Assessment (Was accidentally saved as a draft rather than posted on blog)

The article by Elana Shohamy on Assessment was very interesting to read as a preservice teacher. The article discusses how language testers are not completely prepared to assess language learners in discourse knowledge, which affects students' performance in listening, reading, speaking and writing. Assessment is more than multiple choice questions, which can not really display students' understanding of the language. I have taken many tests in the past, and felt that my performance on these assessments did not demonstrate my understanding of the content. As a student, I have felt  frustrated that my understanding of the topic knowledge, was not shown through the assessment. As a teacher, I will do my best to ensure that the assessments I give are not only valid and reliable, but give my students the opportunity to demonstrate their discourse knowledge and language skills in a meaningful way. 

Canale and Swain (1980) identified three main components that play a role in communication which include linguistic competence, sociolinguistic competence and strategic competence and later a fourth component to refer to the user's ability to process and produce language beyond a sentence. These are very significant elements in language learning and connect discource to language learning. There are a number of specific discourse features including the ones discussed in the article, discourse topic/content, domains and types/styles factor into testing and affects student performance. Discourse is a key feature of communicative competence. We as teachers nned to think of a variety of authentic way to assess these discourse skills.There are so many ways that we have discussed in other courses, of how we can formally or informally assess our students. through low-stakes in-class tests, portfolios, interviews, journals etc. These methods can be helpful if appropriately adapting it for your classroom, lesson, students and overall teaching context. I personally like the use of portfolios and journals which allow students to see their development overtime and encourage them to reflect on their language development. This lowers the affective filter, help students gain confidence in their language skills and practice language skills. I believe this is a better alternative than a simple score from one high-stakes standardized test, which turns a student into a score without considering student's background. 

Brown's chapters also disucss assessment with language learners and discussed terms related to assessment that we have seen in Eng 346. These concepts are incredibley important to consider when evaluating and creating an assessment for students, such as practicality, reliability and validity,  a test's authenticity and wash back, the affect the testing has on teaching. When I read about washback I always think of NCLB. Washback considers the effects testing has on teaching and the classroom. As we know, NCLB is very controversial not only because of the affects it has on schools and communities  but the teaching in many classrooms. Instead of teaching student in a way best or them, instead students "teach to the test". The emphasis is more focused on high performances on tests, rather than student development. Students who are bilingual, from a low-socioeconomic status, or even students who have special needs may be marginalized. Schools that don't have the same resources many others do, are also pressured to meet a standard without being given the resources. There is more of a focus on scores rather than the students and schools taking the standardized tests. As a consequence the needs of particular schools and the needs of students are unaccounted for. One example, I have heard before is that, a teacher may teach writing using multiple choice in the classroom rather than giving students the opportunity to explore dative writ in styles and activities because that is seen on the test. Fortunately, standardized tests are only one type of assessments used in schools, and the use of more reliable, valid, culturally relevant, practical  authentic, and student-centered assessments are out there. It is our jobs as teachers to find these types of assessments and use them in our classrooms appropriately. 

Week 13: Curriculum design and lesson planning

This week's readings included, Brown Chapter 9-11 and Kumar Chapter 13.

Kumar discusses the importance of monitoring one's own teaching acts. This, as he states includes, closely observing classroom events and activities, analyzing the classroom input and interaction and overall, evaluating instructional objectives and outcomes critically. He later discusses product and process oriented models. While product-oriented models of classroom observation assumes that a description of teacher behavior is needed to build a classroom behavior profile of the teacher, instead the process-oriented approach of observation assumes that the classroom activities are need to be interrupted to understand the classroom processes and practices. This helps us understand the things that are going on in our classroom, do you agree?

Brown discussed curriculum design in one of his chapters, including program evaluation which he states is essential. Brown states that two of the program evaluations are implied in a course, one of the teacher and one of the program itself. It is important to note that the students, teacher and the program are all interdependent, so while it is important to evaluate the teachers, it's important to know it is only one factor and an effective program evaluation needs to consider all three factors. 

Kumar also discussed, that whatever the observation system may be, it meeds to be user-friendly which means offering them open-ended possibilities and user-friendly procedures in self observing, analyzing and evaluating themselves as teachers. the system being user friendly really is key, but how do you believe this is possible? What does being user-friendly entail? 

At one point during Kumar's chapter, he discusses multiple perspectives in classroom events and how the multiple perspectives and pedagogies of teaching coming together may affect the perceptions of what happened in the classroom and how the teacher teachers. What do you think of this? 

