Task # 15 -- Communicative Approach2

[ Show ]

Support VoyForums

[ Shrink ]

VoyForums Announcement: Programming and providing support for this service has been a labor of love since 1997. We are one of the few services online who values our users' privacy, and have never sold your information. We have even fought hard to defend your privacy in legal cases; however, we've done it with almost no financial support -- paying out of pocket to continue providing the service. Due to the issues imposed on us by advertisers, we also stopped hosting most ads on the forums many years ago. We hope you appreciate our efforts.

Show your support by donating any amount. (Note: We are still technically a for-profit company, so your contribution is not tax-deductible.) PayPal Acct: Feedback:

Donate to VoyForums (PayPal):

[ Login ] [ Contact Forum Admin ] [ Main index ] [ Post a new message ] [ Search | Check update time | Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4 ]

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]

Date Posted: 13:41:20 08/15/03 Fri
Author: Jos� Miguel Teixeira de Carvalho
Subject: Task # 15

Task 15: How can we use portfolios to evaluate our students' progress?

First and foremost, a portfolio is a tool that exists in order to help both teachers and students to critically think about their process of teaching and learning � respectively � a foreign language. Namely, however, it is meant for students. "Portfolios capitalize on students' natural tendency to save work and become an effective way to get them to take a second look and think about how they could improve future work". And, as I have been pointing out in my previous tasks, in order for a student to build up a portfolio he/she has got to have gumption � a quality of utmost importance, a must for whoever intends to accomplish any kind of task nowadays. The task we are talking about here is how to learn a foreign language... though the task can be put in the following terms as well: how to teach a foreing language?

But the question I am supposed to ask today is: how to develop a portfolio program since there is no single correct way to do so? Well, exactly because of that, I believe it is a matter of choice: you should keep what you want in your portfolio. You should keep what you think it's going to be better for you in the future, precisely because every portfolio has an intended audience. That is what I would tell my students once they had begin a portfolio.
As we can read in "Student Portfolios: Classroom Uses", the authors are concerned with three different kinds of subjects worthwhile keeping in a portfolio: the writing material, the reading material and the mathematics material. It makes a lot of sense to think those materials are worthwhile keeping in a portfolio by an American student when we realize that the teaching program in the schools attended by the north-american elite is based on the 3 Rs: Reading, (W)Riting and (A)Rithmetics. So, for an ordinary middle-class type of student, to keep a portfolio contaning material based on the 3 Rs, sounds like a very sound idea. It is a large step towards a competitive market.
Far fetched as it seems to be, a 3-R portfolio would be, nonetheless, a nice way to evaluate Brazilian students' achievements on EFL learning grounds. I really think so. And the keyword here is achievement. "In certain ways an achievement test is also like a progress test but it is usually designed to cover a longer period of learning than a progress test. A test of achievement measures a student's mastery of what should have been taught (but not necessarily what has actually been taught)." [HEATON, p. 14] In other words, students ought to have gumption to learn what their language teachers cannot (would not, should not) tell them. To adapt, to improvise, to overcome... that is what a Brazilian EFL student need to do.

How do we evaluate students' portfolios? Well, I think that an honest remark is all a student need. We should tell whether his/her portfolio is a good piece of work or a good piece of c**p!! Good strong personalities are forged with this kind of honesty. No need to hide the truth from him/her. If a student has produced a painful portfolio, the minute he/she is told so, he/she will try to do better next time. At least those who have gumption will.
I know it is a matter of choice the material one keeps in a portfolio. But, as teachers, we can tell good things from bad things. If it is possible for anything to go in a portfolio, with its evaluation there's got to be some criteria of judgement.

These few lines cannot encapsulate all the possibilities a portfolio program has. All I can say, in order to finish my participation on this discussion forum, is that I hope to have produced a good piece of work, worthwhile to be reread.

Sources:

1) http://www.ed.gov/pubs/OR/ConsumerGuides/classuse.html
2) http://www.cal.org/ericcll/digest/hancoc01.html
3) http://www.stanford.edu/group/CFLP/research/portfolio/portfolio1.html
4) HEATON, J.B. Classroom Testing - Longman keys to language teaching, UK, 1991.

[ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ]