Assessments

I have truly fallen in love with my job. I have spent so much time in the past few months trying to gather as much information as I can about language acquisition, assessments, etc. The great thing is that it doesn't feel like work. It's truly fascinating to me, and I love putting what I learn into practice.

I am very proud of the assessments that I give. I have worked very hard to make them as communicative as possible. For those of you who have taken a language, I am sure that you have seen the conjugation chart. (I dance, you dance, she dances, etc.) I have gotten rid of that on my assessments because it isn't very useful. I don't remember learning English that way. We acquire language through input--that is, interaction with the language; we do not acquire a language through explicit grammatical instruction. Teachers get frustrated that their students--after years of explicit instruction--are still not conjugating correctly. Why is that? Well, I think that there are many factors, and it depends on the student. It may have to do with that students' willingness to actively participate in the course, of course. But I think a huge part of it is that these "conjugations" have not become a part of the students' inner language. What I mean by inner language--which I got from Bill VanPatten--is what is in the students' heads and is natural to them. It is not just explicit grammatical knowledge, which is what that conjugation chart pretty much represents.  With explicit grammar instruction, students start to learn about the language as opposed to acquiring it. That's not really the point of a class unless you're teaching a linguistics course, which most of us are not.

So, back to my assessments. When I assess the students, even when I am giving a short quiz, I make it as communicative as possible. They have to answer questions about themselves, their classmates, me, etc. Why would I have them do a conjugation chart when I can see what they can do with the language by actually using it?

However, these quizzes are usually on one concept. That is SO unrealistic with language because none of us wake up in the morning and think "oh, I am only going to have to state what I have to do today." So, I always give the students an assessment that requires them to use multiple aspects of the language in a real way. This is where errors come in. Obviously, a quiz on one concept is much easier than a speaking assessment that requires them to use a lot of what they have (hopefully) acquired. However, I love these assessments because it really gives me a true understanding of what the students can communicate.

The truth of the matter is that I think we all--myself included--expect our students to do more with the language than their language proficiency really allows. If we are expecting first-year students to use a complete sentence accurately on everything, then we are expecting too much. And I am not saying that we should stop giving them tasks that require full sentences, but I am saying that we should adjust our expectations and assess their ability to communicate--not their ability to use full sentences.

I gave my sixth graders a writing assignment a few days ago, and it was amazing to see how willing they were to take risks. They were trying to form questions (many did it successfully!) and communicate using the little exposure they have had to the language. When I graded this, if they wrote something like "my family and I from Massachusetts," obviously they missed a verb, but I understood what they said, and I emphasized the importance of that. When I gave feedback, I did not criticize them for grammatical mistakes (because THAT is why students stop being willing to take risks in the language). Instead, I praised them for making their writing comprehensible, and I gave them tools to improve by suggesting phrases like "I am very funny" as opposed to just "I am funny." When there was something I could not understand, I underlined it, and I just said "I had trouble understanding this sentence. Could you clarify for me?" I don't want students to have the expectation that they speak perfectly because they will start to be afraid to speak the language, and that is what I believe teaching for accuracy does.

That's all fine and dandy. However, my problem this year has been with my quizzes. I was giving them these quizzes and giving them half a point for communication and half a point for accuracy. Okay, but then I'm contradicting myself. On my big assessments, I tell them to focus on communication, but then on these quizzes I grade partly for accuracy? That's stupid. I talked to my boss about it, and he put it in perspective when he said this: "you have to ask yourself what you are assessing. Are you assessing their ability to use the proper conjugations or are you assessing their ability to communicate?" That did it for me. I cannot be doing both if I want them to feel comfortable using the language. At the proficiency academy, I learned that a goal must contain a language function. My goal for the students should not and will not be "I can conjugate verbs." So, if my goal is "I can express such and such a thing," then shouldn't that also be my goal for the assessments I give? The answer is yes. No more grading for accuracy in my classroom. If they have had the right amount of input, and I don't force them into output before they are ready, they will communicate successfully. That is the sole purpose for language.