Representations of Turkish Immigrants in Turkish-German Cinema: Tevfik Baser’s 40 Square Meters of Germany and Fatih Akin’s Head-On (Paperback)
Ali Nihat Eken from the School of Languages has recently published with VDM a book entitled “Representations of Turkish Immigrants in Turkish-German Cinema: Tevfik Basers 40 Square Meters of Germany and Fatih Akin’s Head-On“.
Editorial Review: Since their arrival into Germany in the 1960s, Turkish immigrants have always drawn the attention of filmmakers. The German immigrant cinema of the 1970s and 1980s focused on the harsh living and working conditions of these immigrants; however, it very often depicted immigrants in one-dimensional roles. Since the mid-1990s, however, there has been a change in the portrayals of Turkish immigrants in a new wave of films made by young German-Turkish filmmakers challenging cultural stereotypes about Turks. This book examines one film from the earlier phase of migrant cinema – Tevfik Baser’s 40 Square Meters of Germany (1986) and one film from the most recent phase – Fatih Akin’s Head-On (2004) and aims to demonstrate how Turkish immigrants are represented in these films and whether the cinematic representations of the Turkish immigrants have changed over the years.
Publisher: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller / Paperback, 80 pages /Language: English
ISBN-10: 363917416X / ISBN-13: 978-3639174168
July 19th, 2009 in
SL Voices |
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Ekrem Şimşek & Mine Münevver Bağ
Another series of Ministry of Education, In-service Training Seminars for English Language Teachers was carried out from 14th to 19th June 2009, and more are continuing this week, 22nd to 26th June. Seminars take place in various towns in Turkey and address primary and secondary level English Teachers who have varying amounts of teaching experience. The main aim is sharing state-of-the-art teaching techniques and revisiting awareness of a range of teaching and learning issues.
In these sessions, teacher trainers from Sabanci University, School of Languages give seminars and workshops on various topics ranging from the teaching of the four skills, classroom management issues, testing and assessment to the use of technology.
As has been the case in the last 10 years, Sabanci University’s close cooperation with the Ministry of Education In-service Training Unit was highly appreciated by the participants in Karaman as well. The feedback received was very rewardingand the training was widely reported in the local media. Several online news agencies as well as a local television channel informed the citizens of the event.
SL Director, Deniz Kurtoglu Eken and SL instructors, Senem D.Büyük, Jonathan M.G. Smith, Sevhan Acar, Benet Vincent and Jacqueline Einer worked with İTÜ teachers, offering them a two-day training program on June 11th and 12th, 2009.
The professional development seminars included the following themes: creative processes for personal and professional growth; program development and strategic planning; curriculum and syllabus development; using technology in teaching and learning; corpus work in institutional research and teaching and the role of English for maths and science.
The 1st Istanbul Arel University International ELT Conference 29th-30th May 2009
Greg Grimaldi, School of Languages, Sabancı University
I was pleased to be able to attend the first day of the first ELT conference to take place at Arel University, Istanbul, an institution which itself was established just two years ago. The overarching theme of the conference was ‘Managing Innovative Changes in TEFL – New Insights Beyond Methods’. Several plenaries and a wide array of concurrent sessions were packed into the two days, featuring Paul Seligson as well as two trainers well known in Turkey, Kristina Smith and Tom Godfrey. Also presenting was Tanju Deveci from Sabancı University’s School of Languages: in a session titled ‘Transformative Learning’, making use of student comments, he discussed our in-house coursebooks, the Beyond the Boundaries series, and how our programme aims to help students adapt to university, challenge their own and others’ perspectives, and thereby shape their own identities.
An English Proficiency Exam for Turkey?
The opening plenary was delivered by Professor Özcan Demirel of Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey, who spoke on ‘CEFR-Based Language Testing’ and proposed a top-down approach to standardising the assessment of English in Turkey. He believes that the (Turkish) Higher Education Council’s Centre for the Selection and Placement of Students should design a test of English for all Turkish universities to use in deciding whether to exempt students from Preparatory English classes before they enter their degree programmes proper. This test would be related to the Common European Framework of Reference criteria and submitted to the Council of Europe to be considered for official recognition. My personal view is that such a product, if designed well, should be a welcome addition to the options currently available for evaluating university students’ English levels. However, student profiles and university requirements of preparatory schools obviously vary wildly from one institution to another, and those programmes should ideally respond to the specific needs of their parent institution as well as their students. Moreover, the importance a Preparatory English programme places on defining its own exit criteria and fairly assessing the extent to which they are met is a measure of the degree of vitality, self-determination, and drive for self-improvement existent there. It is essential, I believe, that such a fundamental element of an institution’s identity should not be imparted involuntarily.
Improving Speaking Assessment
Susan Davies, the next plenary speaker, revealed that any institution can apply to have its language test(s) accredited by the Council of Europe and advised those interested to consult its website. She spoke first of the challenges related to the assessment of speaking, which can be summarised as ephemerality, practicality, validity, reliability, utility (whether a test discriminates), and washback. She recommended the process of improvement that the exams produced by her organisation (City & Guilds, the British qualifications body) had undergone:
- The ratings scales were revised and revalidated according to the CEFR. Tests were recorded and performance evaluation standardised. For each of the (four) task types, at every level, examiners now know what candidates ought to be able to do (in terms of accuracy, range, pronunciation and fluency), and simply evaluate whether they exceed, meet or fail to meet those criteria. A ‘global’ evaluation (also encompassing, for example, task achievement) is made as well.
