In educational contexts, most of the teachers do not have a clear concept of what evaluation is. As a matter of fact, they wrongly evaluate students. In the following paper, I will explain the term of evaluation according to different authors' quotes, the importance of giving valuable feedback to students and the use of technology to apply tests.

QUOTES

'Interpretation of evidence', is a critical aspect of the evaluation process. The mere collection of evidence does not by itself constitute evaluation work. The information gathered for the evaluation of an educational programme must be carefully interpreted. Sometimes, un-interpreted evidence is presented to indicate the presence (or absence) of quality in an educational venture. Bradfield, J. M., & Moredock, H. S. (1957).

Evaluation is the assignment of symbols to the phenomenon, in order to characterize the worth or value of a phenomenon, usually with reference to some social, cultural or scientific standards. Beeby, C. E. (1977).

Evaluation is a judgment of value with a view to action.

In the following video, I am talking about the concepts that are mentioned in more detail.

As a conclusion evaluation is not just gathering information or give a score. We have to evaluate our students every day in different clever ways like make them perform various types of activities such as mind maps, portfolios or videos, where they can apply different kinds of abilities: communication, critical thinking, creativity, etc.

Conceptual map

REFERENCES

Bradfield, J. M., & Moredock, H. S. (1957). Measurement and evaluation in education.              Macmillan (NY).

Beeby, C. E. (1977). The meaning of evaluation. Current issues in education, 4(1),                   68-78.

Alan C. Bugbee Jr. & Frank M. Bernt (1990) Testing by Computer, Journal of Research            on Computing in Education, 23:1, 87-100, DOI: 10.1080/08886504.1990.10781945

February 20th. 2019

COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

INTRODUCTION: As humans beings, we have the capacity to express our thoughts according to the necessity of communicative something. The use of specific words for different types of contexts. Speak the language, know what to say, how and when appropriately. 

DEFINITION OF COMPETENCE: The quality or state of having sufficient knowledge, judgment, skill, or strength (as for a particular duty or in particular respect). DEFINITION OF COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE: The ability to use the language for real communication purposes in truly communicative settings. 

In the next video, there is a more detailed explanation about what is communicative competence.

All in all, in my opinion, we born with this special capacity to acquired knowledge, we are perfectly designed to learn anything from the context in which are living, an example of this is language, we started just with babbling and then with a full language, of course, this is possible with a lot of practice.

Conceptual map

REFERENCES
Canale, M. & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second           language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1,1-47
Hymes, Dell H. (1972). “On communicative competence”. In Pride, J.B.; Holmes,                          J. Sociolinguistics: selected readings. Harmondsworth: Penguin. pp. 269–293.    
Mary E. Diez (1984) Communicative Competence: An Interactive Approach, Annals                       International Communication Association, 8:1, 56-79.

March 3rd. 2019.

OBJECTIVE AND SUBJECTIVE EVALUATION

Teachers can evaluate their students in different forms, for example, evaluation could be objective or subjective. Objective evaluation: Teachers grade on quantifiable evidence like the number of questions a student answered correctly on a test. Subjective evaluation: Teachers evaluate the qualities of a student’s performance like interest in the subject, behavior, etc.

In this video a more detailed explanation of each type of evaluation will be made. Furthermore, the difference between them.

As a conclusion, we can evaluate our students in both ways, but in my point of view, applying subjective evaluation is less stressful for students because they learn without any pressure and they don´t memorize information to present a test.

REFERENCES

Renner, Rebecca. (2018, August 15). Objective Vs. Subjective Evaluation Criteria.

        Synonym. Retrieved from https://classroom.synonym.com/objective-vs-subjective-

        evaluation-criteria-8265343.html

April 24th. 2019

WHAT DOES ASSESSMENT MEAN TO YOU?

In educational context all the time we are judging students' and teachers' performance because we have the necessity to improve it. However, we do not know how. Assessment and evaluation most of the time are misunderstood concepts by teachers. Consequently, students are poorly evaluated. In the following paper, we will write about different points of view related to what assessment and evaluation are. Furthermore formative assessment, summative assessment, testing, diagnostic test, progress test, and achievement test. In addition, there is a video which explains with more detail about these concepts.

