879. Evaluating everyday work



One day teacher of English A said to teacher of English B, “I could tell you quite many things about assessment of my students’ learning English, but here I’ll try to tell you few things.

A first premise is that I assess my students’ daily work. Still also I set a written test after a period, usually when we finish a unit of the course book.

I have a list of my students in class and I give them a grade or an acronym from time to time: contributions to a discussion, homework, behavior problems, effort, fluency at speaking...

Here on this list is the day-to-day conducting of the classes. For me, as well, it’s also important to consider the idea I am keeping about every student’s working; it’s nothing written anywhere, and has to do with the knowledge I’m making about each student’s daily work.

On the other hand periodical written tests tentatively would register the knowledge and performance the students have acquired and reached after a unit for example.

After a period of two or three months I give a grade to each student – in a single academic year there are four or five assessment or ‘evaluation’ periods, plus the final grade. The grades of the written tests can mean about 60 % of the ‘evaluation’ period, while the class grades another 40 % approximately.

In practice it isn’t difficult to ascertain whether a student has: fail, pass, good, very good, or excellent (I mean the equivalents in the Spanish grading system). Even the very students I think could assign similar grades to themselves after one of these periods. It’s simple in practice. They usually have no surprise after having given them the grade report.” / Photo from: ahfd ap nic in. facilities laboratory. indira gandhi centre for advanced research on livestock

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