What is the linguistic wealth that we bring to this course?

Topic: What is the linguistic wealth that we bring to this course? Date: 14 November 2006 3:06 PM
Subject: Theory into practise... Author: Mondy, Steven

Where do we kick this discussion off? Well, at the moment, our college is in the middle of our mid-term examinations. And I am in the process of thinking about how to test, not only a variety of skill areas, but varying levels and students with different purposes. I have many concerns regarding the appropriateness or validity of all that I do in testing situations. Reading Hughes, I see that testing where possible is to be seen as a group task, and that we should be assessing our own tests and their purposes. I think that essentially this is needed and in theory a given, but I sometimes find that the situations that we find ourselves in make it hard to do. Making our mid-term examinations, while juggling class teaching requirements and college commitments can be quite a handful. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it is not always possible to take time with the test making process, and we may not be able to always give very much attention to evaluation until much later. How do we as teachers start to implement some of the necessary theory into our real life working situations? This is where balance and fortitude is needed in making small changes to the things that we are already doing. We are already using various strategies and techniques, such as suggested in the readings under the different approaches (integrative, communicative etc…). There is definitely a need to understand the effect that our choices of items and complete examinations have on the overall motivation of students within our classes, and to their whole attitude toward language. What do you think?
Steven Mondy