Shohamy E. and Brown 23 and 24

There is so many components that go into assessment especially testing.  The test must be reliable and valid, in accordance to what the test should be measuring.  This goes through domains such as reading, writing, listening, speaking, vocabulary, and grammar; it aslo goes through purpose such as stakeholders of the test, test users, test takers, is it measuring achievement or is it placing the student into a program.  Something that the article concentrates and stresses is the importance of analyzing discourse when testing.  Shohamy gives a short background of research that has been done on discourse and language testing, "quantitative analyses have examined mainly the effect of different discourse elements on test takers' scores" (203).  There is research on the effects of test features such as subject matter, titles, rhetorical structure, missing cohesive ties, question types, oral tests and production tests and how these features effect test scores.  For example, for a reading comprehension test, the question types must take into consideration, "(1) the texts used for a test, (2) the test questions, (3) the answers produced in response to the test questions, and (4) the interpretation of the answers produced and the assignment of scores" (205).  The question types suggested by Perkins in the article are open-ended essay responses that can be collected for a portfolio.  This is similar to the teaching writing article that we read earlier.  In that article they recommend alternative assessment. 
I thought the section on qualitative examination of oral proficiency tests was particularly interesting, perhaps because I will take an partly oral examination to be a bilingual teacher.  On the state test that I will take there will be an oral section in which I have a limited time to speak into a tape recorder.  For a taped test, there is typically more paraphrasing, and for a direct test like the OPI there is more switching to their L1.  I would have thought the opposite, just because there is an actual person that you are speaking in a direct context. 
The last section on new assessment types mentions that "teachers and students are more involved in developing and designing the assessment procedures" (212).  I like the joint development of the test, it is a very transformative way of thinking.  Also there must be a variety of assessment procedures for assessment of discourse skills, which cannot be totally analyzed by a state test. 

Kuma 13, and Brown

In Kumaravadivileu's chapter about monitoring teaching acts, he talks about the various impacts of observations in an second language learning classroom.  He talks about the limitations with Product-Oriented Models and Process-Oriented Models.  These models are both "cumbersome, time-consuming, and labor intensive" (289).  They can both give a limited understanding of how the lesson really went, and are not as benificial to the teachers practices, teachers self-reflective skills, student understanding, and observer intake.  He also talks about an alternative to the product and process oriented models and suggests a User-Friendly System.  Kuma organizes this system into a M & M observational scheme or ten part process, involving at least three meetings with the observer. 
My roommates mom is a second grade teacher, who typically has autistic students in her "mainstream" classroom.  Because of the students that she has in her classroom, observations from an autism specialist need to be made.  The teacher finds these observations stressful, planning much more detailed lessons, and having to organize an administrator to also attend the meetings (in order to defend the teacher in case of a bad report from an observer).  My roommate described one instance where the observer came late to a lesson without the principle attending and decided to stay later than promised. 
Kuma describes his process as an "atmosphere where teamwork is encouraged" (291) which I think was clearly lacking in this observation process.  There was not a preobservation meeting with the teacher, which I think is an excellent backwash enhancer.  I am using the term backwash in a way where the teacher plans differently because of this observation.  The careful planning that a teacher may have to do, which may give a false display of what students really experience, may be minimized if the observer met with the teacher beforehand to discuss what would be happening in the class. Another thing that truly affects the teacher and students nervousness is the responsibility of the observer to give a "fair, frank, and friendly" comment, as well as being on-time with the appropriate observational technique agreed with the teacher (video camera or another observer attending the session). 
I really enjoyed being the observer while reading the classroom dialogue in the example in the book on pages 295-298.  Many of the things that I thought should be talked abut with the observer were talked about, the question about the condo, the paragraph explanation and the school system clarification.  Something I found interesting during the postobservation analysis is the teacher and observer disagreement on the learing opportunities on page 301, "When the observer, being a more experienced teacher, argued that teachers in an L2 class should make use of all the learning opportunities created by learners even if they gto against their planned agenda, the novice teacher seemed skeptical."  If disagreements like this come up, who has the right to say what is right?  Is it okay to agree to disagree in these instances?  Is it better to have an expert teacher come in and observe or is it better to have one of your own experience?

Final Paper Progress

Teacher Error Correction In Writing

I will be talking about error correction in the writing of younger students elementary ages.  What I want to discover is how teacher corrections affect a students writing, and how writing improves, progresses, or digresses with the feedback that the teacher gives on their writing.  

I will be opening my paper with a discussion on the controversy with correction feedback in writing with research from Dana Ferris Truscott.  Then I will divulge into different methods teachers use for feedback on writing.  Christina Ortmeier-Hooper from the University of New Hampshire is also a source that I will mainly be using her article called "Mapping new territory: Toward an understanding of adolescent L2 writers and writing in US contexts."  I believe this article gives the most direct findings for me as a future bilingual elementary teacher.  

Kuma 11 and 12

Both Chapter 11 and 12 brought up issues that we have disscussed in ENG 343.  The first point was that English is a Global Language and also highly stigmatized by the rich and wealthy.  Even though Kuma does not say this, he says that the term standard English comes from "those who control the social, political, and cultural power centers within a nation" (242).  Even where English is highly regarded as a first language, or the language of politics and therefore schools like Singapore and India, the language dialect must sound most like a British/Australian dialect in order to be seen as proper.  I like what Kuma had to say for the reasoning behind the stigma that standard English has.  He says, "ELT...is a product of colonialism not just because it is colonialism that produced the initial conditions for the global spread of English but because it was colonialism that produced many of the ways of thinking and behaving that are still part of Western cultures" (243).  Another thing that we talked about in the 343 class is the Ebonics debate, and whether or not people are disadvantaged in learning the origins and dynamics of their home language.  To a bilingual education major, I don't care which language you are learning or speak at home, if those two languages are different you should be values as a learner of two languages, not just the one dominantly spoken by the "well educated" people of society.  Kuma goes on to prove that there are strong support for L1 and L2 to be used in the classroom. 
Cultural consciousness in the classroom brings up ideas discussed in 343 as well.  The complexity of culture for example, and how defining or narrowing this complex idea is not what culture is in its entirety.  Culture cannot even be limited to a context, even within a particular language, nation, or religion.  For example today in my tutorial class at the ELI we had a good discussion on body language and in particular, greetings.  In Saudi Arabia, specifically in the Muslim community, women will not shake the hand of men that are not their family members.  Women will also cover their face only sometimes this is something that depends on the background of the family.  When in the United States sometimes men and women struggle with these customs, but sometimes find similarities.  My students compared their tradition of women covering their hair similar to the nuns in the catholic church that cover their hair.  One point that Kuma points out is cross-cultural encounters.  I believe that these are very important in culture teaching.  In order for students to understand culture they must experience the differences and similarities first hand.  How can we foster that in a EFL classroom?