Enhancing Oral

Production through
Formative Assessment
Santiago Montoya Alzate
 Agenda

01 02 03
Context Statement of the Action research
problem question

04 05
Theoretical
Action Plan
Framework
 01
Context
Context
- Public Colombia Institution

- Innovative and inclusive institution

- Committed to the human development of the students

- The institution intends to become the leading institution

in technical teaching
Malla de inglés
- It is a tool to classify the content of the classes and define
how and what to evaluate.

- Consists of topics, objectives, problematic questions,

competences, achievements, teaching strategies and
strategies for evaluation

- Aims to evaluate the work of students, the activities done

in class, the homework, participation, punctuality and
respect
The teacher
- Foreign Languages at the Pontificia Bolivariana
University

- Worked in different municipalities around Colombia

before arriving in Marinilla.

- Considers this as beautiful and complicated due to the

amount of roles that a teacher needs to play in the
classroom.
The students
- Adolescents between 14 and 16 years old who belong to
different socioeconomic classes.

- Are interested in business and making a living out of

hobbies.

- Expressed the importance of having a good relationship

with the teachers
 02
Statement of the
problem
Ministry of
Education
The evaluation is a tool to promote the
effective learning, the pertinence of the
teaching process, the comprehension of
goals and the motivation for students.
Ministry of
Education
MEN enhances the importance of the
constant evaluation, active participation,
the self-evaluation of the students, the
feedback of the teacher and the trust in the
process for improvement.
In the
classroom:
- Evaluation was made through
worksheets: sentence completion,
letter soup, matching or
categorization
- Students work for the grade
 In the
classroom:
- Summative assessment becomes a strategy for
control
- The students do what is expected but just for
some minutes and eventually, moments later,
they return to the “misbehavior”.
 The
Evaluation
- Meets one of its intentions: controlling, but fails
in meeting the others: assessing learning and
assessing for learning.

- Most of the students do not seem to achieve the

goals intended for their school level.
 03
Action Research Question
How can the use of Formative Assessment in the classroom improve
the English Oral Production in students of 8th grade in a Colombian
public institution?
 Objectives
General objective: To explore how the use of strategies for Formative
assessment can influence the English oral production?

1st 2nd 3rd

To gather the student's
To analyze students' To interpret the memos
perception about the
level before and after of my observations
use of formative
my implementation in regarding the influence
assessment for
the beginning and end of formative
improving the oral
of the periods through assessment on the oral
production through
pre and post tests. production
written reflections.
 04
Theoretical Framework
 Summative
Assessment
- Conducted at the end of a period, semester or
unit in order to determine the knowledge of
students (Box)
- Assessment is any instrument or task whose
results serve to measure the level of
competence or development (Chappuis)
 Formative
Assessment (FA)
- Formative assessment (FA) is an active and
goal-oriented learning process in which
students and teachers work together to
constantly gather evidence of learning to
improve the students’ achievement. (Moss &
Brookhart, 2009, p. 6)
 Benefits of FA
- It helps learners be aware of the gaps between
their goal and “their current knowledge,
understanding, or skills and guides them
through actions necessary to obtain the goal”
(Ramaprasad, 1983; Sadler, 1980, as cited in
Boston, 2002).
 Challenges of FA
- Time demanding, adequate spaces and
teachers’ preparation
 Oral Production
(OP)
- According to O’Malley and Valdez (1991), oral
production is how people share information
about their knowledge of life under a
contextualized conversation.

- The importance of oral production roots in the

need of students to make decisions about their
own interactions (Bañuelos, 2006)
 Importance of
Oral Production

- The importance of oral production roots in the

need of students to make decisions about their
own interactions (Bañuelos, 2006)
Challenges of Oral
Production
- Teachers of English need to plan accurate
speaking activities that promote oral
production; taking the risk factors such as
errors and the reaction of students to them
(Ortiz & Artunduaga, 2017, p. 53).
Challenges of Oral
Production
- Teachers of English need to plan accurate
speaking activities that promote oral
production; taking the risk factors such as
errors and the reaction of students to them
(Ortiz & Artunduaga, 2017, p. 53).
 Strategies:
- Chappuis proposes 7 strategies divided in 3
guiding questions:
Where Am I Going?
- Strategy 1: Provide students with a clear and
understandable vision of the learning target.

- Strategy 2: Use examples and models of

work.
Where Am I Now?
- Strategy 3: Offer regular descriptive
feedback during the learning.

- Strategy 4: Teach students to self-assess

and set goals for next steps.
How Can I Close
The Gap?
- Strategy 5: Use evidence of student learning
needs to determine next steps in teaching.

- Strategy 6: Design focused instruction, followed

by practice with feedback.

- Strategy 7: Provide students opportunities to

track, reflect on, and share their learning
progress.
 05
Action Plan
Link to see Action Plan
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VAeqVqeu1DkDKbyLNFQvcIw
U38BUKpAN-TUpiNKNHJQ/edit
References
Biggs, J. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning: a role for summative assessment?.
Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5(1), 103-110.

Boston, C. (2002). The concept of formative assessment. Practical assessment, research,

and evaluation, 8(1), 9.

García, C. B., México, T., & Gaona, M. D. R. D. A methodology for oral production.
Harlen, W., & James, M. (1997). Assessment and learning: differences and relationships
between formative and summative assessment. Assessment in education: Principles,
policy & practice, 4(3), 365-379.
References
Kibble, J. D. (2017). Best practices in summative assessment. Advances in physiology
education, 41(1), 110-119.

Ortiz, S. M. R., & Cuéllar, M. T. A. (2018). Authentic tasks to foster oral production among
English as a foreign language learners. HOW Journal, 25(1), 51-68.

Razmi, M., Pourali, S., & Nozad, S. (2014). Digital storytelling in EFL classroom (oral
presentation of the story): A pathway to improve oral production. Procedia-Social and
Behavioral Sciences, 98, 1541-1544.
References
Kibble, J. D. (2017). Best practices in summative assessment. Advances in physiology
education, 41(1), 110-119.

Ortiz, S. M. R., & Cuéllar, M. T. A. (2018). Authentic tasks to foster oral production among
English as a foreign language learners. HOW Journal, 25(1), 51-68.

Razmi, M., Pourali, S., & Nozad, S. (2014). Digital storytelling in EFL classroom (oral
presentation of the story): A pathway to improve oral production. Procedia-Social and
Behavioral Sciences, 98, 1541-1544.
References
Sanchez, A. (2004). The task-based approach in language teaching. International Journal
of English Studies, 4(1), 39-71.

Shepard, L. A. (2017). Formative assessment: Caveat emptor. In The future of assessment

(pp. 279-303). Routledge.

Tan, Z. X. (2016). Benefits and implementation challenges of Task-based language

teaching in the Chinese EFL context. International Journal for Innovation Education and
Research, 4(3), 1-8.
References
Thomas, M. (2013). Task-based language teaching and CALL. Contemporary
computer-assisted language learning, 341-358.

Wei, L. (2010). Formative assessment: Opportunities and challenges. Journal of Language

Teaching & Research, 1(6).
Thank you!