Brown also discusses lesson planning in this week's readings which breaks down the format of a lesson plan,  guidelines for the actual planning of the lessons and provides a sample. The guidelines were very interesting to read. Which of the guidelines did you find most important?

Brown also mentions making lesson plans take into account the variation in students. We know our students abilities will vary, and we should consider this when planning lessons though some of the techniques provided on page 169. What type of individual differences can you think of between students that you should consider?

Research Progress Report

Since discussing the paper proposal I have been able to refine what I would like to do for my paper.  I am investigating the impact Communicative Language Teaching or CLT has had on different language learning contexts. My research question is; how does implementation of CLT in EFL classroom contexts with student/teacher perceptions affect language learning. Since the feedback I was given, I am going to look specifically, at how power comes into play. How CLT has been accepted in the western cultures, in the inner circle and how that has affected the rest of the world. I will be looking particularly at Kachru's concept when exploring this. I am interested in how CLT doesn't account for cultural differences that vary between language learning contexts. I am questioning it's authenticity, adaptability as well as it's acceptability for language learning contexts. I have a lot of information regarding what CLT encompasses and how it has been supported by researchers or questioned by others. Next, I am looking for more information about the inner and outer circles to discuss how power has influenced the adaption of CLT in classroom contexts around the world. A few of the articles I found regarding my paper topic include..

1. The Use of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT): Turkish EFL Teachers' Perceived Difficulties in Implementing CLT in Turkey by Zekariya Ozsevik. This article explores the effect implementing CLT has in Turkey.

2. Communicative Language Teaching: Teachers' Perception in Bangladesh (Secondary Level) by Mohammad Tofazzl Hossen. This article includes data regarding teachers' attitudes towards CLT in a Bangladesh secondary level school.

3. English for Speakers of Other Languages Students' Perceptions of a Communicative Curriculum in a Family English Class Sarah Price. This article looks at while many advocate the use of CLT, its effectiveness is called into question when it is applied to different cultural styles of learning.

Week 12

This weeks readings include Brown chapter 26, and Kumar chapters 11 and 12.

"Critical pedagogy" is something that perhaps at the beginning of this course, we were unsure of what it meant. Now I am sure this phrase means something different to each and every one of us. It encompasses what we believe about teaching within it's own context, based on our particular beliefs. What does your critical pedagogy mean?

This chapter discusses teaching being a subversive activity. This is something that is very important for our future classrooms. Teachers should not be passive agents that distribute information to our students, but instead, critical agents for change who work to instill these values in their students and as Brown states, help them become "crap detectors". We are not only language teachers, but we are also helping students develop and grow through critical pedagogy. They should be prepared for social, economic and political systems and become  individual learners you think and behave for themselves and intellectually. Brown goes on in his chapter to discuss "hot topics" that may be adressed in our future classrooms which involve human rights, gender equality, nonviolence, racial/ethnic discrimination, political activism, health issues, environmental action and more. These are all very controversial topics which involve critical thinking. Because these topics can be very personal for students, Brown included a numer of ways we can deal with these controversial issues that make their way into our classroom. Before he even discusses these guidelines, he does state that teachers need to have social responsibility, which means they will fully resepect the values and beliefs of all students.

As we know our classrooms are not isolated from the rest of the world, instead they include political, social and economic factors. Kumar mentions this as well when he states that no classroom is an island unto itself.  Instead, "It is influenced by and is a reflection of the larger society of which it is a part" (239). I have always supported creating a critical pedagogy in the classroom, but how can you do so while still being socially responsible? What is our role as a teacher? Brown discusses teachers being there to create first an atmosphere of respect for all students opinions, beliefs and ethnic or cultural dicersity. teachers are also responsible to include opportunities for students to learn about these topics, and have the opportunity to examine and analyze all sides of an issue. With doing this the teacher needs to maintain morality and ethics in the clasroom atmosphere. Today, teachers everywhere are involving global concerns and social responsibility in their classrooms. Why do you believe this is important? How will you do this in your own classroom? What are your concerns?

Brown also discusses five moral dilemmas that may be involved in our classroom of critical pedagogy. I believe these are very important to mention because if we are aware of them, we are more likely to consider them in our classroom atmosphere and the activities we do. We need to be aware of the cultural biasses of communicative approach, avoid adding to disempowerent, analyze our matierals, remain neutral and consider assessment standards  which may have cultural and ocioeconomic bias.

