Tag Archives: accuracy

Writing

HOW TO USE THE EVALUATION CRITERIA FOR WRITTEN TASKS

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Most official criteria first apply a holistic view: overall impression, fluency and how pleasant the text is to read AND secondly detailed components: content/message, language and accuracy of language

Marking and evaluating any pieces of writing is always a challenging and time-consuming task for the teachers. Marking is supposed to be fair and reliable but one has to admit that there is always a little room for subjectivity.

What a marvellous group of future teachers of English! They are all university students, teacher trainees as we call them, who have been practising teaching English for a full year at Turku Teacher Training School. Now they are about to finish their training, ready to start their career as fully qualified teachers of English with a Master’s Degree in their pockets. Permission for the use of the photo pending.

In teacher training in Finland we first aim at a situation where every teacher trainee’s evaluation of an essay, for example, is within 5 points of the experts’ opinion (the scale being 0 – 100). Having marked hundreds of essays the teachers’ marking is usually within a couple of points.

For this reason in order to guarantee the maximum amount of objectivity we have to have criteria that is easy to use once we have been trained how to use it. The criteria has to be explained and analysed to the students too. It is the only way to show them what is expected from them when they write essays or work on any other written assignments.

In order to save paper give your criteria to the students once a year and ask them to glue it in their essay notebooks. During the year the students will mark their progress on the criteria sheet, each essay with its own symbol. The students are allowed to glance at the criteria even during exams.

Criteria never tell you directly what to do to get to the next level. Criteria only tell what is required at that level. CLT researchers have provided us with lots of strategies how the students can improve their language skills.

Learning strategies will help the students on the question ‘HOW to get to the next level in writing or any other language skill area. I have lots of comments on these strategies separately and under most of the topics, too.

Many students quickly become very good at evaluating their own and other students’ products. They realize that the detailed criteria open the door to the improvement of their essays.

Then they start to ask questions of the following kind:

  • How can I get more points for my argumentative essays?
  • Is there a commonly accepted structure for good essays?
  • How can I impress the reader with my vocabulary?
  • Which grammatical structures appeal to the reader?
  • What is meant by complex and simple sentences?
  • How much do mistakes affect the points given?
  • Are all mistakes equally serious?
  • What if I have a lot of spelling mistakes?
  • Do we have to follow the conventions of text types? Newspaper articles, reviews, interviews, blogs etc.?

Some of these questions are answered in my other articles, others in this very same article. If the student gets criteria-based feedback on his/her writing task, they will know which areas they are good at and which areas require much more work.

For instance, if the teacher gives the following points for the essay: overall impression 7,5, content/message 8/10, vocabulary and structures 6/10 and accurary/mistakes 7,5/10, the student will start wondering ‘How can I get 9/10 for content?’, ‘What’s wrong with my structures and vocabulary?; I think it is better than that?, ‘What are my most serious mistakes?

The remedy for the defects of a text can be found by applying the criteria to the text and using writing strategies.

Let’s now check how to proceed with using the ‘unofficial sample’ criteria below. It can be used in age groups 12 – 18 provided it is modified to the proficiency level of the students. Each column is enlarged below with some additional comments.

How to use this sample criteria if you are marking an essay

Do not be alarmed! Whatever criteria you are using the same principles in arriving at an ‘objective’ grade apply. HOWEVER. the main point is not to give a grade but give a more detailed account to the students where they stand in each column.

Choice 1 My recommended way of proceeding:

  • Start with the green ‘First Impressions’ column = Ease to read /Flow of ideas/ Fluency and decide which grade applies to the text you are reading.
  • Then move to the right to each yellow ‘Detailed criteria’ columns separately and decide on your grade.
  • The underlying idea is that ‘Content/message’, ‘Language’ and ‘Accurary’ columns are of equal value; i.e. have equal effect on the final grade
  • Finally come back to the ‘green’ column and see if the ‘yellow’ column grades match the green column one.
  • The average grade of ‘Content/message’, ‘Language’ and ‘Accurary’ columns should be close to your ‘First Impression’ grade in the green column. And this average grade is the final grade in most cases!
  • NOW, having done this procedure you can ‘objectively’ give the final mark and justify the grades against your marking sheet, both for the students and their parents.
  • For example, Overall impression 8+ out of 10, Content 7, Language 9-, Accuracy 8,5.

Choice 2 Some teachers prefer to move horizontally from the green column to the right. Their assumption is that the student’s level remains approximately the same in all columns, maybe going up or down one step but no more. If you know the student’s proficiency level, this is a faster way to give the grade since you do not have to read all criteria texts.

  • Let’s look at an example on proceeding horizontally: If you give, say, 6 points for ‘Flow of ideas’, move to the right on the same line to the other columns and see if the other standards match at level 6 or not. If they do not Move up or down in each column until you are pleased.
  • If you think the grade is between even grades 2, 4, 6, 8 and 10 use grades 9, 7, 5 and 3.
  • Even half points, pluses or minuses are ok, if you feel like it.
  • Now the student can decide which skill area he/she wants to develop next and how to do it. This document is also easy for parents to understand if you meet them at some discussions.  