On the one hand, we have four different definitions of assessment. Firstly, is defined as any method used to better understand the current knowledge that a student possesses. This implies that assessment can be as simple as a teachers' subjective judgment based on a simple observation of student performance, or as a complex as a five hours standardized test. J.L. Herman (1991)

Secondly, according to David Boud (2000), assessment is the process of the documenting knowledge skills, attitude and beliefs, usually in measurable terms, the goal of assessment is to make an improvement, as opposed to simply being the judge. In an educational context, assessment is the process of describing, collecting, recording, scoring and interpreting information about learning. 

Thirdly, the purpose of assessment is to gather relevant information about student performance or progress or to determine student interests to make judgments about their learning process. After receiving this information, teachers can reflect on each student’s level of achievement, as well as on specific inclinations of the group, to customize their teaching plans. ( Matthew Lynch, 2016). 

Lastly, assessment is the systematic collection and analysis of information to improve student learning and program viability. Assessment is “…the process of gathering evidence to make inferences about…how students are progressing toward specific goals” (National Standards, a quote from Pennington, 2001,p. 206). 

On the other hand, evaluation can be understood in different ways, depending on the needs, purposes or objectives of the educational institution, such as the control and measurement, the prosecution of the validity of the objective. From this perspective, it is possible to determine in which educational situations it is pertinent to make assessment a measurement or the combination of both concepts. (Mora Vargas, Ana Isabel, 2004). 

Many times, both ‘evaluation’ and ‘assessment’ are confused concepts because it seems they are the same, however, evaluation is when teacher just judge students’ performance (final product) and give them feedback to improve the quality of the product, while during assessment process teachers focus on the learning procedure by observing student’s performance, besides give feedback for improvement. 

These are our personal definitions: 

Assessment is the process in which we can review the process of something providing feedback according to specific criteria in order to improve quality to have a better product. (Corona, América A., 2019)

Assessment in an educational context is when the teacher observes student’s performance in order to give them valuable feedback, this is based on a task given by the teacher. (Mendez Ana B., 2019)

Assessment is a process where teachers collect information every single day during the course about students’ learning in order to make improvements with the proper feedback. (Velazquez Beatriz., 2019)

There are many uses of assessment in the educational system, two of them are: 

Formative assessment is in-process evaluations of student learning that are typically administered multiple times during a unit, course, or academic program. The general purpose of formative assessment is to give educators in-process feedback about what students are learning or not learning so that instructional approaches, teaching materials, and academic support can be modified accordingly. Formative assessments are usually not scored or graded, and they may take a variety of forms, from more formal quizzes and assignments to informal questioning techniques and in-class discussions with students. 

Summative assessment is used to evaluate student learning at the conclusion of a specific instructional period—typically at the end of a unit, course, semester, program, or school year. Summative assessments are typically scored and graded tests, assignments, or projects that are used to determine whether students have learned what they were expected to learn during the defined instructional period. 

In other words, Formative assessment is the process of checking regularly how much a student understands about a topic and give the proper feedback to improve learning. For instance, when a teacher is teaching a lesson, he or she is going to stop an ask a question, depending on how student answer this question, the teacher will continue teaching or get back and teach again. 

Summative assessment sums up what a student has achieved at the end of a period. It has a point value. For example, end-of-term of midterm exams which are applied to students and teachers give them a score. 

‘Testing’, which is a completely different process. This term refers to finding out how well something works. In terms of human beings, testing tells what level of knowledge or skill has been acquired. We have to take into account different kind of tests whose are applied in different moments with different purposes during the course (diagnosis, progress, achievement, and proficiency). 

Diagnostic tests measure students' understanding of a subject area or skills base. Teachers typically administer diagnostics for reading and math skills, using the results to provide remedial instruction or place students within appropriately leveled classes. Many content teachers, though, give formative assessments to gauge what knowledge students bring to class. (the classroom, 2019) 

Progress tests measure the student's improvement in relation to their syllabus. These tests only contain items which the students have been taught in class. There are two types of progress tests: short-term and long-term. Short-term progress tests check how well students have understood or learned the material covered in specific units or chapters. Long-term progress tests are also called Course Tests because they check the learners progress over the entire course. (good look exams, 2018. 

Achievement test evaluates a learner's understanding of a specific course or study programme. It can be compared with proficiency tests, which measure a learner's level of language, diagnostic tests, which identify areas learners need to work on, and a prognostic test, which tries to predict a learner's ability to complete a course or take an exam. ( Frost Richard, British Council, Turkey, 2017). 

