After reading this study, I have realized
that as future teachers we need to be well trained and well prepared to play a
real language teacher’s role. A part that caught my attention was the one that cites
the teacher’s perceptions towards assessment because there are many differences
between those teachers who have had formal training in language assessment and
those teachers who have not. In this
article, it is said that trained teachers take the assessment as an integral part
to lead students in the learning process because they think that
assessment is a tool to monitor the learning process and to encourage students
to learn; on the other hand teachers
with no training in language assessment tend to have a negative
perception of it because they don’t take assessment as a strategy to encourage
learning, they just do it because it is an easy way to grade students, or
because they have to do the assessment as a requirement of any
institution. As it is said bay the
author, Classroom assessment is an important tool to
collect information to know how well students are experiencing in the learning
process.
But there`s
a concern related to language assessment, Colombia is not an exception to this
problem because there are only two public universities that offer assessment
training to undergraduate programs and taking this into account it can be said
that if this situation does not change, our country will not have a real development
in the field of education. The fact here is that many teachers don’t use other assessment
tools, the majority of them only use tests, and those tests are used for wrong purposes
giving as a result an incomplete and wrong language learning process. This has
a negative influence in the Colombian educational system.
In my
opinion, I think that every teacher should have an active role in the
assessment process, because it changes in many ways how we teach, the way we
provide feedback, the way we prepare our classes and even our student’s
perceptions and conception related to education.
Hi, Julie, I completely agree with your entry, I think teachers in Colombia need and deserve more training in terms of assessment and evaluation. I guess that one of the problems is that the majority of people consider that to be a good teacher you need to have a good classroom management, to be fluent in the language, to have abilities when dealing with people and having the different theories of language learning in their minds, but, they don't consider assessment an important tool since "assigning grades" does not require training. We should start changing that perspective into our classroom, implementing the different alternative assessment tools we have already learn. Tell me now, according to your experience as a teacher, have you started to implement one of those yet? How was it?
ResponderEliminarHello girls, I agree with you, it is incredible that only two public universities offer assessment courses to undergraduate students, but it is really sad that majority universities which offer Licenciaturas programs do not offer assessment courses, that's the reason why our education is not really competitive in comparison with other countries. Besides, we as tachers not only have to give summative assessment but formative as well, and in addition to this a meaningful feedback, we can make the difference.
ResponderEliminarHi Milena, thanks for your comment and yes all wht you have said is true, I have know some teachers that strongly believe that a good teacher is the one that meets all the characteristics you have already mentioned and if you don't have those characteristics you are not seen as a teacher. Also, I have the necessity to mention something that recently happened to me and is that I was concudting an interview to a teacher and he told me that young teachers don't know anything about teaching because according to him, we, as young teachers try to change the "traditions of education and assessment". So, maybe for this and many other misconceptions our country is not as competititve as it should be in the field of education.
ResponderEliminarOn the other hand, at this moment I'm working with a small group of students and I have started to implement everyday journals (i have to say I took this idea from Raùl) as an assessment tool in order to evaluate their writing skills and althouhg it is an ongoing process I think it is a nice way for me to be aware of their writing process and also it is a better way for them because they don't feel threaten or afraid. I think there will be many other ways to assess, different from the traditional tests, but this is just the beginning, so let's wait and see what happens... :)
ResponderEliminarWell my dear Malbicyta, I don't know if I'm wrong but I think that maybe many of the Colombian Universities don't offer assessment training because they see it as something useless because as Milena has already said, maybe for them the only fact of "evaluating with traditional tests and grading students" is enouhg. It is somehting sad, yes, but I think it's a fact that can be changed, not now but I think it can change... :)
im sorry to disagree with you girls :) but i guess that language assessment training its not something new in fact it already exist in our university but with a different name , i guess the problem goes beyond that and it have to be more with the policies in the educational plces where teachers go to work after graduated, u know what i mean? i work full time and belive me there is nothing we can do in one day, it is abig process and as i said in my presentation the road is too long.
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ResponderEliminarHi Julie, I really liked your entry, specially, when you mentioned this: 'it is said that trained teachers take the assessment as an integral part to lead students in the learning process because they think that assessment is a tool to monitor the learning process and to encourage students to learn' I think, that summarized the whole text. We need to receive more training on assessment as it has been demonstrated in the majority of universities in Colombia. That's why we continue evaluating with tests instead of other great and meaningful alternatives.
ResponderEliminarAccording to your concluding paragraph, I would like to know how you could play an active role in the assessment processes.
Well Dianita as I said before, I think a good way to assess the learning process of the student is to monitor and try to follow the whole process, I think it something difficult if there are large amounts of students but I consider monitoring and observing what's going on helps a lot.
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