Additional comments on the columns 

1 How easy and pleasant is it to read the text? 2 Is it close to natural text written by a native at that age? 3 Are the ideas clearly presented?

At its best the text sounds natural and could be written by a native speaker.

The text is easy and pleasant to read and it is logical.

  • The yellow boxes clarify the meaning of some of the terms used.

  • Simple ideas are known to everybody, often opinions not supported by evidence. Complex ideas are convincing and backed up with proof, reasons or examples, seen from many perspectives.
  • Essays are just one type of written tasks and these days many other text types have to be practised and their conventions followed.

This language column has two components:

Vocabulary which at its best has to impress the reader and be stylistically appropriate.

The variety of the grammatical and sentence structures reveals a lot of the level of writing skills.

Still, one also has to take the audience and the text type into account when writing a text.

Yes, indeed. All mistakes are not equally serious. Basic errors learnt early in the study of the target language are more serious.

1 How serious are the vocabulary or grammatical mistakes?

2 Do these mistakes or spelling mistakes cause misunderstandings?

Communicative teaching (CLT), Historical perspectives

ASSESSMENT OF and FOR LEARNING

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The quality of the student-centred learning process (AfL) is actually more important than the final results of the exams (AoL).

If you test and use the results to give grades, it is AoL. If you test and use the result to help the students, it is AfL. But AfL is much more …

Assessment for learning (AfL) consists of all the measures that the teacher and the students take while learning in order to make learning more pleasant, relaxing and effective. The best teachers have always done it automatically using formative tests, continuous assessment and personal feedback as a tool.

What the CLT researchers have done is that they have laid the scientific foundation for AfL to balance the over-rated importance of constant grading and exams (AoL).

Assessment of learning (AoL) refers to the traditional ways of evaluating students using summative exams, mostly at the end of the learning period.

In brief, the concept of AfL

  • was developed from formative and continuous assessment
  • but is more focused on the process of learning, learning styles and strategies
  • emphasizes the students’ role in assessing themselves and others
  • favours student-centered methods and feedback that enhances learning.

In short, using assessment of AoL

  • means checking towards the end of the course to what extent the goals of the course have been reached
  • This type of testing is discussed at the end of each skill area under the left-hand side menu topics ‘Vocabulary’, ‘Speaking’, ‘Pronunciation’, ‘Listening’, Reading comprehension’ and ‘Grammar’.

AoL and AfL compared

Assessment of LearningAssessment for Learning
AoL 10% of teaching timeAfL 90 % of teaching time
N.B. The percentages above simply indicate which kind of assessment I personally consider vital.
  1. The focus is on final results, summative exams and giving grades.
  2. The student is classified: excellent – good – satisfactory – bad.
  3. AoL takes mostly place at the end of the learning period in an examination marked by the teacher. Little analysis of what may have gone wrong.
  4. AoL means strict teacher-centred control, individual (not pair / group) accomplishments are valued.
  5. Little attention is paid to ways of learning and development of skills, mainly the content of the course is tested.
  1. The focus is on the learning process and ways to enhance learning.
  2. The student is compared with his/her previous performance.
  3. AfL takes place all the time, done by the teachers or other students, not to give a grade but to guide the learning process, individual needs are taken into account
  4. AfL is more like giving guidance and positive feedback to others continuously, the teacher in the background
  5. A lot of time is spent on learning strategies and how to improve language skills, knowledge of the content is tested but the ‘side products’ of AfL are recognized.

You may wonder if you should be worried about not always knowing if you are applying AfL or AoL. No, definitely not.

The borderline between AoL and AfL can, in fact, be a line drawn on water. Wise teachers have always, at least subconsciously, done both for the benefit of their students.

How come? For example, if you have a practice lesson before the examination and the exam is analysed afterwards when the papers are returned to enhance learning, AoL and AfL are intertwined, in my opinion, in an ideal manner. Any AoL exams that make the teacher realize that the goals were not reached and some remedial actions are required, turn the original AoL exams into AfL exams simultaneously.

Over the last fifteen years more and more attention has been paid to the process of learning which we teachers are trying to make as smooth and effective and enjoyable as possible. These measures are what we call ‘Assessment for Learning’ and they are utilized from the beginning of the course till the end until it is the time for the summative exam.

In the past learners of foreign languages were terrified of making mistakes and the fear of embarrassing yourself in front of others prevented learners from being fully engaged in learning. Thanks to the ideas of communicative learning teachers realized the message getting through to the listeners/readers was more important than the accuracy of the language. Application of CLT and AfL principles is a highly recommended combination in any language class.

No-one makes mistakes on purpose (unless they are joking). If the message is understood, the mistakes do not usually matter at all. We make mistakes even in our mother tongue. Why should we worry about them when learning a new language?

In the end, the success of our language lessons is measured in how well our students cope with the language in real life, not which grades they were granted.

The next two articles deal with the tools you can use in class to apply the principles of AfL.