Proficiency test The purpose of any proficiency test is to find out whether you have already got the knowledge and the skills that are taught in a particular course, even though you have not taken the course. 

That is, all the different types of testing are specifically designed to evaluate certain abilities in students, depending on when and how these tests are taken.

IMPLICATIONS FOR REALITY

Furthermore, all these concepts, in real life are completely different. Perhaps we do not realize how important assessment, evaluation, and testing are. If a teacher pays attention to the student’s performance, he or she will understand the necessities of each student in order to help them to improve. Some examples are:

- Your students can not understand a topic even when you (as a teacher) have been explaining it many times and you don’t realize this problem because you do not assess them frequently.

- In most of the courses, teachers just teach a topic one time and pass to the next one, even though, students did not understand the previous one.

- Students give more importance to scores than meaningful learning.

- Teachers and students see ‘evaluation’, ’ and ‘testing’ as the same thing.

- Teachers pretend that everybody “knows” what they teach, however when they apply a test the results are totally different and students suffer the consequences.

All in all, when students fail an exam they are frustrated and teachers are disappointed, teachers must know the differences between assessment, evaluation, and testing in order to improve learning, not just give a good or bad grade.

Conceptual map

REFERENCES:

R.J. Dietel, J.L. Herman, and R.A. Knuth. NCREL, Oak Brook, 1991.

David Boud (2000) Sustainable Assessment: Rethinking assessment for the learning                 society, Studies in Continuing Education, 22:2, 151-167, DOI: 10.1080/713695728

[…] https://www.theedadvocate.org/real-purpose-assessments-education/ […]

Mora Vargas, Ana Isabel, La evaluación educativa: Concepto, períodos y modelos . Revista     Electrónica "Actualidades Investigativas en Educación" [en linea] 2004, 4 (julio-           diciembre)  [Fecha de consulta: 28 de abril de 2019] Disponible en:                     <http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=44740211> ISSN 

Frost Richard, British Council, Turkey, 2017

BENEMÉRITA UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE PUEBLA
FACULTAD DE LENGUAS

LESSON  PLAN

Teacher’s name: Beatriz Velazquez

Feb/21/19

Adults: 20 years old

Level: B1

Time: 60 minutes

Method : Direct method.  Ss figure out the grammatical rules themselves, classroom instructions are in the target language and demonstrations are used.

Grammar point : The correct use of idioms

Topic: Ss are able to understand how the language works when they communicate with native speakers

Linguistic content:  Understand the figurative meaning of idioms

Evaluation: Teacher checks if students acquire the new knowledge

WARM UP “Hot seat”  the group will be divided in two teams making a horseshoe, a seat will be placed in the middle and a Ss who represents the team will sit down facing them. Teacher shows pictures and the team must say things related to the picture in order to elicit the word. Once the student guesses correctly, teacher will show another picture. Continue until the time runs out (5 min. per team.) Eliciting Extracting information.  Current knowledge on the topic.  Ask students if they know why is literal meaning and figurative meaning Led in  (Presentation)                                                                      Teacher shows a book and students read the definition of the idiom, figurative and literal meaning, then teacher shows (12) flashcards with idioms. (Barking up the wrong tree, don’t cry over spilt milk,every cloud has a silver lining, hit the nail on the head, let the cat  out of the bag, the elephant in the room, the ball is in your court, a penny for your thoughts, a perfect storm, when pigs fly, to feel under the water, in cold blood.  Teacher shows another set of the same idioms where they have what the idiom means, students have to read them. At the end, Teacher shows only pictures about idioms and students have to tell what idiom is. New vocabulary : spilt, court, penny, lining Controlled practice                                                                           Students make teams of four and write a short story using as many idioms as they can.  Then they read their stories to the class Freer Practice Power point presentation. Students will read the meaning that appears in each slide and then try to say the idiom to                                                        wich refer it (to help them each slide come with sound according to the idiom) Review: Time check/if students understood all the concepts taught

TIME 10 Minutes 5 Minutes 15 Minutes 10 Minutes 10 Minutes 10 Minutes

SKILL Speaking Speaking Reading Speaking Writing Speaking Listening Reading Speaking Listening Speaking

AIDS   Pictures Flashcards Blown-up book Powerpoint

EXAM LINK

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScDkMwQs-sWbFxw-9OQCqfWUplVfH1r4dptJ74hMxQlUTJYcQ/viewform