From multiple perspective judgments calls to the one grade
Sunday May 19th, 11:55am- 1:30pm (Room 47), Nanzan University, Nagoya.
Details:
How to streamline grading in teaching materials using tasks with the help of the CEFR
Teachers often dislike having to grade students. And many a teacher feels insecure about grading accurately and fairly. This is especially true in cases where students are performing more communicative and/or interactive tasks. What are the criteria we ought to apply? How do we identify them in for us a time saving yet professional manner? What are the tools at our disposal? Are we honing in on the right aspects? How useful are grids and sets of criteria we are using?
On the one hand, good teaching materials should help and guide teachers towards answering such questions. On the other hand, grading should be open enough to allow for any given number of different task and activity types. Under no circumstances should grids and criteria restrict teacher and student creativity in designing, performing on, and even changing and modifying language learning tasks. Neither the learner nor the teacher ought to be a slave to the requirements. Tools and methods should be at our disposal to help and make things easier and smoother for all involved.
Furthermore, the grading of tasks offers an excellent chance to make grading guidelines clear and more transparent to students. They can even be active in the process of identifying and selecting the most appropriate criteria. But how exactly do we go about developing such guidelines for cutting edge teaching materials? Most certainly, open standards are needed for flexibility and predictability. The open standard descriptors as laid down in the Common European Framework are helpful here, as a basis for reliable judgment calls. However, teachers’ experience with tasks that simply “work” is important as well.
How to juggle the various requirements, and how to perform the balancing act between simply having to grade and how to still offer exciting and engaging language learning tasks will be at the heart of this forum by the FLP, MW, and TBL SIGs.