SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐỒNG NAI TRƯỜNG THPT PHÚ NGỌC µ SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM VẤN ĐỀ VÀ ĐỀ XUẤT TRONG KIỂM TRA VÀ ĐÁNH GIÁ KẾT QUẢ HỌC TẬP MÔN TIẾNG ANH CỦA HỌC SINH THPT Người thực hiện: Nguyễn Thị Hoa Bộ môn: Tiếng Anh Lĩnh vực nghiên cứu: - Quản lý giáo dục - Phương pháp dạy học bộ môn: Tiếng Anh Có đính kèm: Các sản phẩm không thể hiện trong bản in SKKN 1 Mô hình1 Phần mềm 1 Phim ảnh 1 Hiện vật khác Năm học: 2013 - 2014 SƠ LƯỢC LÝ LỊCH KHOA HỌC I/ THÔNG TIN CHUNG VỀ CÁ NHÂN: 1. Họ và tên: Nguyễn Thị Hoa 2. Ngày tháng năm sinh: 16/ 04/ 1985 3. Giới tính: Nữ 4. Địa chỉ: 3/5, Ấp I, Xã Phú Ngọc, Huyện Định Quán, Đồng Nai 5. Điện thoại: 0915978138 6. E-mail: nguyenhoa164@yahoomail.com 7. Chức vụ: Giáo viên 8. Đơn vị công tác: Trường THPT Phú Ngọc II/ TRÌNH ĐỘ ĐÀO TẠO: - Học vị (hoặc trình độ chuyên môn, nghiệp vụ) cao nhất: thạc sỹ - Năm nhận bằng: 2012 - Chuyên ngành đào tạo: giảng dạy ngoại ngữ (Tiếng Anh) III/ KINH NGHIỆM KHOA HỌC: - Lĩnh vực chuyên môn có kinh nghiệm: Giảng dạy ngoại ngữ Số năm có kinh nghiệm: 4 - Đã thực hiện các chuyên đề trong quá trình học cao học: Đánh giá sách giáo khoa tiếng Anh THPT, Cách dạy lớp có học sinh thuộc nhiều khả năng trình độ khác nhau, sự khác nhau của tiếng Anh khi được sử dụng ở các nước tiêu biểu trên thế giới, … Dong Nai Department of Education and Training Phu Ngoc High School µ Topic: Two Issues in Assessment of High School Student Performance in English Full Name : Nguyen Thi Hoa Aspect of Research: Language Teaching and Testing School Year: 2013 – 2014 CONTENT Introduction A) Problem Area in Assessment B) A Review of Relevant Literature B1) Assessing Grammar Knowledge B2) Assessing Oral Skills C) Recommendations for The Current Case Conclusion References Introduction The issues of teaching English have widely discussed and researched since English now becomes an international tool for communicating among people around the world, even among people in the same community. Individuals with a variety of professionals, age, ethnics and purposes try hard not only to achieve a certain level of but also to get a required certificate of English. In other words, “language tests play a powerful role in many people’s lives, acting as gateways at important transitional moments in education, in employment, and in moving from one country to another” (McNamara, 2000, p.4). Hence, the issues of testing one’s ability of English have attracted great attention of language experts. From the point of view of an English educator, the author of this paper aims to discuss two issues in assessment of high school student performance in English, specifically which of the twelfth grade students. Then, in an attempt to find best solutions to the involving case, the author reviews relevant literature, comparing various possible answers. The last part of this paper is devoted to identifying the most suitable solution to the two mentioned problems, detailing specific recommendations. A) Problem Area in Assessment As you can find a typical test attached with this paper, tests during the twelfth school year, even in other school years, are mainly aimed to measure students’ ability of grammar. However, the required level of grammar is quite high. It is obviously that exceptions of grammar rules are tested for often. One can claim that such a high level is unnecessary and causes many problems for students and relevant educators as well. Learners and teachers spend a lot of valuable time practicing all that grammar stuff even though it is clear to them that what they are struggling for is hardly ever applied 1 in communication. Making students pay much attention to grammar also affects their later process of learning English. They certainly become less fluent, even less confident once they are too conscious of grammar rules. This negative effect is obviously shown in reality as at the end of a seven-year high school course students are rarely able to communicate in ordinary conversations in English. The lack of balance of measurement among four macro skills is another problem area in assessment that this paper aims to cover. Oral and aural skills are completely neglected during the period of seven years of learning English at high school. Therefore, no one can find even a single part which is devoted to testing speaking or listening skills in any out of twelve tests in the twelfth grade. Meanwhile, speaking ability is a very key indicator of one’s English competence. Also, listening skill receives very little attention. Hence, one can claim that measuring listening and speaking skills is absent from the assessment of student performance. Practicing all four skills in English is officially required in almost English courses in high school so it is necessary that aural and oral skills receive much more attention in language testing. B) A Review of Relevant Literature B1) Assessing grammar knowledge Penny Ur (1996, p.75) over-simply defines grammar as “the way words are put together to make correct sentences”. However, one can “apply the term ‘grammatical’ to units smaller than sentences” (Ur, 1996, p.75) as grammar is “the rules in a language for changing the form of the words and joining them into sentences” according to Oxford advanced learners’ dictionary, seventh edition. Grammatical competence “will be understood to include knowledge of lexical items 2 and of rules of morphology, syntax, sentence-grammar semantics and phonology” (McNamara, 2000, p.93). The question on the adequate level of grammar which should be achieved by high school students has been an issue of debate for many years. Some argue that the superficial knowledge of grammar can make no significant contribution towards achieving the communicative aim. Hence, there is no point in setting the target grammatical level for high school students unnecessarily high. In contrast, one may fear that “a lack of grammatical knowledge can severely limit what is understood or produced in communication” (Purpura, 2004, p.4). In reality, each educational institution requires a certain grammatical level of their learners. Thus, it is the teacher’s responsibility for guiding students to acquire the grammar necessary and to meet the grammatical requirement of that teaching situation. High school students in this case demonstrate their grammar ability only through language tests designed by their own teachers. Arthur Hughes (2003) has stated that all we would be looking for is some general indication of the adequacy of the student’s grammar knowledge so “the test should be guide do-able; not too difficult” (Ur, 1996, p.42). Moreover, the grammar part of the test must provide more context than only single sentences. Unfortunately, the achievement test discussed here uses a list of single sentences to check the grammar knowledge. Besides traditional tests, there are a variety of alternative assessments like class observation, portfolio or class activities which can be applied for the author’s teaching situation. These alternative ones require students to be able to produce grammatical responses and apply grammar to some communicative purpose (Purpura, 2004, p.2). In other words, assessments of grammar should require students to demonstrate not only their memory capacity of grammar forms but also their language ability of understanding and applying them. 3 B2) Assessing oral skills Hughes (2003) believes that language abilities are not easy to measure and it has been widely recognized that speaking is the most difficult skill to assess. It is absolutely true to the author’s teaching situation. In reviewing earlier work, this paper concludes that testing speaking skill consists of the testing of pronunciation, spoken grammar, spoken vocabulary, and even sociolinguistic applications of speech. Hughes (2003) claims that the most common format for assessing speaking ability is the interview. Besides, interaction with fellow candidates and responses to audio- or video-recordings are also widely applied for testing oral skills. However, “a frequent problem for teachers is when there are so many learners in one class that it seems to make it unrealistic to assess speaking” (Scrivener). The teachers who designed the discussed test are also in that situation. Their class size generally ranges from thirty to fifty and each class lasts forty-five minutes per time so it is unlikely possible to assess all students’ performance at a time. In this case, this assessment should be done through classroom activities, group presentations during class periods of the school year. An underlying problem in testing speaking in this educational case is its scorer reliability. As Mead and Rubin (1985) confirm that “a major aspect of any rating system is rater objectivity: Is the rater applying the scoring criteria accurately and consistently to all students across time? The reliability of raters should be established during their training and checked during administration or scoring of the assessment”. In some cases, it would be more reliable if students’ performance is double rated. Not only marking learners’ performance but the teacher should provide them with a grid containing a list of specific criteria with comments. As Hughes (2003) concludes that the accurate measurement of oral ability is not easy and it takes considerable time and effort, including training, to obtain valid and reliable results. 4 C) Recommendations for the current case It cannot be denied that grammar contributes an essential part to one’s linguistic competence. However, the too much emphasis on the mastery of grammatical structures may decreases students’ fluency. Thus, under the discussed circumstance, the test designers should aim to a lower level of grammar which is widely considered an adequate level for high school students. Specifically, exceptions of grammar rules need to be tested with care and are used only to distinguish outstanding individuals rather than to check ordinary students’ grammar ability. One more thing to make this test authentic is that texts for checking grammar ability should not be in isolated sentences but in a specific context. The teachers in charge of designing tests should be in an emphasis on grammar meaning rather than on accuracy of form. Therefore, the answer to the question whether grammar tests that focus only on sentence level accuracy can be justified (Rea-Dickins, 2001) is absolutely no. Moreover, the format for measuring students’ control of grammar should be varied. It can be separately tested with multiple-choice questions, matching or sentence transformation, etc. at a time and through writing tasks at other time, for example. In short, more effort and investment should be put into designing tests, especially into the grammar part. In regard to speaking and listening skills, it is strongly advisable to include their measurement sessions among tests, at least in one test, during the school year because “the motivating power of tests appears clear: learners who know they are going to be tested on specific material next week will normally be more motivated to study it carefully than if they had simply been told to learn it” (Ur, 1996, p.279). Under the author’s educational situation, teachers may encounter difficulties in measuring these skills but it is worth great effort to manage them. The author of this 5 paper is in favor of covering the measurement of the oral skill through class activities and observation such as pair work, group work or group discussion. In terms of the aural skills, they can be included in a fifteen-minute test. At the early stage of the semester, students should be noticed that their speaking and listening skills will be assessed during the class time and the criteria that the teacher would focus on. Moreover, the teachers should give their learners comments on their oral performance in parallel with a specific score after the testing progress comes to end. In short, although speaking ability is the most difficult one to measure, “where there’s a will, there’s a way”. Conclusion In this paper, the author has identified two issues in assessment relevant to her own teaching situation, reviewing related literature and finally detailing specific recommendations. It should be repeatedly noticed that grammar tests should be guide do-able; not too difficult and testing speaking and listening skills at least once during the school year is essentially done. Also, various alternative assessment ways which are more effective than the traditional tests are already presented in the paper. It would be ideal if teachers could combine those assessing methods. The testing issue obviously plays a vital part in test-takers’ learning process, especially in which of high school students. Thus it is vital that test designers are aware of making assessing student performance more valid and reliable. 