express themselves.
•Dramatic and simulation games – observe the students’ communication level.
 EVALUATION FROM A COMMUNICATIVE PERSPECTIVE

▪ There’s a difference between

• Language taught and used in classroom
vs. outside of classroom
▪ Teachers need to assess the students’
strategic competence in the process of
communication.
▪ As teachers, we need to work on:
• Activities should be authentic
• Texts/materials should be genuine
• Language used by teachers should be
natural
• Topics should be contextualized
• Activities should be related to everyday
life

THIS CAN BE CARRIED OUT THROUGH

– Continuous long-term assessment -Individualized feedback
– Untimed, free-response format -Interactive performance
– Contextualized communicative tasks -Intrinsic motivation
– Open-ended answers
 ASSESSING ENGLISH IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS

WHY EXAMS? – ON-GOING DEBATE

▪Goal → not knowing the language, but use it as a means of communication
▪The Primary English language classroom → a very cheerful environment
(non-threatening, non-judgemental).
▪Assessment must avoid the idea of failure. Assessment does not identify
failure or success.

ASPECTS TO KEEP IN MIND WHEN ASSESSING

▪ Assessment should be an integral part of the teaching-learning process
▪ Students need familiar contexts and activities to demonstrate their abilities
▪ Through assessment we find out what students can do and what they still
need help with
▪ Assessment should be appropriate to age in terms of contents and cognitive
aspects
▪ Each student should be assessed individually