Integrating Language Skills: Week 11

This weeks readings include Kumar chapters 9 and 10 and Brown chapter 22.

Kumar discussed how little sense language would make if it was removed from the context. The book states, language is something that not only invokes content but it also provides context. As we have discussed in class, language is not simply a collection of words but much more complex.The chapter goes onto discuss the various contexts including linguistic context and provided the example of the meaning of the word "table" across different contexts. Reading how different the meaning of table can be used in English made me reflect on verbs and vocabulary that were difficult for me to learn in Spanish. It was confusing for me to understand that words could be used in different contexts until I realized how often this occurs in my first language. I can understand how difficult the concept of linguistic context can be on second language learners. Another difficulty for many student is the extralinguistic context which includes prosodic signals like stress and intonation in an linguistic environment. When reading about this, I thought of the first grade students I work with in reading. The biggest area of focus in their development is reading fluency which accounts for intonation, tone etc. This is very difficult for students to do in their native language when reading, so I can only imagine how difficult this must be for second language learners. Understand how to use and using these extralinguistic features like stress and intonation is a very difficult for task. Kumar points out that this is difficult for even advanced L2 learners. While we learn how to appropriately use these features in language implicitly, students' background knowledge from their first language. I also thought Kumar's discussion on extrasituational context was interesting as it proved that there are not only context influences from the language itself, but there are also social, cultural, political and ideological contexts that influence particular speech events. This is something that has always been very interesting to me- how much culture affects our interaction with others and how difficult this can be on L2 learners. I have experienced this myself when communicating with someone very different from myself, and expect to experience this in January when I arrive in Spain. Kumar provided an excellent (and humorous) example of such about an cross-cultural interaction between an American and a woman from Zambia. While the woman from Zambia may tell another "How are you? Oh, I see you've put on weight"- which is a normal greeting for this woman, to an American with different cultural values and expectations, this may be very odd or even offending. It truly is interesting how differently we interpret the things we say and do, because of our own cultural values.

Not only is there such a connection between language and context but there is also a connection between the way we use "primary skills of language" including listening, speaking, reading and writing. Kumar discussed this along with language being context-embedded. He discussed the concept of separating primary skills of language how important it is to instead, integrate language skills as learning and using any one skill will i effect, trigger cognitive and communicative associations with the others. It's interesting as he mentioned, that so many universities teach courses specific to one skill. Haven't we learned how complex language is, and how important it is that all domains me used and developed to have an authentic learning experience of the language?

Brown's chapter also gave us a better understanding of integrating language skills, as it discussed form-focused instruction. While not all theorists have agreed on what role form should take in the classroom, many researchers today support some form-focused instruction in the communicative framework. I learned Spanish with explicit instruction of grammar, and little time for communicative or authentic communicative tasks. While the idea of "form-focused instruction" originally came with a negative attitude, I do agree that there needs to be some focus on form of the language including organizational components for language and systemic rules that govern the structure. There seemed to a push for more of a natural approach to language teaching and a push away exclusive attention of grammar and vocabulary.  We went from too much focus on form, to the opposite end of the spectrum- barely any. Now attention to language forms was also ineffective but now it is understood that there needs to be attention to what brown calls the "basic bits and pieces of a language" provided in an interactive curriculum.

Brown did an excellent job discussing the different ways grammar can be taught and the effects it may have. Did his argument change your own ideas of teaching? What are you concerned about the most? Teaching seems to be a balancing act of some sorts, and while it may difficult to balance a focus on form, and focus on communication purposes, hopefully in time we will be able to do so to meet our students individual needs. Brown's examples of grammar techniques were especially helpful, would you consider using these in your own classroom?

Week 10

This week's readings included Brown Chapter 22 and Kumar's chapters 7 and 8.

Brown's chapter provided some principles for language assessment that I also thought are extremely important in tests and assessments including practicality, relability and validity, authenticity and washback.
Reliability is very important because it ensures that sources of possible unreliability are noticed and accounted for when considering test scores and making decisions. I, as many of us, have learned in other TESOL courses how important a test's reliability is and of the number of possible sources of unreliability including the test itself, testing environment, test scorer or test takers themselves. Can you think of an example of when you administered or took part of an assessment that you felt was unreliable for one of these reasons? Why is it important for our tests/assessments to be reliable?
Validity is also important because it makes sure that the test or assessment is measuring what it needs to measure. We have come across three different types of validity including the content, face and construct validity. How can we be sure there is validity in our test/assessment?
Washback is another principle Brown discusses, which I find very interesting and important to consider in our future ESL/EFL or bilingual classrooms. This term refers to how assessments or tests affect teaching and learning. I believe it is important in our classrooms, to consider how each assessment we administer will affect our teaching, and the learning occurring in the classroom.


