Shela Adams: Voicethread for Final Lesson Plans

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Testing in the L2 classroom

I think this chapter put into words how I have come to perceive tests.  I think that, having been an L2 student for more than a decade now, I have seen my share of different kinds of tests.  Also, teaching a Spanish 1 level class now has reintroduced me to some kinds of tests I have not seen in a while.  I think that when I read chapter 9, I found myself associating achievement tests with lower level L2 classes and proficiency tests with higher level L2 classes.  I think this is because in lower level classes there is a lot more classroom learning and the teacher is much more involved in the students' learning.  The teacher therefore has to give these achievement tests to see whether or not the students are comprehending what is being taught in the classroom.  With these lower level classes, the students are not interacting much with people outside of the classroom, and they are not experiencing the L2 culture except through culture lessons in the classroom.  This leads to a partially sheltered learning experience.  This is not necessarily a bad thing.  I think it is important for beginner L2 learners to have a good introduction to their new language in a classroom because it allows for a reduced anxiety level, one of  Krashen's points.  I think that once the students have a sufficient understanding of the structure and tone of the new language, they are more receptive to outside-the-classroom learning experiences.  This is where proficiency based testing comes into play.  Once a student is confident enough to use the new language in less formal settings and even outside of the classroom, they can begin to improve their L2 in ways they could not have done with classroom learning.  When their L2 begins to improve outside of the classroom, it becomes necessary to decrease, but not do away with, achievement testing and move towards proficiency testing.  Proficiency tests are designed to test the overall comprehension general competence in the new language.  This means that students can begin to increase their competence outside of the classroom, and improve their overall control of the new language. 
I think proficiency testing, although very useful, can be difficult to do inside of the classroom.  It is relatively difficult to perform a proficiency test in a class because it usually involves an oral component.  Testing oral proficiency can be time consuming and requires substantial effort on the part of the teacher as well as the student.  Proficiency tests are designed to test the overall competence, so they should probably be administered before or after a class, so as to test the incoming and outgoing competence. 

Classroom Testing

After reading Chapter 9, I definitely thought of testing in a different way. Actually, maybe not differently, but it became clear to me what good tests consist of.  That is, some of the activities mentioned are what I see my cooperating teacher do on her tests.  I assumed that all she was testing for was general grammatical understanding, but now I see that it is much more.  In fact, I have seen her tests work as a way to judge overall language proficiency.  Recently, students took an exam and did not do well on it.  They struggled where they had to show their general understanding and provide the meaning of certain things.  My cooperating teacher took this as a sign that more time must be spent learning those concepts.  Students could produce the formulaic answers, but when it was put into the larger context, their understanding was lost.  This if anything was proof to me that varied testing does work in regards to student proficiency.

The only concern I had when reading this chapter was how do you know when you are asking students to do too much on a test?  I think that they do need to be challenged and many strategies should be incorporated into testing, but what if a teacher is asking too much?  I find this difficult sometimes because we are the ones that know the language.  We might assume students can put things into context that they cannot yet.  I suppose this could be a process of trial and error.  If students are unable to answer open ended questions or pick the appropriate verb from the work bank, then perhaps the teacher needs to back track and make sure they are teaching the students strategies to using context.  I think that teachers need to make sure they emphasize the importance of overall meaning rather than specific grammar points if this kind of testing is going to be utilized.

Language Classroom Testing

Chapter 9 on Classroom Testing was a very interesting read. I learned that it is important to focus your assessment on the goals you have set for your students and that we need to move away from testing strictly grammar points by using isolated-sentence formats. Although it takes much more effort to develop a test that can fully evaluate much more than correct grammar usage, as future teachers we need to create assessments that encompass as many skills as possible. This chapter covers several types of assessments that would be the most appropriate for reading and writing, oral performance, and listening comprehension. A variety of different kinds of assessments may yield better results than just using one type, which is of what the “hybrid” approach aims to accomplish. I thought that it was interesting that this approach combines specific features of language while having the student use it in a certain context. By integrating lexical, grammatical, sociolinguistic, and discourse features into the assessment, it not only allows for a more cumulative evaluation but it seems more accurate in reflecting that students’ ability to use the language correctly and effectively in real situations.

