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?

Kuma 9 and 10 Brown 17

Kuma's chapters were on contextualizing linguistic input with four realities of context, linguistic, extralinguistic, situational, and extrasituational.  The first reality of linguistic context refers to the multiple meanings within one word.  The example Kuma gives is "table,"  which depending on the context like math, literature, science or politics can have very different meanings.  This reminds me of the website that Dr. Seloni showed us last week with the "dictionary" that finds examples of words being used in journals and newspapers so that students may be able to better understand the entire meaning of the word.  Another component to the linguistic context is the cohesion of sentences and being able to understand a group of sentences (conversation).  Extralinguistic context is more about the different stresses that typically coincide with different languages.  This is crucial to accent and understanding.  One of my Chinese students at the ELI is very difficult to understand sometimes and it is because of their lack of stress on any particular word, like the book addresses. In situational context there is an interesting dialogue in Reflective task 9.3 that says A: Not now, darling./B:Then when?  It would be very interesting to see CLD students' thoughts about the context this occurs.  These four realities are important to language understanding and really organize and compartmentalize linguistic input.  Is there one reality that is more important than the other?  Or which one do you think is the most important to teach CLD students.
Integrating Language skills is about how all skills should not be compartmentalized like text books and testing companies try to foster.  In this chapter Kuma points out that one benefit to integrating skill is the various learning styles that various learners bring to the classroom.  Even though teachers naturally integrate skills despite what administration or text books may suggest, this integration for different learners is very important.  I think that even more should be done to integrate different skills that wouldn't typically be used with a language classroom, like spelling the alphabet with your bodies, or drawing a mural in response to listening.  My question is, should learners not be challenged to complete skills outside of their comfort zone?  Especially with younger learners who have not mastered certain skills?

Brown 22 and Kuma 7 and 8

Brown's chapter on assessment coincides with the article that we read last week about writing.  There are many components to assessment, the major one is the variety of assessments that a teacher can use.  They can be assessed as an ongoing assignment, interaction, portfolio (like in the article) or formative way.  They can also be assessed on a "storehouse of skills and knowledge, usually within a relatively short time limit" (402 second edition).  The chapter presents the validity of the different testing/assessing.  For the midterm that I used for my ELI students I would say was a more interactive language test.  Based on what the students have practiced in class, debate, disscussion, vocabulary, or other various activities, they had to complete various communicative tasks for the midterm.  Midterm multiple choice tests would be invalid to the content of the class.  We have just completed an analysis of a standardized test of our choice in our ENG 346 class.  In this class I have realized that standardized tests, although undesirable to many teachers, are unavoidable to any teacher of a second language learner.  What are some ways that we can use this testing backwash to our advantage in our classroom?  A testing strategy that I thought was interesting was the cooperative test construction, I do not think any of my language teachers have used this on me, but this past week in a Chicago ESL classroom that I observed, the teacher had the students creating "wh" questions and told them that some of the questions would appear on a test they would take later on. 
Kuma's Lanuguage Awarness in the US or Whole Language movement, claims that "It does not exclude some languages, some dialects, or some registers because their speakers lack status in a particular society" (158).  This is also emphasized later in the book as a component of Critical Language Awareness (CLA).  Language in a critical awareness allows students to have power over their language interpreting it in specific sociopolitical contexts.  Then Kuma presents a difference in the view of the teachers role in this critical awareness.  Does the teacher help the learners "understand how language is used by some as a tool for social, economic, and political control" or "can [they] cooperatein their own marginalization by seeing themselves as 'language teachers
' with no connection to such social and political issues" (165)?  I think that the second option that Gee presents is a misrepresentation of language, like Paulo Frieres view of teaching as a transformative intelectual, there are deeply embedded social, economic, and political powers within the education system. 
Intuitive Heuristics is basically the self discovery of language of a student.  Kuma describes heuristics in a grammar context, since the rules are definite in a grammar class.  I compare this idea to the teaching written grammar in the article last week, that self-correction is the essential skill to teach since writing is such a complex process, and in heuristics was of teaching it is all about leading your students to reason and not to memorize rules.  However, previously, Kuma talks about the complexity of the English language spelling system alone, and how a students reasoning could lead them to spelling "fish" "ghoti."  Also in beginning language learners I have always thought that explicit instruction of the grammatical rules are more effective.  Can a heuristic type of teaching be used in every context (beginning-advanced) (spelling, syntax, subject-verb agreement, ect.)? Also, in the dialogue examples one of the teachers uses a book and the other uses a cartoon.  The one with the cartoon seems to be more heuristic and more effective.  Are there heuristic grammar text books and would they be effective and useful to teachers?

Not Speaking the Language

The article called "How do I support a student's first language when I don't speak the language?" answers a lot of my questions on a diverse non-dual language classroom which I have been concentrating on in my bilingual education courses.  One thing that I really liked was the teachers involvement with the parents in order to educate them on how important it is to actually teach their kids how to read and write in their native language or language that is spoken at home.  This is often a misconception that immigrant families have when they want their children to have English speaking skills.  The article also talks about the political activity that has happened with Proposition 227 which promoted English only education, and required waivers for non-English speakers.  This makes these challenges for teachers with very diverse classrooms very hard.  I am not sure if the Spanish speakers would be better in a dual language classroom, or if they would get more out of learning with speakers of different languages. 
The teacher must learn much more about each culture so that the students can be properly represented in the classroom.  However, it forces speakers to speak in the target language which would be English in this case.  The negotiation of meaning must happen in the target language, with some aid from the volunteers.  I like Kuma's example, episode 5.3, where the teacher carefully selects the questions so that the students collectively come up with a definition.  I try to do this in my ELI courses, asking what a definition is usually results in some students knowing, and some not knowing.  Instead of me giving the answer, the students should be forced to try to figure out the meaning without me so that vocabulary term is memorable.  I try to have my students provide multiple definitions and examples so that one of the examples is comprehensible input.  This is a skill that I do not think comes naturally to teachers of mainstream classrooms.