- The tasks and language expected in each test were benchmarked: an interlocutor frame was produced (for reliability); test writers practised writing very tight task descriptions; topic choice was scrutinised; and testers became more aware of which functions and grammatical knowledge the students would need.
- Ongoing monitoring of both candidates and examiners’ performance as well as the tests themselves was established.
Steps Towards Learner-Centredness
In between the plenaries, I attended two sessions, the first by Anna Beilharz from Işık Schools in Ayazağa, Istanbul, who encouraged us to inform our teaching with reflection on both our own most positive learning experiences and our personal motivations for being teachers. She proposed a simple 4-stage planning process of considering 1) students’ needs, 2) their starting-points, 3) externally imposed frameworks, and 4) within those limitations, options for methods and assessment which maximise students’ ‘roundedness’. Anna contends that the three skills students will need most in their future careers will be problem-solving, adapting and learning itself. To develop these, she advocates progressing towards learner-centredness by gradually handing over as much responsibility for decision-making as possible (see diagram below, from her handout). As an example of a negotiation and problem-solving task, we tried a cutting-out and discussion activity on house design from Southern Grampian Adult Education’s DIY literacy resources, which she helped develop.
(click on the image above for larger view)
Although I accept that the distance instructors can advance towards a truly learner-centred environment will often be restricted by factors external to the classroom, some movement in that direction is surely possible and desirable with all ages and types of learners.
Making Change Work
The other concurrent session I attended was by Metin Timuçin, head of the Department of Foreign Languages at Sakarya University, Turkey, who drew on leadership and management theory as well as experience of integrating computer-assisted language learning into his school’s curriculum to explore the process of introducing innovations in TEFL contexts. He claimed that change usually fails for three main reasons: 1) the goals are unclear or unrealistic, so the teachers do not have either the direction or the ability necessary to achieve what is expected of them; 2) the perpetrators have poor credibility (a poor record of introducing change, or suspect reasons); and 3) the changes are too complex and overwhelming, with the result that teachers are working on too many fronts at once.
Metin referred to four consequences of change which the literature states staff need help in negotiating; they comprise shifts from 1) a sense of loss to one of commitment, 2) old to new competences, 3) confusion to coherence, and 4) conflict to consensus. Strategies to achieve this would be, respectively, 1) making the change meaningful: challenging staff to accept the reality of the need for the innovation, thereby engendering unease at not changing, but all the while preserving an atmosphere of psychological safety by allowing time for it to be implemented, plus some kind of continuity, and opportunities for personal contact with the change instigators; 2) making training continuous, coherent and personal: help often comes only at the beginning of when a novel procedure or programme is implemented, but as change devalues old skills, teachers need to be engaged by having what they value recognised and valued in an ongoing process of development and dialogue; 3) providing everyone with the clarity regarding authority, responsibilities, and decision-making that they need, because change always causes chaos through realigning structures, functions and roles; and 4) generating a critical mass of support (which is hard to quantify, and depends too on who it includes) as well as using power in positive ways, since winners and losers are usually created by shifting power relationships, and so not everyone will immediately – or perhaps ever – support every change.
Characteristics of Academic Grammar
The session which proved to relate most to my own interests was the day’s final plenary, by Rod Webb, who confessed to vested interests through his affilation with Garnet Education (which produces mainly EAP coursebooks) but nonetheless insisted upon profound differences between general English and (even general) academic English. He mentioned the detriment to motivation that is generated by irrelevant and/or repetitive teaching - or, as he put it, ENOP: ‘English for No Obvious Purpose’. This often includes too much focus on tenses and trivial topics and/or content, which university students later report bear little relation to the knowledge of (and in) English they need the following year. Rod perceptively suggested that most people are naturally goal-oriented, but aren’t sure what their goals should be; students want something purposeful and different (from typical ‘General English’): even though they may not often know what they need, they do usually know what they don’t need.
Rod stated that phrases and sentences in academic English were overall the longest of all genres, and the main part of his presentation focused on four features found in academic-sounding language: 1) complex noun phrases, 2) prepositional phrases, 3) clause joining and embedding, and 4) adverbials indicating stance. Common characteristics of noun phrases include quantifying phrases, adjectives, and post-modification of the head noun using prepositional phrases and relative clauses: students need to recognise these and later be led to expand the noun phrases they write. A statement is also often expanded on, qualified or justified by prepositional phrases, often plus a relative clause, e.g. ‘according to +name’ or ‘contrary to +n phr, who states / believes (etc.) +clause’. Another aspect requiring focus is different methods of adding (often subtle) authorial stance to writing, starting with adverbs (‘Controversially,…’) and simple comment clauses: ‘Kendall claims/forgets that…’; ‘It is easy / surprising to see that…’. Finally, there are a number of commonly occurring grammatical structures for linking ideas, which include various forms of ‘which +clause’ (as just demonstrated), ellipsis (often used when listing, currently being demonstrated), simple conjunctions (as is about to be demonstrated), and employing V-ing to add new information to a clause, permitting the sentence to proceed (you get the idea). If, despite the proliferation of these, students are taught only conjunctions and transition adverbs, that is all they will use.
