Reflection - UNIT 2

Rodrìguez Pintle Eric

Reflection about the UNIT 2

          The unit has been very interesting; I have learned that not only tests can evaluate learner’s performance, also the daily effort and a continuous positive attitude towards the subject.

Now I know how to assess students in the two different ways, which are informal and formal.

These tools are very useful when teaching, in my opinion, informal assessment should be considered as important as formal assessment (Tests, final works, etc.) because it shows us the development of our students.

I really like the idea of using an assessment plan each time it is possible to do, because we have a concrete knowledge of how the group is dealing with the course. So I would use it very often.

This unit was entertaining and informative, the topics were not complicated and the reading materials were excellent.



Activities and Instruments

Rodrìguez Pintle Eric

Activities and instruments

INFORMAL ASSESSMENT

Weight: 45%

A)    Activities

Speaking:

1-      Students have to present themselves to the class. (Name, address, nationality, etc.)

2-      They must say the name of the person that is being described. (See Reading – activity 1)

15%

Writing:

1-      All the students are going to write down the most important information about their classmates’ presentation.

15%

Reading:

1-      Every student will read the information that they wrote, but only about one of their classmates and without saying the name of the person.

15%

Evaluation

5 points: He/she has no problems in writing, speaking, or reading.

4 points:  He/she has few mistakes in writing, in fluency, or reading.

3 points: Struggled when making sentences, no very good fluency, has considerable errors when reading.

2 points: The student does not know the grammar, cannot express complete ideas, and difficulties to read.

1 point: Student has no grammar knowledge, cannot express complete sentences, and does not know the pronunciation of the written words. But he/she tried.

0 points: Student has no grammar knowledge, cannot express complete sentences, does not know the pronunciation of the written words, and did not try at all.

EXAMPLE

Name of the student:	Speaking	Writing	Reading	Final evaluation	Observations:
Victoria Castillo	5	5	5	45%	Great writing, speaking, and reading skills.
Luca Mazzeo	4	3	3	30%	Has some troubles in reading and writing, he needs to practice more his grammar.
Hans Ackerman	0	2	1	9%	Does not show interest. Needs to study grammar and practice pronunciation, fluency, and reading.

How to evaluate:

For each less point on a skill the final grade will reduce on 3%

Informal Assessment Plan

Rodrìguez Pintle Eric

Assessment Plan

The next assessment plan will show us how the students improved their four skills of the second language learning during the course in the classroom. The aspects that will be evaluated are linguistic and non-linguistic.

Linguistic Factors	Non-Linguistic Factors
Speaking aspects: ·         Fluency ·         Vocabulary ·         Intonation ·         Relevance ·         Discussions ·         Tone ·         Pronunciation	This characteristics will be taken into account on every class of the course ·         Attitude ·         Effort ·         Involvement ·         Frequency of participation ·         Organization ·         Attendance ·         Disposition ·         Group work
Listening aspects: ·         Comprehension ·         Listening for specific information ·         Discriminating sounds (pay attention only to what is relevant) ·         Accuracy ·         Distinguish pronunciation between similar words. ·         Identify the main idea of a discourse or discussion ·         Guessing meaning of unknown words in a dialogue
Reading aspects: ·         Use of skills for reading: 1.      Scanning 2.      Skimming 3.      Predicting 4.      Previewing 5.      Questioning ·         Fluency ·         Group reading ·         Individual reading ·         Silent reading ·         Level of comprehension when reading in class
Writing aspects: ·         Reading reports ·         Essays ·         Group work short composition (in the classroom) ·         Individual short compositions (in the classroom) ·         Brief activities in the classroom: 1.      Fill in the blanks 2.      Complete the sentence 3.      Dictation ·         Homework

English course

Level 1

UNIT 1 Nice to meet you!

1.1   Introducing yourself.

Learning objectives: Students will learn how to introduce themselves in the target language with the common expressions of English (give name, birth date, occupation, address, age, and nationality). Besides, they must be able to ask this information to another person. The present tense is going to be the main grammatical objective.

1.2   Introducing others.

Learning objectives: Learners have to know how to introduce someone else, by saying the occupation, address, age, nationality, etc. of another person. The present tense will be applied with the different pronouns using vocabulary that they already know and new vocabulary.

1.3   Asking for a person’s information.

Learning objectives: The students will be able to ask for their classmates’ information through small group activities. The main objective is the question form with the verb to be.

INFORMAL ASSESSMENT

What will be informal assessed in a classroom situation?

In informal assessment we will focus on what is performed during the class, such as speaking skills, and reading skills that show us how our students are achieving the language.

Reading skills will be evaluated through reading group, silent reading, and applying activities to develop skimming and scanning.

Speaking will be evaluated in the class discussions, students’ participation, coral drills, and role plays.

Also, we have to evaluate the non-linguistic aspects, and one of the most important is the attitude, which will determine how often a student participates in the classroom, and how he will work with his/her classmates.

Do not forget that an appropriate atmosphere is needed in order to students feel comfortable in the classroom and, so, they take risks to practice the language.

FORMAL ASSESSMENT

What will be formal assessed in a classroom situation?

In this part of the evaluation, we will focus on writing, grammar, speaking, and vocabulary. The tools we are going to use to evaluate each of these aspects are:

Writing: This skill will be evaluated trough multiple choice activities and a short text written by the student.

Grammar: By making a short story using determined tenses in the writing. For example: “Write a brief story of why do you like English using the present tense.”

Speaking: Through an individual oral test.

Vocabulary: Use exercises of filing in gaps, focusing on specific vocabulary, the one that is going to be evaluated.

What would be the weight?

Informal assessment                40%

·        Reading skills                10%

·        Attitude                          10%

·        Speaking                        10%

·        Participation                  10%

Formal assessment                   60%

·        Tests                              30%

·        Grammar                       10%

·        Writing                          10%

·        Reading                         10%

Informal Assessment

Rodrìguez Pintle Eric

The informal assessment is one of the ways a teacher has to evaluate his/her students’ work in the classroom. This technique requires a constant evaluating process which involves the continuous observation to our students. The fact that informal assessment is very useful, it does not mean that we will stop using formal assessment, because is not always suitable to assess our students every day, sometimes we won’t be able to do it, therefore we need a combination of both kinds of assessment. When assessing, we have to observe the 4 skills and see which is the most difficult or which one is the one that students struggle more with. With this information we must create a strategy to improve those weaknesses