Brown's chapter also learly defined the difference between a test, which can measure someone's knowledge about a given domain, and an assessment, which refers to an ongoing process for a wider domain. As I read Brown's theories on assessments and tests, I wondered when would it be appropriate to use an assessment? When would it be appropriate to use a test?


While brown's chapter looked at tests and assessments, Kumar discussed language awareness. One interesting point of this, addressed Critical Language Awareness (CLA) which considers the sociopolitical nature of language, specifically focused on the exercise of power. Kumar discusses how teaching CLA can teach learners how language can be used as a tool. Overall, Kumar discussed that language awareness, is important in language education as it helps the learner. How do you believe language awareness will affect your future classroom.

Kumar also discussed heuristics, which was an unfamiliar word to me. Heuristics, as Kumar states on page 176, refers to the provess of self discovery as the part of the learner, and to a particular method of teaching which encourages the student to learn about themselves and their own experiences. This is connected to this idea, of language awareness. While there are language rules  the teacher should create beneficial linguistic environment, learners can use to use their heuristics and discover the linguistic system on their own while teachers need to show students that grammar is a dynamic system with structure of form meaning and use, they should also promote the students own self-discovery.

Week 8

This weeks readings included Cary S How do I support student's first language when I don't speak the language, Brown Chap 18 and 19 and Kumar Chapter 5!

Out of all the readings I was really interested to read Cary's work. I know a few people who have taught English who don't speak their students' native language. I also know people here who are interested in getting a TESOL endorsement but don't because they are monolingual.

The article points out a number of things I find important in teaching and have discussed in my previous courses. The article right away lists the key points of the writing.

Establish a classroom community that values and celebrates all languages and dialects. Later on in the article when talking about Delores, they author mentions how much she works on making sure her classroom celebrates diversity. This is something we have discussed in my bilingual education courses. In my own classes we have practiced activities and lessons that create a classroom community, from sharing your immigration story, to describing and drawing yourself.. I believe creating an open classroom which promotes diversity is essential in today's classrooms.

Another key element mentioned is to Encourage parents to develop and maintain primary language at home. This is something I hold in my own teaching philosophy. From what I have seen, some parents really want their children to learn english, and quickly. This sometimes leads them to discourage the use of the primary language in their own home. I think it is important to share with parents how important it is to keep building the child's primary language in the home. A language should never be seen as something that hurts the child's success but as an attribute that should not only be celebrated in the classroom but in the home as well.

The article also states, Offer primary language support through bilingual parent and community volunteers, peers, cross-age tutors, and extended day programs. I hope that when I am a teacher, I will also be an active member of the community. I think schools benefit from being well-supported by community members and parents. I believe having support like this for parents would really make a difference. Later in the article, the idea of having parents come to the school and share something of their primary language, either through a poem, song, story, show and tell etc. with the classroom. I was really impressed by this idea, and thought of what a great impact this would have.
Understand the differences between supporting and developing the primary language and Learn and use some second language yourself with students are also key ideas mentioned in the article. I believe there truly is a difference between supporting and developing the primary language for your students. At one point the article stated that Dolores wasn't completely fluent in Spanish yet. They mentioned that while she can "suppor a student's primary language" she "couldn't develop it". This is something I am very worried about in my future practice. Because Spanish is my second language, and I am not completely fluent I worry that this will be a disadvantage for my students that need to continue developing in their first language. I decided to pursue teaching because I want to help children- and I am afraid that because I am not a native Spanish speaker this could be a disadvantage for younger students.

The article mentioned one other concept that is very prominent in the field of bilingual education. The article mentions Prop 227 at one point which is anti-bilingual education. Our classes have researched views of both the supporters and opponents of Prop 227 extensively. While many of the basis of the advocates of Prop 227 are based on biases and myths, it is still very difficult for me to hear people claim that bilingual education is too expensive, ineffective or misguided. As the  article and multiple other research outlets have proven, children who have a strong foundation in their primary, native language outperform their peers in English programs. It is true that students who have this strong foundation, are more successful in school. Hopefully one day we will base our decisions on the education of our children on what is best for them, and not on our own stereotypes and biases.