The talk ended with the following recommendations: expose students to authentic texts and focus on their (relevant and useful) language from an early stage; utilise expert informants (lecturers and graduating students); practise language analysis; encourage critical reading (focusing on texts which convey information); and promote reflection. The latter may have been an aim of both that session and the conference as a whole, and if so I claim it was certainly attained in this listener.
SL in Action: TESOL Spain - March 13-15, 2009 / Sevilla, Spain
Meral Güçeri & Zeynep Önel
School of Languages, Sabancı University, Istanbul / Turkey
“Blending Tradition with Innovation” was the theme of TESOL Spain 2009 which was held in Sevilla. The conference offered the participants the opportunity to re-explore the tried and true while considering new activities to use in our teaching. Sessions on reflection and exploration by teachers, materials writers, and curriculum developers were provided as a powerful vehicle for professional development. A wide range of topics on the areas of interest including teacher training, methodology, curriculum design, materials development, classroom practice, testing and evaluation, teacher interaction, CLIL, and of course information technology were catered for.
One of the highlights of the convention was “Petcha Kucha night” aiming to exhibit work in public allocating each presenter 20 seconds for an initial slide show (to create interest) which was followed by 6 minutes 40 seconds upfront presentation before the next presenters took their turn.This kept the presentation concise and interest levels high. Petcha kucha provided a forum where creative work was displayed. However, seats were limited and had to be booked well in advance.
The very first plenary session was given by Ronald Carter of Nottingham University whose talk was entitled “Tradition and Innovation: The English Language Today”. Carter discussed how rapid development of English language and its multi-million word corpora generated new insights into grammar and vocabulary which present challenges for course materials and teaching. In addition, he defined internet English as one of the innovative developments in the English language.
Jeremy Harmer’s talk “ Ease up the Slap: Language and Discourse in the ESOL classroom” was based on the complexities of language, methodology and discourse in the constantly evolving world of international English. Harmer claims that English is expropriated by a hugely diverse community of speakers and this creates a number of unanswered questions such as: “what should we teach students, and what should we teach it for? When British politicians talk about ‘our’ language, exactly who is ‘we’, and while we are thinking about it, who should teach whatever it is anyway?”
In his plenary entitled “Blending the Ancient Need for Stories with Classroom Practice” David Hill argued that human beings lived through stories, but that this fact is neglected in classroom practices. Hill observed that even though there were a number of books about how story telling could be used in the classroom, there has been no systematic attempt to work on story writing as a skill! In this session he explored how teachers could encourage their learners to write their own stories.
Our session, “Responding to Student Writing: A Variety of Ways” highlighted crucial areas of feedback to student work. We shared our experience on the feedback process which has an impact on students’ attitudes towards writing. We reflected our findings of a variety of ways of responding to students’ written work, namely, whole class discussions, written comments on student drafts, one-on-one conferences and electronic oral feedback based on written comments (on a DVD) and explorations of student attitude to each and every one of them. Both the attendance and the participation was high and the presentation lent itself to the discussion of the ways of responding to students’ work.
What can be said about Sevilla, the Andalucian capital, in Spring? You can imagine the sun, the tapas and the aroma of the orange trees in full blossom.… Natural beauty is so well blended with the history that one cannot help admiring every aspect of it. TESOL Spain provides a forum for TESOL professionals to meet, share professional ideas and discuss issues. The Convention was held at the University of Sevilla premises, located in the heart of the city, and the venue was built as a tobacco factory (la Real Fábrica de Tabacos) in the 18th Century. The hall in the 1915 painting by local artist Gonzalo Bilbao Martínez is where we had welcoming cocktails! It also turns out that the building was part of the setting for Bizet’s Carmen.
Our TESOL Spain experience has been worthwhile and enjoyable as it created the opportunity to learn more about other colleagues’ practices , to socialise and network and find out about the trendy topics and latest materials in ELT.
The Less Easily Definable in Effective Teaching: Giss and its Implications for Language Teacher Training and Development
The SL Director, Deniz Kurtoglu Eken has recently published with VDM a book entitled “The Less Easily Definable in Effective Teaching: Giss and its Implications for Language Teacher Training and Development”.
Editorial Review: This book presents an extensive qualitative research study on the long-needed exploration of the less easily definable and less easily observable aspects of effective language teaching which the author refers to holistically using the birdwatching term “giss”. The in-depth research was conducted with students, teachers and trainers through the use of questionnaires, interviews, classroom observation, video-based discussions of lessons and analysis of feedback forms on observed lessons. The findings highlight the need for less easily definable aspects of teaching such as personal qualities, communication skills and what the author calls, “affective-level” techniques to be incorporated into criteria for teaching effectiveness. This leads to a discussion of the effective teaching criteria and feedback tools designed by the author. A detailed account of the feedback received on the use of the criteria and a discussion of a framework for teacher training and development based on the findings from the research is also presented. This book is intended for all professionals interested in such inspirational explorations and in promoting a principled approach to teaching in their schools.
