Lesson 22 Self-assessment

Lesson 22

Self-assessment

You spend all day covering topics like grammar, expressions, idioms and phrasal verbs, only to slap your students with quizzes, monthly assessments and the big, bad, end-of-course examination.

Of course, all of this seems necessary in order to prepare students for that fatal, super-final official exam that’ll tell them and the world at large just how well they’ve learned English.

This routine where students study and teachers evaluate might seem standard for a traditional learning experience, but for an ESL class, it leaves out a very important part of language learning: self assessment

The Objectives: What Are We Here For?

Setting the broad objectives

If you haven’t already, make a list of teaching objectives for your ESL class based upon the textbook you’re using and the desired outcome assigned by your school administration.

When setting up your objects, you need to figure out the following things:

Why you’re introducing self assessment as part of class structure

How often it’ll take place

The kinds of things you want students to assess about themselves

Students will need to come up with their own list of objectives as well, and these objectives will probably be slightly different than your own. Give them the freedom to do this themselves, providing guidance only as needed.

Some common broad objectives include:

Motivations for studying English

Classroom environment and attitude

General grammar and structural assimilation

Fluidity in speech and pronunciation

Communication in English

Cultural understanding

Effective self assessment creates itemized goals towards gradual, attainable ends.

Breaking objectives down into bite-sized pieces: the goals

Once you’ve determined your broad objectives, break them down into measurable goals that can be reached over the timeline.

For example, the broad objective of understanding general grammar can be broken down into smaller steps, like:

Presenting the main verb forms

Presenting present simple verbs in third person

Presenting the past and past participle forms of regular verbs

Combining verb forms with auxiliaries

For students, those goals may be more like:

Use the auxiliary “do” when making a question in present simple

Understand the difference between the three pronunciations of the suffix “-ed”

Make contractions with pronouns using auxiliary verbs

Practice switching subjects in sentences to strengthen correct auxiliary use

Making goals flashcards

Flashcards are useful for teaching and reminding your students of their goals. They also act as triggers for any self assessment activity you do during the course.

You can use flashcards as part of your self assessment activity by making a large poster with columns that represent any broad objective categories that you have in mind. Some examples of these categories include: attitude, classroom behavior, grammar and communication skills.

For each of these categories, make a dozen or so smaller goals flashcards, one goal per card. For example, under “communication skills” you may want to have goals like “practice the exercise 10 times at home.”

You can use flashcards for self assessment after any class activity. Simply pass them out to your students and ask them if they’ve reached the objective on the card. Students who think they’ve met their objectives can stick their card under the appropriate column header on the poster.

Also, try mixing flashcards from different categories to show students how their goals can overlap. A learner who receives a goal card on grammar during a communication activity may discover that he or she mastered a grammar point as well.

And if you want to give your students a complete ESL learning experience with flashcards, real-life videos and interactive activities, add FluentU to your curriculum. FluentU lets students document progress in real-time, making it easier for them to assess their strengths, weaknesses and areas they improved in.

The recording rubric

Every now and then, our evaluations can seem overly subjective or inconsistent. As teachers, knowing beforehand what we want to look for during assessment makes rating student performance easier and more effective–which is why every well-organized ESL teacher should use grading rubrics when evaluating their students.

The same is true for student self assessment. Learners must be aware of their goals, and the best way to achieve that is to have them come up with a rubric that lists the goals and objectives they should work towards achieving.

Creating a rubric template will go a long way on saving time, in addition bringing structure to your self assessments. You can do this by printing a table from your word processor or spreadsheet program that lets students write in their goals in the first column and use the following columns to evaluate their performance.

Instead of having your students use letter grades or percentages to evaluate themselves. I recommend using adjectives like:

Excellent

Very good

Good

Satisfactory

Needs work

These adjectives help to keep the rubric more language oriented, and can be more specific depending on the goal in question.

For example, goals under “classroom behavior” can have more relevant adjectives like “disruptive” or “cooperative.” If you’re teaching students who’re less formal, you can even add creative and use slang terms like “cool!” or “boooorrrrring!”

Demonstrate the use of the rubric

There’s little mystery to showing students how to use the recording rubric as long as you’re clear from the outset what a rubric is and what the terms mean. Since you’ve already made them familiar with objectives and goals, handing out and having students fill in a rubric will become a regular class habit.

After any activity, hand out a blank rubric to each student then ask them what goals they think were relevant to their activity. If need be, you can use the goals flashcards to give students ideas of what they should list in the goal space.

Students choose the adjective that they think best assesses their level of achievement. You can even have students exchange rubrics in pairs so that they can assess each other.

Preparing Students for Self Assessment

These two basic activities will help you to demonstrate basic ESL learner motivation and knowledge self assessment.

1. The “Why am I studying English?” survey

All students are in the ESL classroom for a reason. Some know why they’re there and are working towards a clear-cut goal, while others might be studying English to satisfy a professional or educational requirement. Either way, identifying the “why” that motivates students helps you to better understand your students’ needs.

Objective: Identify reasons for studying English.

Who it’s for: Best with intermediate to advanced students, but can be used for beginners able to make short answers.

What you need:

“Why am I studying English” survey

Flashcards with various reasons for studying English written on them (for example: “for work,” “for travel,” “for university,” “my boyfriend is American,” etc.)

How to proceed:

Pass flashcards to your students and then ask the class whether they’re familiar with reason listed on their cards. Make sure to teach any reasons that students don’t understand.

Collect and shuffle the cards, then repeat the process a couple more times.

When finished, pass out the “Why am I studying English” survey and have your students walk around the classroom questioning each other on why they’re learning English.

2. The self assessment passport

The European Language Portfolio (ELP) is an active tool used to promote language learning in multicultural societies, such as countries in Europe.

One aspect of the ELP was the development of a type of “passport” reflecting not only the knowledge a student has upon beginning to learn a new language (including their native language), but also the process and achievements involved in acquiring one or more new languages.

Objective: Record initial knowledge of native and target language; provide a framework for continued evaluation

Who it’s for: Just about any level, though best used for beginners of the CEFR A2 proficiency level.

What you need:

A passport template with fill-in sections about native language proficiency in listening, speaking, reading and writing

Target language proficiency in listening, speaking, reading and writing

Extra pages for regular recording of achievement

How to proceed:

Hand out the template and have students fill in the initial information, like their name, address and age, as well as their proficiency in their native language.

Ask them to fill in the target language proficiency section with their own self-evaluation of their current level. The CEFR rubric comes in handy here!

Students will be periodically updating the information in the passport, recording their progress throughout the class as they continue to learn and understand new concepts.

Starting Your First Self Assessment Exercises

These three activities are meant to get your students actively involved in the self assessment process by creating easy-to-follow frameworks and practicing using those frameworks.