After reading Brown for a while I found myself in front of this short quiz that you can see in the first pages of the reading, I hope you remenber it,
and I must said I felt myself some how quite ignorant, because I didn't know any of the words even though the book was suggesting it was quite easy, at least that was my case, maybe you knew all the answers, I don't know. Where I want to reach is to the point of thinking the following: If I felt somehow pressed by the fact of not knowing any answer of this quiz, maybe as future teachers we could analyse how language learners feel about a test, from our own experience as students of this program, on secondary school, primary, etc., and use it to propose a better posible way to undertake tests. As for the ones who are already teachers how do you see testing? but not as a student. How do you do it?
What are you planning to achieve when doing a test?
I do not like to think as test I prefer to say that I am trying to make them expose or present their potential on a specific topic. What I expect from this process or as you say "plan to achieve" is to explore how this person will be able to manage certain situations on real life, I try to prepare these students to face moments of their lives where they can enrich even more and more their knowledge.
ResponderEliminarIf a student uses knowledge to acquire more knowledge then my job is done.
I have to confess I have found myself stuck in designing only conventional exams to evaluate my students' performance. I believe it when people say "if your students fail you fail"I think it perfectly reflects the importance of our job.
ResponderEliminarTo answer one of your questions, I see testing not only as a way to assess my students but as a way to evaluate myself, to really think about how competent I have been in my classes and to what extent my students have been affected by my performance as a teacher.
Being honest, I also felt quite ignorant when read that short quiz and I realized that maybe our students feel in the same way. On the other hand, as a teacher I have designed standarized exam, maybe because they are easier to grade and to design, but that is something I know I need to change and focus more on the assessment, rather than on a series of questions or filling in the gap exercises.
ResponderEliminarHonestly I avoid to evaluate by testing, I apply test when it is mandatory according to my place of work´s schedule. I find myself as a student very anxiuos when it comes to take a test, and I am a bad test taker even if I know that I know what the test is about.
ResponderEliminarBut coming back to the way I test, I tend to follow my school´s criterion taking into account the grids but I also focus on the process of every single student.