INTERCLASS DEBATE FOR UPPER STUDENTS
Emine Güreli and Reyhan Salatacı organized an interclass debate for the upper intermediate students in May.
SEMI-FINAL
At the end of Unit 6 in the Beyond the Boundaries Level 3, there is a speaking activity which teaches how to do a debate. Having done one practice in the lesson, we decided to turn this activity into an interclass debate. We organized this activity among four sections. In the first round, four sections (Sections 6, 7, 3 and the Repeat classes) were invited to join the discussion.
The students were asked to vote for three debaters to represent their class. Three days before the debate we gave them the topic of the debate so that they could prepare their arguments in English. They were also informed about the criteria for the discussion. The groups decided which side would be ‘For’ or ‘Against’ by tossing a coin right before the debate began. Mine Bağ, Aylin Atikler ve Tanju Deveci were the members of the jury of the semi-final. Four students from two different sections (Erdoğan Yıldız and Ahmet Şenol, Burak Dolan and Sedef Oral were also on the jury to select the group that produced the best argument in terms of language and content.
During the debate, each student was given three minutes to state their group’s arguments. The debater from the other group was asked to refute the argument and make the case for their arguments. The debate lasted approximately twenty minutes.
The first debate was between Section 3 and the Repeat classes. Pınar Karaca, Gökhan Alcan, Beste Kiper from Section 3 and Ömer Erkut Vanlıoğlu, Deniz Can Sümer, Bilge Sağnak from the Repeat sections represented their classes.
The Topic for the first debate was: We should censor the Internet or TV to protect societal values and stability. In other words, censorship is necessary because of the violent, sexually explicit and political content in some websites and TV programmes.
The winning team was Section 3. Although it was the first debate and the students seemed nervous at the beginning, they performed well.
The topic for the second debate was : English should be the medium of instruction (i.e., the language of education) in Turkish universities.
In this round, Birce Öyküm Ertizman, Mesut İnaç and Begüm Bener from section 7 discussed the topic with Nazlı Kubalas, Umutcan Silan and İbrahim Dikmen from Section 6. The winning team was Section 7.
The facilitator of the debate was Jacqueline, who ran the debate by giving and taking turns and warming the students up for the discussion. She also provided help with the selection of the debate topics and the instructions during the preparation of the debate.
FINAL DEBATE
The winning groups, namely Section 7 and Section 3, competed in the final debate which took place on May 22. This time, the students were asked to find a topic for the final debate. Among the four topics, we chose “Democracy cannot work in developing countries,” which was created by Section 3. The participants were the same for Section 7 but in Section 3, two of the students, Dilara Akdoğan, Melis Okay, replaced the previous debaters.
Four sections watched the final debate, which was hosted by Ayfer, who helped the discussion run smoothly and pleasantly.
After twenty minutes into the debate, the jury (Mine, Emine, Michael, Nazlı and one more student from Section 4) announced that the against group (Birce Öyküm Ertizman, Begüm Bener and Mesut İnaç from section 7) won the debate. The difference in the scores was quite small. The audience was also asked to evaluate the strength of the arguments put forward by both groups. At the end of the debate, all the participants were given a book as a gift and memory of the day.
We thank all the students for their courage and effort and the teachers who supported us in this activity. It was good to see the progress the students had made in speaking and developing arguments.
BALEAP Conference: English for Specific Academic Purposes, Reading, UK April 5-7 2009
Jacqueline Einer, Jonathan Marcus G. Smith, Müjde Şener & Benet Donald Vincent
BALEAP, the British Association of Lecturers in English for Academic Purposes, only has conferences every other year, so there is generally high competition amongst those who want to present papers. It therefore reflects well on the SL that we were responsible for two presentations at this year’s conference, which was held on the leafy Reading University campus and featured such famous EFL/EAP names as Ken Hyland, John Swales, Hilary Nesi and Christine Feak.
The theme of the conference was English for Specific Academic Purposes [in contrast to English for General Academic Purposes], and Ken Hyland opened the conference with a plenary setting out his understanding of and insights into this area. Hyland used evidence from corpus studies to point out the differences in terms of language use in these areas:
Research Articles and University Textbooks (different genres): articles use more hedges and citations, but fewer ‘transitions’ (linkers) than textbooks
Across different disciplines: words on the AWL have widely different frequencies, collocations and meanings according to academic discipline / citations are far more frequent in ‘soft fields’ than in ‘hard fields’ / reporting verbs differ according to the field (soft fields: discuss, hypothesize, suggest; hard fields: observe, discover, show, analyse), reflecting the differences in how research is conducted and results are interpreted /4-word bundles (e.g. on the other hand, in the case of) also vary widely by discipline.
He concluded by noting that such differences reflect different conceptions of the world, what information and knowledge is important, and different writer/reader relationships in different fields, the implication being that EAP instructors cannot ignore such differences or they risk misleading students.
