CHOOSING AND DEVISING TEST TASKS

Along this course, we have been talking about different ways, tools and strategies for assessing students in second language learning processes. We have also discussed important concepts such as Reliability, validity, practicality, washback among others that we are starting to implement in our practices.

Now, new concepts need to be considered according to the reading Choosing and Devising test tasks. It seems to be hard for me as a teacher to deal with the word devising, frankly speaking I would like to avoid devise test tasks, but when you have been teaching a course and at the end of it you have to apply an assigned test, sometimes it could be harder than devise one.

I had a bad experience regarding test tasks at the beginning of this year. I was teaching a level 1 group of learners and when the time for the final test arrived I administered an assigned test. The exam seemed to be appropriate for them but when they started to answer it, the problems showed up. The listening part was so complex for their level, besides the complexity of the content, we haven’t worked in the type of exercise that they had to develop. My students complained and although I knew they were right I couldn’t skip that part I just encouraged them to do it. I felt so bad because the majority of them failed the listening section and it wasn’t the purpose. While reading the text, I realized that the fault was in the instructional objectives and instructional activities,(concepts cited by the authors).

 In the reading “Choosing and devising test tasks” the authors mentioned four important factors to take into account for choosing the tasks of a test.

ü  Instructional objectives: The task will be focused on the same kind of language skills described in the objectives

ü  Students’ level of proficiency: which task is more suitable for a beginner and which is more suitable for an advanced learner. In this part, we talk about open-ended and close-ended response tasks.

ü  Instructional activities:  the activities selected must be known for the students, if they are familiar with the kind of exercise they will have a good performance.

ü  Testing resources: Resources for taking into account such as time for administering and scoring the test, contents and physical space.

Maybe we had a wide idea about these new concepts but, what about applying them in our tests? I found some useful questions that we can ask ourselves at the moment of choosing the objectives: Do the objectives include all important outcomes of the course? Are the objectives realistic in terms of the abilities of the students and the time available? (Linn & Miller 2004).

It is also important to have a clear idea about what type of learning outcome do we expect from our students. Is it about Knowledge, Thinking skills, Performance skills,  Application?

Having set the objectives, activities, resources, level of proficiency and a clear outcome we will be ready for designing a test with the appropriate tasks.

AMPLIFYING SOME CONCEPTS

In our last class of Assessment, We were talking about the concept of collaboration and collaborative learning, but the time was not enough to discuss about what cooperative learning is and what the differences between those terms are.

When the class finished I was confused with the definitions of the words, so I came back home and decided to look for the concepts and the differences, and I want to share this information in my blog because it would help us to clarify and amplify our ideas about cooperative and collaborative learning.

After reading the definitions of the concepts, I picked up some and wrote them on a chart, and here are some of the results:

COLLABORATIVE LEARNING

COOPERATIVE LEARNING

Collaboration is a philosophy of interaction and personal lifestyle. -Collaborative learning is a personal philosophy, not just a classroom technique. In all situations where people come together in groups, it suggests a way of dealing with people which respects and highlights individual group members' abilities and contributions. (Panitz 1996) -Rockwood (1995) states: collaborative learning is connected to the social constructionist's view that knowledge is a social construct. -Collaborative learning is based on the idea that learning is a naturally social act in which the participants talk among themselves (Gerlach, 1994). It is through the talk that learning occurs.

Cooperation is a structure of interaction designed to facilitate the accomplishment of an end product or goal. - Cooperative learning is defined by a set of processes which help people interact together in order to accomplish a specific goal or develop an end product which is usually content specific. It is more directive than a collaborative system of governance and closely controlled by the teacher. (Panitz 1996) - Rockwood (1995) defines: Cooperative learning is the methodology of choice for foundational knowledge. - Cooperative learning involves students in a major task and gives responsibility to all the individual learner in the learning process.(Paulsen 2003)

Now, I have a clear idea about these methodologies and learning processes.

Here are some links, where we can find and read more about collaborative and cooperative learning; the first one is a slide share presentation that gives definitions, characteristics, comparisons and advantages about the concepts mentioned.

http://www.slideshare.net/carolzinhanep/webinar-1-9071080

http://celt.ust.hk/teaching-resources/cooperative-and-collaborative-learning

http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/deliberations/collaborative-learning/home.cfm