Reflecting on writing assessment (Casanave, Ch. 4)
As I enjoyed reading Casanave, (Chap. 4) about assessment, the author discussed two points that raised concerns about my funds of knowledge on language teaching in general and assessment in particular. First, she stated that “a fair assessment of writing, above all, treat all students without bias against differences in culture, background knowledge of content, students’ experience…..” p. 119. If assessment is an intrinsic part of language teachers’ daily activities with regard to empowering learners with language skill and learning strategies, how can language teachers, in real-world classroom, be blind graders? Can language teachers, all the sudden, break the golden rule in language teaching, which stipulates that the more teachers know about students’ background and learning past experience, the better they can help them? As to quote Gebhard, (2005) “A number of educators encourage language teachers to take on the role of needs assessor. Doing so includes learning about students’ language-learning history, goals, interests, study habits, learning strategies, and language-learning styles. They suggest we interview students, have them complete questionnaires, and generally observe what they do and say. (p. 57). In the same line, Reid (1998) provided language teachers with a very nice chart to use while inquiring about students’ background so as to better help them in their language learning endeavors.
The second point raised by Casanave is about items to focus on in language assessment. She recommended that “a fair assessment examines performance in writing rather than multiple-choice knowledge of grammar, style or vocabulary, (…). “p.119. Sincerely speaking, how professional would it look like reading a student’s paper, noticing grammar, style or vocabulary errors, and closing your eyes as a teacher and moving on? That way, how do language teachers help students who are on long journey of modeling and molding their language? How will students know that a given verb phrase, a syntactic structure or a word are to be replaced, rephrased or revised if they miss the opportunity of learning about it through their assignments, in classroom situation (which is likely the only opportunity to use a language both in writing and oral form, at least in EFL context )? Is assessment exclusively about content?
Moreover, the washback effect is so influential (Bachman & Palmer, 1996 ) that teachers cannot help targeting such items (grammar, vocabulary and style) because they are the main components in high-stake composition tests. Bsed on my experience as a national examination marker for 4 years, composition used to count for 40% of the language paper (Kinyarwanda, French, English and Kiswahili). The marking scheme was thoroughly detailed about items to grade, such as grammar, style, vocabulary, length, ideas, arguments, format (according to a genre). And guess what! After the marking session, teachers (included myself, of course) used to take their marking schemes back to their schools and use them as invaluable guidelines to teach language and prepare their students for the national exams. And it used to work: the more students understood the markers’ expectations, the better they performed and passed their exams. Needless to mention that the same criteria are used in standardized tests such as TOEFL, GRE and the like. The ACTFL (American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages) Proficiency protocol is not far different.
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I do definitely agree with you Theo and understand you concerns and position. Of course as educators we all aim at fair assessment. Often times in grading exams and especially national exams in our part of the world (which are somehow the equivalent of standardized tests here), we don’t take into consideration learners’ background, past learning experience, cultural background. And then, when we teach writing, if we follow Casanave’s line of thought, when responding or assessing writing (or writing instruction), we don’t have to correct everything, we have to focus on content and not form. This does seem to be contradictory. And this is the point you are trying to make, I guess.
ReplyDeleteAlso in my own teaching experience, the debate of focusing on form more or on content was always a source of disagreement between my colleagues. I personally , in the beginning of my teaching career used to focus on form more than on content because I believed that erroneous form fails to convey the intended meaning. So, as a teacher assessing such a piece of writing, I often have to reconstruct the intended meaning because I share the L1 with my learners and would understand better what they mean. This led me to reconsider my assessment approach by taking into account both form and content or rather the intended content. because when students fail to formulate their intended meaning, we have to help them acquire the linguistic skills they lack and not to simply penalize them. This will only reinforce the status quo as far as the writing skill is concerned.