The other plenaries, featuring Christine Feak and Hilary Nesi, were equally interesting. Professor Hilary Nesi’s talk focused on the reflective writing which students at British universities are obliged to write as part of PDP (personal development planning) and which stands in stark contrast to the ‘essayist tradition’ which applies to most university writing. This reflective writing strand is a not uncontroversial aspect of university writing amongst students and scholars.
Prof. Nesi used parts of the BAWE (British Academic Written English) corpus to show the strategies such students used to, for example, avoid taking the blame, or, in some cases, to avoid blaming others for the shortcomings of their projects. She also pointed out the kind of evaluative language students use, relating instances to Martin’s evaluative language taxonomy (Martin, J. in Hunston & Thompson, 2001).
Christine Feak’s plenary, on the other hand, looked more in depth at a case study of a student navigating her way through a post-graduate program in an American university, which involved overcoming disciplinary differences to find her own voice. It pointed to the importance of discipline tutors having greater discourse awareness which might help avoid their using criticisms like ‘you need to find your own voice’ or ‘the grammar isn’t quite right’ when the real ‘problem’ with a piece of writing might be simply that it doesn’t follow the epistemological conventions of the discipline concerned; even apparently closely related disciplines such as anthropology and sociology can have surprising differences in terms of such conventions. Dr. Feak also stressed the importance of raising learners’ awareness of features of academic writing in different disciplines by training them to be ‘discourse analysts’ in their own right.
Looking at the conference as a whole, some of the key issues raised are listed below:
-What is academic language? How does it differ across disciplines? What are the differences between ‘general English’ and academic English (e.g. very low usage of progressive aspect)
-Problems of plagiarism and incorporating sources and how to overcome them through awareness raising as well as through providing language input
-Professional competencies of EAP teachers: what these should be. The need for teachers of EAP to be aware of, for example, disciplinary differences in epistemology and phraseology
-Learner training: encouraging students to become discourse analysts
-The importance of corpora to EAP work (mentioned in all plenaries)
-The mutual benefits of collaboration between discipline specialists and EAP instructors
-How social forces affect language use
In general, the presentations were very interesting and informative, and a large number of them were relevant to our context. We would strongly recommend this conference.
The next BALEAP conference takes place in Portsmouth, UK in April 2011.
Reference:
Hunston, S & Thompson, G. (Eds) (2001). Evaluation in text: Authorial stance and the construction of discourse. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Involving learners in Assessment for Learning (AfL): An interpretation of Interactive Assessment
Ashley Hazell-Yildirim & Helen Lavender, The Centre for Language in Education (CLE), Hong Kong Institute of Education, Hong Kong
Ashley Hazell-Yildirim and Helen Lavender both work at the Centre for Language in Education, (CLE) Hong Kong Institute of Education in Hong Kong (HKIEd) as language instructors to student-teachers of all disciplines. Helen is also the manager of the Language Learning Centre. Ashley worked at Sabanci University from 2005-7. In this article, we would like to share a working model incorporating ‘interactive assessment’ based on some of the main principles of Assessment for Learning.
[Click on the images below for a larger view]
Introduction
Involving learners in assessment is a conscious, organised decision which represents a paradigm shift in second language assessing practices and in ways that a curriculum is delivered to create optimal learning opportunities for learners. This decision does not always align with an established culture of assessment of learning (summative assessment) as practised in many international, educational, and EFL/ESL contexts. A more ideal model of assessment for learning in which learners are directly informed of how they will be assessed from the outset, are involved in feedback, feedforward and evaluation at every level can be an effective learning pedagogy in itself. Committing to assessment for learning by implementing established best practices and behaviours in teaching and learning, and by integrating a workable model in the curriculum, is achievable.
Definitions from Literature: AfL and Formative Assessment
Assessment for learning (AfL), formative assessment, learning-oriented assessment, interactive assessment. Not just buzzwords of the moment, but a principled approach to learning through assessment which is in place in schools and tertiary institutions around the world. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority in the UK defines AfL simply as ‘the process of using classroom assessment to improve learning, whereas assessment of learning is the measurement of what pupils can do.’ (retrieved 3 May 3, 2009). The Assessment Reform Group (ARG) give a more detailed definition as ‘the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there (2002). Two key advocates of AfL, Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam (1998), define AfL as the information gathered through learning activities undertaken by teachers and/or learners which can be used as feedback as a way to inform and modify the teaching and learning that is taking place. AfL as the header encompasses all that happens in formative assessment, learning-orientated assessment and interactive assessment, and the terms are often interchangeable.
Our Working Definitions: AfL and Formative Assessment
It is useful to take definitions of approaches and fine-tune them to align with your own context. Therefore, we have come up with our own definitions to work with.
AfL in our context is the overriding idea that assessment is not solely a tool to measure and judge but to be used as effective pedagogy to ensure learning is taking place, assessment and improvement paths are transparent, and our learners are actively involved in assessment processes and decisions.
