Assessment

This artifact is my Reading Assessment Creation Activity from my LT549 course. The context of this Assessment Creation Activity is an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) class for ages 11-12 in a private school in South Korea. These students are intermediate-high to advanced-low level (ACTFL) and or level B2 (CEFR). Their language background would be Korean. The focus of the class is to build students’ academic English skills. The TLU Task is reading for information and argument. The students will read  the article and answer the questions. The areas of language abilities are reading and scanning for specific and relevant details, reading for specific information, and understanding relevant vocabulary. These skills are relevant and necessary for succeeding on an English standardized test. The focus on strategic competency comes from the correction and feedback process. I intended the teacher to use the passage to go over the answers and show (using the passage) how the students would come to the right answer. Having students practice looking for indicators of the right answer will develop their strategic competency, which will improve student confidence in doing similar TLU Tasks on actual standardized tests in the future.

This artifact is my Listening Assessment Creation Activity from the LT549 course. The context of this Assessment Creation Activity is an EAP class for ages 11-12 in a private school in South Korea. These students are intermediate-high to advanced-low level (CEFR level B2). Their language background would be Korean. The focus of the class is to build students’ academic English skills. The TLU Task is listening to radio call-ins on whether a college education is worth it and choosing the statement that best summarizes each caller’s argument. This task is taken from a sample CEFR B2 listening exam question. While the wording of the answers and distractors may be confusing, this kind of wording, format, and tasks are similar to what they will encounter on real standardized tests in the future. Because this is low stakes, students are given the opportunity to try their best and get thorough feedback from the instructor. With there being a transcript available of the audio, it may be helpful to visually point out indicators for the right answer and indicators in the wrong answers that cancel them out. While one would usually not use material that is confusing, it is important that the teacher prepares and continues to work on strategies for confusing wording with students to increase familiarity and decrease frustration later in their school career.

This artifact is from my complete curriculum design for the imagined context of an English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course for Education students in a South Korean university. This large project covered many intricate elements of design. During the process, I designed this activity called a Fish Bowl activity (pp.22-24). Students put five desks in the inner circle and then five desks in the outer circle directly behind the ones in the inner circle. All desks will be facing the center. One half of the class will have one question and will start in the inner circle. Their partners (who have the other question) will sit directly behind them to give feedback on the feedback sheet (see artifact). The teacher will set their phone timer to 15 minutes to begin the discussion. After each 15-minute round, there will be 2-3 minutes to finish up comments and transition. This TLU Task is relevant in that academic discussion is important for Education students. The outer circle component provides students with direct feedback on their performance in the discussion. This activity as well as the steps in preparation for this activity provides constant low stakes assessment and feedback from peers as well as their instructor. While the first Fish Bowl is low stakes, there has been scaffolding throughout the unit that led up to this task, which is also preparation for a higher stakes Fish Bowl.