6 [...]... Trường THPT Phú Ngọc CỘNG HOÀ Xà HỘI CHỦ NGHĨA VIỆT NAM Độc lập - Tự do - Hạnh phúc –µ— Định Quán, ngày 24 tháng 05 năm 2013 PHIẾU NHẬN XÉT, ĐÁNH GIÁ SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM Năm học: 2013 - 2014 ––––––––––––––––– Tên sáng kiến kinh nghiệm: VẤN ĐỀ VÀ ĐỂ XUẤT TRONG KIỂM TRA ĐÁNH GIÁ KẾT QUẢ HỌC TẬP MÔN TIẾNG ANH CỦA HỌC SINH THPT Họ và tên tác giả: Nguyễn Thị Hoa - Chức vụ: Giáo viên Đơn vị: Trường THPT. .. and Theory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press SỞ GD & ĐT ĐỒNG NAI KIỂM TRA HỌC KỲ II LỚP 12, NĂM HỌC 2012-2013 Môn: ANH VĂN Thời gian làm bài: 60 phút, không kể thời gian giao đề (Đề thi có 04 trang) Mã đề thi AV102 Họ, tên thí sinh: …………………………………… Số báo danh: ……………………………………… ĐỀTHI GỒM 50 CÂU (TỪQUESTION 1 ĐẾN QUESTION 50) ĐỀ CHÍNH THỨC Choose the option that best completes each of the following... Chức vụ: Giáo viên Đơn vị: Trường THPT Phú Ngọc Lĩnh vực: (Đánh dấu X vào các ô tương ứng, ghi rõ tên bộ môn hoặc lĩnh vực khác) - Quản lý giáo dục 1 - Phương pháp dạy học bộ môn: Tiếng Anh 1 - Phương pháp giáo dục 1 - Lĩnh vực khác: …… 1 Sáng kiến kinh nghiệm đã được triển khai áp dụng: Tại đơn vị 1 Trong Ngành 1 1 Tính mới (Đánh dấu X vào 1 trong 2 ô dưới đây) - Có giải pháp hoàn toàn mới 1 - Có... pháp đã có 1 2 Hiệu quả (Đánh dấu X vào 1 trong 4 ô dưới đây) - Hoàn toàn mới và đã triển khai áp dụng trong toàn ngành có hiệu quả cao 1 - Có tính cải tiến hoặc đổi mới từ những giải pháp đã có và đã triển khai áp dụng trong toàn ngành có hiệu quả cao 1 - Hoàn toàn mới và đã triển khai áp dụng tại đơn vị có hiệu quả cao 1 - Có tính cải tiến hoặc đổi mới từ những giải pháp đã có và đã triển khai áp... đơn vị có hiệu quả 1 3 Khả năng áp dụng (Đánh dấu X vào 1 trong 3 ô mỗi dòng dưới đây) - Cung cấp được các luận cứ khoa học cho việc hoạch định đường lối, chính sách: Tốt 1 Khá 1 Đạt 1 - Đưa ra các giải pháp khuyến nghị có khả năng ứng dụng thực tiễn, dễ thực hiện và dễ đi vào cuộc sống: Tốt 1 Khá 1 Đạt 1 - Đã được áp dụng trong thực tế đạt hiệu quả hoặc có khả năng áp dụng đạt hiệu quả trong phạm vi... trong thực tế đạt hiệu quả hoặc có khả năng áp dụng đạt hiệu quả trong phạm vi rộng: Tốt 1 Khá 1 Đạt 1 Phiếu này được đánh dấu X đầy đủ các ô tương ứng, có ký tên xác nhận của người có thẩm quyền, đóng dấu của đơn vị và đóng kèm vào cuối mỗi bản sáng kiến kinh nghiệm XÁC NHẬN CỦA BAN CHUYÊN MÔN …………………………………………………… …………………………………………………… …………………………………………………… …………………………………………………… …………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………... After three months’ practice, Peter can run A morer and more fastly B faster and faster C fast and fast D more and more fast Question 11 Governments have laws to protect wildlife from commercial trade and overhunting A given B enacted C had D taken Question 12 What wiil we do today? – Let’s go for a walk, _? A don’t you B shall we C do we D do you Question 13 She had to give her job because... book which _ A had been given / was badly damaged B has been given / badly damaged C was giving / is badly damaged D has given / damaged badly Question 2 The town _ almost solely on the tourist trade A expands B improves C advances D depends Question 3 No student in the school is noisier than I am A I am the noisiest student in the school B I am noisier than no student in the school C I am most . SỞ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐỒNG NAI TRƯỜNG THPT PHÚ NGỌC µ SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM VẤN ĐỀ VÀ ĐỀ XUẤT TRONG KIỂM TRA VÀ ĐÁNH GIÁ KẾT QUẢ HỌC TẬP MÔN TIẾNG ANH CỦA HỌC SINH THPT Người thực. nghiệm: VẤN ĐỀ VÀ ĐỂ XUẤT TRONG KIỂM TRA ĐÁNH GIÁ KẾT QUẢ HỌC TẬP MÔN TIẾNG ANH CỦA HỌC SINH THPT Họ và tên tác giả: Nguyễn Thị Hoa - Chức vụ: Giáo viên Đơn vị: Trường THPT Phú Ngọc Lĩnh vực: (Đánh. ĐỒNG NAI KIỂM TRA HỌC KỲ II LỚP 12, NĂM HỌC 2012-2013 Môn: ANH VĂN Thời gian làm bài: 60 phút, không kể thời gian giao đề (Đề thi có 04 trang) Họ, tên thí sinh: …………………………………… Số báo danh: ………………………………………. ĐỀTHI