Formative Assessment in our context is the conscious planning of assessment and learning within the curriculum, mainly in the speaking and writing evaluation of our learners’ English skills. The learners are involved from the first day of the course, feedback is the concern of everyone, and completion percentage of the course mark is given, rather than an individual grade.
Interactive Assessment
Hamp Lyons & Tavares (2008) define interactive assessment as,
‘a very clear and carefully developed system of assessment for learning which emphasises formative uses of an eventual summative assessment: Teachers engage students with thinking about their learning during the assessment process; assessment is one stage of the teaching, learning and assessing cycle in the classroom; every assessment is therefore for feedforward as well as for feedback’
Their work has concentrated on the intervention of the teacher-assessor through scaffolding while the spoken assessment is taking place so that the learners are supported during the assessment and in their learning. The intervention or interaction ‘stimulates and challenges’ the learners to produce discourse higher than their actual ability (Hamp Lyons & Tavares, 2008). Therefore, interactive assessment, in this sense, is when the teacher can meet the needs of the learner, (especially) during a speaking ‘assessment’ task through interaction with the learner, i.e., scaffolding, guiding questions, additional questions, wait-time, back-channelling and other strategic interaction to use the assessment itself as a tool for learning and to ensure students are producing the language they are capable of (Hamp Lyons & Davidson, n.d.). This is based on Vygotsky’s theory of the ‘zone of proximal development’ (ZPD) where learning takes place in the ‘zone’, which is above the knowledge and skill level of the learner at that current time. Vygotsky’s concepts of the ZPD also include,
-the difference between what a learner can do without help and what they can do with help,
-the learner following an adult’s example, gradually developing the ability to do certain tasks without help or assistance,
-the learner’s development being determined by social interaction and collaborative problem-solving. (1978)
In our context, however, we see interactive assessment as having four distinct layers.
The first level resembles that of Hamp-Lyons and Tavares’ interactive assessment description; response to/from the teacher and learner, and with peers (in our context) at any stage of the assessment.
The second involves the learners at both a cognitive and meta-cognitive level, creating opportunities for the learners to think about, talk about, ask and answer questions about, and reflect on, their role and involvement in the formative assessment process. This happens when the learners are part of feedback at the pre-, during and post-feedback stage, i.e. involving the learners in planning, discussing, reflecting and deciding what is understood by the AfL process. An example of this is through questionnaires and reflection tools. One such tool in our model is the use of a peer evaluation questionnaire to gauge our learners’ views about peer evaluation on writing before it takes place, and then immediately afterwards using the same prompts. Another tool is the use of a preferred feedback type and medium handout before any response is given to 2nd draft writing. Our learners have the opportunity to choose the type of feedback and in the medium they prefer – hardcopy, softcopy, audio-video, or audio. These two tools are examples of what we consider to be part of interactive assessment.
The third layer is about empowerment, growth and choice; giving freedom to the learners about how their assessment for learning is going to happen and with whom.
The fourth layer, professional growth, is related to our context and the fact that our learners are going to be teachers of the future. Providing them with the opportunity to engage in formative assessment experientially as learners can help them develop their own principles about AfL for when they are teachers.
A Working Model as an Interpretation of Interactive Assessment
Our model below for speaking and writing formative assessments focusing on our interpretation of interactive assessment is based on Formative Assessment Cycle, Mcmillian (2007:3) and Learning-orientated Assessment, Carless, Joughin, Liu et al, (2006:9).
A Timetable of Formative Writing Assessment integrating Interactive Assessment
The timetable outlined here has been developing over the last 2 academic years and works for all 3 levels of our core curriculum modules.
Our Principles
The following principles are an amalgam of different sources (ARG, 2002, Wiliam, 2005) which have been incorporated to describe our model. In our terms, assessment for learning ensures,
-effective planning of assessment for learning in the curriculum;
-key AfL elements are central to best 2nd LL teaching and learning practices;
-learners are informed of all AfL intentions and become owners of the process;
-learners are involved in the choice of their own learning;
-individual learning styles are taken into account;
-all learners are resources and evaluators, for themselves, their peers and their teacher;
-collaboration and learning together;
-feedback to move forwards in short and long term-learning;
-a sense of motivation for learning rather than for getting grades;
-a directed path for continual improvement, growth and independent learning.
Final Word
The CLE Formative Assessment Working Group is currently evaluating the working model we have described here through questionnaires to our students, focus group meetings with our students and teachers, and achieved learning outcomes through text analysis. We will make amendments and revisions to the working model after this systematic action research project has been finalised, but at this stage informal feedback and official evaluation across the levels show that interactive assessment in AfL has been received positively.
*We would like to acknowledge colleague Michelle Raquel for her suggestion for the blended learning approach to peer evaluation, and Lloyd Norris for his input into the writing formative assessment into the curriculum.
** This is part of the paper presented at the 10th METU Convention, Ankara on 23rd May 2009.
References
Black, P. & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policies & Practice, 5:1, 7-74.
Carless, D., Joughin, G., Liu, N.F., et al. (2006). How assessment supports learning: Learning-orientated assessment in action. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Davidson, C. & Hamp-Lyons, L. Interactive assessment: what, how and why. School-based Assessment Trainer Notes, Hong Kong.