Speaking from personal experience, my language exams at the university level have always been very concentrated on reading comprehension and writing skills. At this advanced level, the emphasis is on overall proficiency and how well you can use the language to convey your ideas. However, we are very rarely tested on grammar or vocabulary because it is assumed that we know how to use it, which we should at 600+ levels. I also have not had an official oral exam here at UNH; I think we get sufficient practice in class as discussions have always counted towards participation grades. In high school it was a different story because we were just learning the basics of the language so we usually had those single-sentence, matching vocabulary exams that didn’t test much except your ability to memorize a list of vocabulary, how to conjugate verbs, and which tense to use in a given situation. We only had one oral exam that I can remember and it was reciting a poem we had to memorize so I’m not really sure how that was supposed to help us. I think that the trends throughout my language classes show that the kind of exam a teacher gives you depends a lot on what level you are on because, realistically, the higher your proficiency, the more versatile the language exam can be because you should be able to demonstrate more communicative skills. But at the same time, I also think it is important to integrate all skills into an exam regardless of what level you are at because you need to take ownership of your learning and start working on all communicative skills as early as possible.

Classroom Testing

While reading the chapter on testing, I have questioned whether testing in the form of an instructional, sit down test, is appropriate for students. I think that there are other ways to monitor students progress throughout the classroom. I think that through creative projects that are not only research based, but must have creative, student produced content, teachers can monitor the students use of grammar, vocabulary, and culture and its progression. These projects can be based on written or oral, presentation projects. I think that these projects would better put content that students are learning into more real life presentations. All tests or quizzes throughout the semester should always be cumulative. Some students tend to learn the content for a specific unit only for an assessment and forget about it afterwards. I think that keeping tests/quizzes/project cumulative, this will alleviate the problem of just learning content for the exam.
Tests are definitely a way to show if a teacher is teaching content well or not. If students are scoring well on the test, the teacher is either effectively teaching the materials or the test is designed too easily for students. I think that students should always be challenged when taking tests-- there should always be a few questions that are "tricks",  that can really push students to use the knowledge that they have learned outside of the traditional format that they have learned it. I believe that effective question types for students would be ones where they are producing their own content-- translating sentences or summarizing authentic materials that they have read. Multiple choice questions or true/false questions should never be used when testing for grammar or vocabulary.
Administrative tests, or placement/assessment tests, can be used for teacher's purposes at the beginning and end of the class. Teachers can use these general tests, like the SAT II or college placement tests to see how well their aims of the classroom are reflecting in the students overall knowledge of the language. Teachers can use these at the beginning of the class to see what topics students are struggling with and what he should better focus and spend more time with. If all the students are scoring really well with the use of the future or the conditional, there is no point for the teacher to waste the instructional time in the classroom working on these. At the end of the class, teachers can use these to see what the students are still struggling with and that can help to mold the lesson plans for the next semester or school year.

Testing

I think that Chapter 9 does an excellent job of demonstrating the different ways that foreign language teachers need to test students' knowledge.  It is important to remember that students are not taking tests based on their ability to guess what a teacher is going to put on the test or their memory skills.  Tests should assess students' ability to comprehend a specific grammatical (or another skill) in which they are learning, that helps them achieve becoming one step closer to proficiency.

Specifically, in one of my former classes, I have thought a lot about the testing process.  In this class, we often had weekly grammar exams that covered different topics that we were specifically learning about.  In these exams, I always felt that random knowledge was being tested opposed to actual understanding of the material and the student's ability to demonstrate their understanding in a larger context.  In one specific exam that I can recall, we were going to be tested on our ability to memorize a list of over 35 phrases using Por and Para.  These were important to learn, but the way we were tested did not help us demonstrate our knowledge.  In this exam, there were about 10 phrases that were chosen that were written in English by the teacher.  Then, the students had to translate the phrases into Spanish using the memorized list of phrases.  I remember being able to identify a few, but not a significant amount of phrases and I earned a low grade on the test.  I was shocked that the teacher really felt that our ability to memorize phrases represented our actual knowledge.  This made me think about how I want to test my students' understanding in the future.  I want to be sure that the tests directly relate and correspond with actual information and understanding from studying, reading or paying attention in class.

This whole experience was interesting to think about from a teacher's perspective.  I can see how the teacher felt that this could be a good test, but the teacher did not fully think through how the students could study for it.  As the chapter indicates, students should not be sitting, memorizing random facts or words that have nothing more than an arbitrary meaning in their larger understanding of the subject or topic.  Our testing needs to accurately represent the material that we actually have taught our students what we actually want them to understand.  We need to recognize what a student will actually gain if arbitrary concepts are memorized.

Testing in Foreign Languages

I think that multiple forms of testing need to be incorporated in the foreign language classroom in order to ensure that students are learning as much as possible in every area of learning a language: reading, writing, speaking and listening. After reading Chapter 9 and about the different methods of testing in the foreign language classroom, what came to my mind were all the examples of teachers I had previously had in foreign language classes that only utilized one or two of these forms of testing. For example, in my high school French classes my teacher put very little emphasis on oral proficiency and did not test us on listening comprehension or our competence in speaking. When I reached the university level and began taking French classes, I did very well and placed into French 503 on the placement exam, but when I began the class I was shocked at how far behind I was in terms of listening and speaking because it was something that I had hardly been tested on. I could read and write French very well, but speaking it and listening to a native speaker and comprehending what they were saying was very difficult for me because I did not have that extra practice and testing in that area. In order to be effective teachers, it is completely necessary that we incorporate all these different areas of foreign language proficiency into testing.

One thing that I really agreed with in Chapter 9 was the importance of not just including open-ended questions or just grammar questions, but a mixture of both. Both skills are necessary and crucial to testing in the foreign language classroom to measure how much of the grammar, sentence structure and vocabulary that a student knows (such as with fill in the blank grammatical questions) and to measure how much of the content and context the student is able to master (such as with open-ended questions that leave the student to hypothesize and formulate their own coherent sentences and answer). In my beginning Spanish classes in high school, almost all of the tests and quizzes that I had to take were simple grammatical tests where we just had to fill in the correct verb conjugation to fit the sentence or circle the correct vocabulary word that completed a phrase. While this is a good skill to learn, it left me and many other students in my classes totally unprepared for when we reached Spanish III and suddenly we were expected to read Spanish novels and write papers every week about various topics and were often tested using open-ended questions to prove that we had comprehended the main themes or stories we had learned about that week. Based on the experiences that I have had in my own foreign language learning, I think it is completely necessary that teachers integrate many aspects of foreign language learning into testing so as to best measure their students’ proficiency level in that language. 

Testing in the Foreign Language Classroom

           I find the idea of classroom testing very interesting, and I thought Chapter 9 described some really neat ideas for the improvement of foreign language tests. Testing methods interest me for many different reasons. First because I am currently a student and I currently take tests, second because I have been a student ever since I can remember and I remember many different tests, and third because I want to be a teacher who will be the one to create tests! As a student and a prospective teacher, tests and exams interest me because they are supposed to serve as ways for students to show teachers what they know. Tests are not supposed to give students nervous break-downs, they are not supposed to test material not covered in that specific class, and the information is not supposed to be immediately forgotten after the test is over. Although these things are not supposed to happen, I’m sure we’ve all seen (and/or experienced ourselves) times when instances like these have occurred.  

            Thinking back to all of my high school Spanish tests, they were all boring, grammar-based tests. I did one oral test when I was a sophomore, but since it took place outside of the classroom and with the 17-year-old TA, it turned out to be mostly English. Like we read about in Chapter 9, I think that traditional language tests need to be revamped to actually test how well students can use the language. If students are memorizing weird acronyms to help them remember words, or if they’re making up other mind games to aid with memorization, chances are those students are going to forget those acronyms and those mind games as soon as they pass in their tests. If you’re taking human anatomy and need to memorize the names of all of the bones in the body, or if you’re taking a history class and need to memorize the dates that all of the Roman emperors served then yes, memorization mind games might really help you. But if you’re studying a language, I don’t believe that students should feel they need to memorize tons of material. I believe that if students are receiving enough good, comprehensible input each class, that knowledge should (for the most part) allow them to do well on each test. I’ve always been a big believer in the idea that test material should not come as any surprise to students, and I think test material should look and be very similar to activities done regularly in class. In my opinion, language tests should test the material covered in class, and at the same time allow for students to show any and all of the language that they know. Like we read in our book, I like the idea of open-ended questions because they allow students to produce what they know. I know an open-ended response question in a novice Spanish class might seem a little intimidating, but it’s the teacher’s job to scaffold the test questions appropriately based on the level of the class, and to put the students at ease. Obviously you wouldn’t ask a novice Spanish student to write their opinions on a complex topic because they simply wouldn’t have enough knowledge to do that. However, you could have an oral interview with that Spanish learner and, while maintaining appropriate expectations, ask them simple questions that have been explained in class (ex. ¿Cuál clase tiene usted después de esta clase de español? ¿Te la gusta?) and the student could elaborate or not as they see fit. I think that by using more open-ended responses (both written and spoken), and more authentic materials (maps, recipes, stories, etc.) in language tests (and in instruction in general!), students will learn a lot more of the language, and teachers will be able to more clearly see what their students know.

Before my first exam in Spanish 503 here at UNH, I remember asking my professor if the exam was cumulative and she said language exams are always cumulative, and it’s true! Language learners should not just be tested on whether or not they can conjugate the verb “comer” properly in a single-sentence. When it comes time for a test, students should be encouraged to use and show everything that they hear and see and think in class to truly show the teacher their level of language proficiency.

