Testing, Testing… What is language testing?
The chapter was difficult for me to read, but while reading this chapter I was thinking out it would be appropriate to keep notes on all my students throughout the day, instead of just observing and keeping mental notes. The aides could keep notes as well as they teach at their stations.
One memory that came up while reading this chapter was when I was in grade school. I was being “interviewed” by one of the aides in Yugtun. I remember being very intimidated by the person and the questions he was asking. Being a very private person I found it hard to answer questions about myself. One question that I remember was who my friends were, and I remember thinking that there’s only one person I hang out with outside of school so I said her name. He replied with, “who else?” at that point I froze and didn’t answer until he asked again. At that point I just blurted out whatever name popped into my head. I wonder now what he was looking for. If it is using the enclitic for and (-llu), did I fail that portion of the test?
In just about everything that we teach we give a test whether it’s informal or formal. I know for a while the math lessons for kindergarten weren’t aligned with the assessments, so we had to make up lessons or look around through our supplemental materials just to cover those indicators. Another thought that came up while reading the chapter was the principals are required to observe teachers and to fill out evaluation forms based on that one ½ hour to an hour of observation. Is it to find out how we do under pressure or is it to see if we are doing what we’re supposed to be doing? What I’m still grappling at are the terms test and criterion (pg 8). If the test is a performance and criterion is the target which the test is based on, then would criterion for the reading be listening and the test on that would be to ask comprehension questions from the reading? See, one of the indicators that the kindergarten child must pass in reading is to be able to listen to a story book for at least 5 to 10 minutes. But how do I know if the child is really listening and not daydreaming?
Back to Work
13 years ago
1 comment:
I struggled with criterion and testing as well. The graphic organizer didn't help me to understand that all that much better. I understood it as criterion is the behaviors or outcomes we want and we use a test to determine if we have been successful in that. That's kind of how I understood it. So, in my weird way of thinking about things, I kind of assumed that criterion could be that a student read a 200 word passage orally with three mistakes of less. That is the behavior or the outcome we want. So, we teach to that criteria and then test it using an RPA or DRA or some other oral reading test. Perhaps Marilee could clarify that for us.
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