Hamp Lyons, L. & Tavares, N. (2008). Retrieved 6 May 2009 from
http://sba.edu.hku.hk/new_qef/res_interactive.html and http://web.hku.hk/~sbapro/series0709.html
The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, UK http://www.qca.org.uk/qca_4334.aspx
Ten principles of AfL – Assessment Reform Group, 2002
http://www.qca.org.uk/libraryAssets/media/4031_afl_principles.pdf
Wiliam, D. (2005). Assessment for Learning: Putting it into Practice. SETT – The Scottish Learning Festival, Transforming Professional Practice, Glasgow, UK, September, 2005.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Process. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Practice Makes…?
Adam J. Simpson, School of Languages, Sabanci University, Istanbul / Turkey
One vivid memory from my time as a student was a quirk of a fine lecturer of mine, who would let us know that our performance in presentations was inadequate by writing ‘5P’ on a piece of paper and hand it to us. The term 5P referred to ‘plenty of practice prevents poor performance.’ If you received a 5P, it meant that your performance wasn’t up to scratch and that you would have benefited from having practiced more. I’m happy to report that I was never the recipient of such a note. The five Ps can of course be applied to any number of contexts throughout our lives, but what do they mean in language learning, and in the assessment of speaking in particular? In what situations do we want our students to practice speaking, and what are the implications on the testing of a learner’s spoken skills. In this article I will be exploring the notion of learners practicing the assessment format for speaking, what practice they are exposed to and their perceptions of how this did or did not benefit them in their exam performance. The findings will be drawn from the responses given by students currently attending the Sabancı University School of languages preparatory English program.
Difficulties in assessing speaking
When it comes to the assessment of speaking, a clear dichotomy exists. On the one hand, what assessors are hoping to see is a genuine, typical speaking performance from the learner. On the other lies the fact that any real expectation that the performance will be authentic is, quite frankly, ridiculous. As Underhill (1987:45) notes, ‘our inherited attitudes to tests, and the way they are usually conducted, hold learners away from (assessors) at arms length.’ For this reason, familiarity with the test format is essential and should be one of the main caveats of the practice activities. Never the less, where do we draw the line between facilitating fair and reasonable test preparation and maintaining a premise of authenticity and unrehearsed performance?
The difficulties in assessing are myriad. Thornbury (2005: 124) notices the problems of assessing speaking from the perspective of the assessor; ‘it considerably complicates the testing procedure, both in terms of its practicality and the way assessment criteria can be reliably applied… Moreover, different testers may have very different criteria for judging speaking, differences that are less acute when it comes to judging writing or grammar knowledge, for example.’ Knight (1992:294) reiterates, suggesting that, ‘difficulties in testing oral skills frequently lead teachers into using inadequate oral tests or even not testing speaking skills at all.’ With issues such as these, what inevitably is required is a compromise that allows for a standardised approach, both in the administering of the test and in the assessment of those taking it. In order to achieve such standardization, at my university the tests the students are required to take are proficiency tests, defined according to Luoma (2004:3) as ‘examinations that are not related to particular learning courses but, rather, they are based on an independent definition of language ability.’ The independent definition in question is that of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFRL). So, having noted that assessment must negate the problems highlighted by Thornbury and Knight by using a framework of reference as a basis for grading criteria, what other practicalities should be considered?
Practicalities of assessing spoken English
One of the key factors of a test is that it must be both practical and efficient. Luoma (2004:39) notes that group assessment, despite clear deficiencies, display these factors and that ‘they can support learning quite well especially if learners also participate in the assessment process.’ This notion of learner involvement is a key element of the research described in this chapter and as such will be discussed in detail later. In declaring group or pair assessment to be suitable for these reasons, the drawbacks of such methods must also be considered if they are to be implemented with a sufficient degree of success. Norton (2005:287), Thornbury (2005:126) and Underhill (1987:46) are among those who note how the pairing or grouping of candidates may impact upon the language sample produced and could therefore affect the assessment process. In terms of the personalities of those being assessed, Underhill (1987:46) notes that there is, ‘danger that a discussion/conversation technique will reward extrovert and talkative personalities rather than those who are less forthcoming.’ Thornbury (2005:126) also observes that the personality of one student can have an effect on others. The nature of the assessment task, the collaborative group discussion, leads to certain issues which must be considered when assessing individual performance. He notes that ‘the performance of one candidate is likely to affect that of the others, but at least the learners’ interactive skills can be in circumstances that closely approximate real-life language use.’ Never the less, it is this notion of real-life use that Underhill (1987:45) is talking about when he notes that, although it is a perfectly natural everyday occurrence, discussion is ‘one of the hardest (techniques) to make happen in the framework of a language test.’ Luoma (2004:39) expands further on the issue, stressing the importance of the length of the group assessment, noting ‘all the participants must have a chance to talk for a sufficient length of time so their performance can be assessed.’ It is for reasons such as this that certain types of exam practice should occur, in order to ingratiate the participants into the assessment process.
