Despite it
is time-consuming, it is important to assess students. Last month (April), I carried out a written
evaluation, which was designed to measure progress in the target language with
the topics covered from March to April. The short listening activity was taken
into account as a listening comprehension quiz. I recorded my voice and tried
to sound a little different and included four speakers, and made mistakes on
purpose, because real life you might face to different accents. So I played the
audio 3 times and students had to complete a chart with all the information.
Finally I gave them another chance to check what they have done and played the
audio for the fourth time.
Regarding
the written test, students were asked to do reading comprehension text with a
picture as a reference in order to adapt material to their context. I used a
photo from my past students and wrote a real story about them. Students were
engaged to this activity due to the visuals and similarities to their life.
Finally I allowed my students to do peer correction and they went to the board
to participate and fill in the blanks the same activities from the test.
I like your idea for the reading comprehension: you're clearly taking steps to enable the students to relate to their own identities in the target language, as you hihglighted in an earlier post.
ReplyDeleteHow did the listening activity go? Do you think that making recordings is more appropriate than using authentic listening materials?
Thank you for the comments,
ReplyDeleteThe activity was a success, they feel confident because they listened common names. Well it might seem that something is wrong about recording my own material, but I think it is a good idea, and also including students to record dialogues that they identify with is much better to start teaching a foreign language. So they can feel proud about their identity.
On the other hand, I don´t want to say that using authentic material in the context is not good, but by the moment in order to engage them with the L2, using contextualized recordings is the first step. After they feel more confident, searching authentic material that could be meaningful for them will be part of the lesson. I know they need to be exposed to different accents or what we called Standard English.