            

Teaching culture in the L2 classroom

Teaching culture is a good way for students to learn about the language they are studying.  It allows them to make connections and comparisons with their own language and culture.  I think teaching culture is a very important part of teaching L2, but I think that it is difficult in lower level classes.  I think it is easy to teach some parts of culture to beginning L2 learners, such as food, holidays, and sports (with popular teams being a natural continuation).  However, I think teaching culture also means including dialect differences, register changes, current events, and history, all of which could be difficult for beginner L2 learners.  This means that in the lower level L2 classroom, culture should be something that is not very concrete yet, but rather something fluid that is always changing.  A good example is something I have experienced in the classroom.  When our textbook covered Colombia, it limited the culture portion of the chapter to the various geographical regions, cultural diversity within the population, and some key, legal, exports.  This means that the students learned a few general facts about Colombia, but did not learn about the dangerous politics, violent current events, or bloody history of that country.  This is a good example of my point because these things could be a lot to handle for a new L2 learner who would need not only to process these things, but to understand the language behind them to truly grasp the culture they were being taught. 
As stated in the book, teaching "facts" about a culture's current events, politics, and even history is difficult because these things can change dramatically depending on the situation in that particular country.  Current events, which are an important part of learning about a new culture, are also difficult to teach because to be current, they need to be happening as they are being taught.  This becomes difficult for beginner L2 learners especially because they may need to learn a lot of new vocab just to keep up with the stories, making it harder for them to entirely understand the events and the cultures they are tied to. 
Another problem stated in the book is that it is difficult to dispel stereotypes when teaching culture because, unless the curriculum calls for it, there may not be enough time to go in depth about everything that is taught, leading to the creation of stereotypes, which can be very detrimental to L2 learners.  The book says that this "information-only" approach "provides no means of accounting for cultural variation," which is essential for culture learning in L2 students. 
Another problem with teaching culture in the classroom is that some students may become too focused on the culture they have studied, and become ignorant to other parts of culture or other cultures entirely.  A student who has learned a lot about Mexican culture and little about Argentinian culture could find themselves at a huge disadvantage if they ever found themselves in Argentina.  Those two countries, although often lumped together as "Latin American" in some contexts, are very different in culture as well as in language itself. 
So, i think that although it is important to learn about the cultures of the new language, I think that it is also important to know that the difficulties that come along with teaching culture are substantial.  Teaching culture to beginner L2 learners should be very different than teaching culture to advanced L2 learners. 

Teaching/Learning L2 Culture

To me, culture is the distinct and collective ideas, values, and characteristics of a particular group in society. This can be broken down into many categories that are typical of that particular culture, such as food, religion, art, music, habits, etc. I believe that all cultures are also followed by many assumptions or stereotypes that may or may not accurately reflect the lifestyles and beliefs of the group. This is one of the more important reasons that I think we should teach L2 culture; to get a better understanding of the culture that is followed by a particular language which often times can have its own given reputation before we have the chance to learn about it from a legitimate source. Another reason why I believe we should teach L2 culture is to better understand the language in general. More often than not, there are words that cannot be translated from one language to another because they specifically reflect a part of that culture that cannot be shared or properly defined with another language. I think it’s important for children to learn that the language that follows a culture is very important because it allows us and others to express thoughts and ideas in ways that are unique to that group of society. Therefore, the language and culture go hand-in-hand and both should be taught equally in the classroom.

            I think it’s possible to teach L2 culture in the classroom setting – to a certain extent. There is a great deal of knowledge about a culture that can be shared within a classroom environment that comes from different sources such as textbooks, media portrayals, news reports, etc. However, I feel that there is only so much that can be said about a culture and it would be much more beneficial to learn in that culture. Personally, being immersed in the Spanish culture during my study abroad experience really allowed me to see first-hand what true Spanish culture is and from that real perspective I was able to form my own opinions about it. This same reflection can be done after reading, for example a textbook article on a culture, but it probably will not have the same effect on that person if they are not experiencing the culture in real life. Cultural immersion seems to be a long-lasting learning experience even after the individual has gone back home. Will I forget what I learned about cultural aspects of Spain from a class lecture? Yes, probably. But will I forget what I experienced while living in Granada? Absolutely not. Not only is the experience unforgettable for most people, it is much more interesting than watching a documentary on cultural lifestyles. So, to answer this question, yes I believe that it is possible to teach L2 culture in a classroom but personally I believe the real learning happens on those cultures’ grounds. The classroom itself is really the only limitation. Relating this back to the five C’s of language learning, it is important to integrate Culture with Community, meaning that the learner needs to get out of the classroom and into the real world to learn from experiences and evaluate the different perspectives they may come across.