Assignment: Reflection Document.

Subject

Assessment and teaching in the classroom

Luis Agustín García Muñoz

Universidad IEXPRO.

Master’s Degree in English Teaching

MTE. Jesus Adrian Castañon Aquino

July 9th, 2022

Reflection Document.
Our duty as teachers is, and will always be to ensure students learning or their
competencies; apart from that, we must make sure subject matter has been clearly
learnt and demonstrated in the classroom.
As teachers, we must apply different methods of measurement which may be testing
or assessment.
When I was studying the BA, I got easily confused, since, culturally, Mexican
students are disposed to get a number to prove they made it through a course
instead of showing/demonstrating their skills at doing something with the information
you obtained during the sessions. The more I taught, the more I learned the different
ways and purposes for measuring competency or knowledge from my students;
obviously depending on the outcome or information I intended to get.
Evaluation gathers different features concerning our class; such features may be
considered in a positive or negative way. Meanwhile, assessment is closed to the
measurement of students’ performance in the Target Language (TL); in there,
constructive feedback may take place to contribute to students’ development of
competencies for improvement.
Something important which may take some time to work on can be a non-formal
assessment. Personally, at the beginning of every course, I administer a test that
goes from the easiest to the hardest structures; texts that demand different types of
approaches, and the use of vocabulary in contexts or (depending on the level)
wordbouilding or wordformation. I carefully select the items to get the real needs of
my class so I can be helped to know their real needs in order to select the materials
for them to improve their language competence.
Currently, I am teaching B1 students and for me is easier to ask them to join a zoom
meeting one by one. I start asking how they feel, how was their experience the last
course, and what their expectations are for the new course; also, I ask them what
their motivations for learning English are or if they have had a previous experience
in a different school. While I administer a “written” diagnostic test for lower levels,
spoken interviews allow me to know more about students’ aspirations using the TL
in an informal chat letting them express themselves.
The interviews mentioned above are commonly carried out as a whole group; I
commonly try to avoid any feeling of threat in order to get factual information from
students’ feelings and views of language. Apart from that, I try to memorize as much
as I can in terms of errors; this is because I may need to work on some structures
whose misuse is common in their spoken production. In that way, I can tell I am
assessing since I am not providing any number, adjective, or category in order to
rate students’ production.
During the last semester of the BA I took, there were two subjects: Teaching practice
and Learning autonomy.
In the first one, we had to record our classes to watch and make notes on our
performance and what could be improved; after that, a reflective essay was written
pointing out our mistakes and how they could be improved in order to reteach the
lesson doing the necessary adjustments. In further peer-teaching sessions, we were
asked to analyze what we did in front of the class and talk about possible aspects to
improve.
In Learning autonomy, we were assigned to respond series of tests in order to know
our multiple intelligences and learning channel; after that, we were asked to develop
a learning contract specifying the way we would work in order to improve our weakest
skills making us of our strong ones. We had self-learning activities from the self-
access center, reflexive essays on how we did it during each term, and self-
evaluation on our experiences working at the self-access center.
After the last two paragraphs, I want to emphasize the importance of reflexive
practice in our classes and most importantly, taking responsibility for our own
learning processes being honest, and responding based on our experiences in order
to know where to go and what to do to reach our goals.
Formal assessment may be described differently. But it is the way we assess
students at the end of our courses or terms to know if students have displayed
enough competencies to move forward in their programs. Moreover, assessment is
not conformed by only tests; for example, Universidad Veracruzana asks students
to exchange comments in forums, video interviews with teachers, written works,
written products based on situations given, and self-learning activities. Such aspects
were given some weight during the pandemic since they managed to standardize
processes throughout the state.
Personally, I think having an assessment is always appropriate in order to keep our
students in a direction; yet, we must be aware of all groups are different and so are
students. Apart from that, their outcomes, motivations, and skills. That is why we
must be down to earth in terms of what we ask our students and what they are
capable of.
Besides, assessment of Grammar, Reading, Vocabulary, and Listening, will always
be present in every school we teach or intend to teach. What is really important to
consider is keeping the focus on oral productive tasks as well as written productive
ones. Through the last two tasks, we can get evidence of competency from the other
skills; there is always a way to keep things simple for us the teachers.
Conclusion.
How important are assessments in classroom settings?
There will always be advantages and drawbacks to using any type of assessment in
our teaching contexts; as I said above, all groups read differently and students are
not the same as each other. Teaching is a trying and error loop.
What kind of assessment are you using the most in classroom settings?
I love doing informal assessments every day in the classroom. I constantly call
students one by one asking them how they felt doing certain activity or homework:
how that process can be improved or if they like to reinforce the same topic using a
different approach or activity instead. Error correction is provided by the teacher as
the last resource; I personally let students, politely, correct each other. Formal
assessment comes every term and at the end of the course in a way of a task in
which students demonstrate what they can actually do with the language they
worked with during the sessions.
What are the differences between summative and formative assessments, and
which has more impact on ESL?
Summative one occurs when it is determined if the student moves forward in the
courses; what is more, it enables the teachers to have a reference of what students
are able to do with the language. In Mexico, summative assessment is the most
relevant since performance is rated by a number which, most of the time, does not
show what our pupils are able to do. Formative assessment is the one that should
take over and it is more compatible in terms of rating and observing competence in
a foreign language.
References
Universidad IEXPRO, (n.d). Assessment and Testing in the classroom.