The assessment process
Students are asked to respond to a set of discussion prompts on one theme that relates to the course material covered prior to the exam. For the oral assessment, the subject matter of the tasks relates to the units covered in the course book. Students are informed that the subject matter of the exam can be taken from any of the appropriate units. For each oral discussion exam, between two and four separate themes with related discussion prompts are devised by the level instructors. During the exam, students may respond to all or only some of the prompts on the theme they are discussing. However, his or her total contribution to the discussion should be approximately equal in length to the contribution of the other participants. The assessment is administered by one teacher currently teaching the students and one not teaching the class. Prior to the exam, some class time is allocated to practicing, although it is not required for individual teachers to adhere to exactly the same practice techniques.
Students as participants in the assessment process
Thinking back to Luoma’s assertion that learners benefit from being party to the assessment process, we must also consider the constraints that this participation must adhere to. As teachers, we are generally aware, through experience and training, what we are trying to achieve when we assess a learner. Learners, however, lack such understanding of the assessment process. Underhill (1987:22) notes that while all learners are able, to a certain extent, to evaluate their own oral proficiency, ‘what they lack is the experience that enables the professional teacher or tester to compare that learner against an external standard.’ Involving the learner in the process, even if merely at the practice stage, therefore requires criteria that they are able to fully comprehend. Luoma (2004:39) stresses the importance of task clarity, noting, ‘it is important that the task is sufficiently clear… for all participants.’ Therefore, knowledge of the criteria to be used in assessing the learner is vital at the practice stage. Explaining the criteria to students is consequently standard practice within my university. Luoma continues: ‘If the participants also take part in the assessment, they need to know what criteria they should apply.’ Therefore, there needs to be certain similarities between the test situation and classroom activity. Thornbury (2005:125) notes how, ideally, ‘the activities designed to test speaking are generally the same as the kinds of activities designed to practice speaking, there need be no disruption to classroom practice.’ Nevertheless, familiarity with the task through classroom practice needs to be separated from pure self assessment, for several good reasons. Often, pure self assessment is impracticable, not only due to the learners’ lack of ability to measure to an external standard as mentioned by Underhill, but also because there is too much riding on the learner having to progress to a higher level to pass the course. Speaking assessment therefore has obvious implications for the role of speaking in the classroom. Thornbury (2005:125) reflects on these repercussions: ‘Where teachers or students are reluctant to engage in much classroom speaking, the effect of an oral component in the final examination can be a powerful incentive to do more speaking in class… the oral nature of the test ‘washes back’ into the coursework that precedes it.’ It therefore appears inevitable that classroom speaking activities will echo the test scenario to a great extent.
Underhill (1987:23) notes how various factors affect the ability of learners to effectively assess themselves, including conscious factors (an example being over-rating their ability to achieve a goal such as the aforementioned progression to a higher level) and unconscious factors (self-confidence and perceptiveness, for instance). Such factors make total self-assessment unworkable within many teaching contexts, mine included. Despite this, some degree of self-assessment, even if just at the practice stage, can play an important role, a role which perhaps cannot be replicated by other forms of testing. Underhill (1987:23) notes how self-assessment can be, ‘introspective, where the learner is asked to reflect back on his foreign language experience and rate himself against some kind of scale; or it can be based on a specific speech sample.’ The role of effective practice should be to bring a degree of introspection into the evaluation of a learner’s own proficiency, so that they may be able to better understand what steps they need to take to enhance their exam performance. This was a key factor in the undertaking of this research.
Previously mentioned was the process of presenting the assessment criteria to students prior to them taking the oral exam. This of course has the benefit of allowing participants to understand that there is a tangible scale against which they will be graded, but, in actuality, telling a group of students that they will be graded to a particular level if they are, for example, able to ‘communicate in an appropriate style on a wide range of points, using complex language and correcting rare errors which may occur’ may not be as meaningful to them as it is to us as the assessor. This is especially the case when grading holistically, the previous quote being an example of our holistic grading. Thornbury (2005:127) describes holistic as being quicker and probably adequate for informal assessment, whereas analytic scoring, ‘takes longer, but compels testers to take a variety of factors into account and… is probably both fairer and more reliable.’ Also noted by Thornbury on the downside is the ‘wood for the trees’ phenomenon, wherein assessors get lost in the details and are unable to give appropriate feedback on the performance as a whole. Given that such phenomena could affect the feedback given by a trained professional, what should we expect a learner to garner from being expected to assess themselves and their peers according to an analytical scoring system? Having said that, there is a degree of fairness and transparency in sharing the criteria with participants that should not be abandoned, regardless of the degree to which students are able to digest the system of grading. Having previously noted the importance of effective practice in bringing a degree of introspection into the evaluation of a learner’s own proficiency, the aims of this research can be summarised as being an investigation into how the activities implemented by teachers achieve this.
Analysis of the Data
The data was collected between June and August, 2008, with fifty-six intermediate level students responding to the questions. The questionnaire can be accessed online (http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=t95VBsxXIRs8EpFN4zS4yA_3d_3d).
The first question asked was whether or not the respondents were able to have any practice in class before an oral exam. Respondents were required to choose one answer.
50.0% (28 respondents) stated yes, 28.6% (16) said no, while 21.4% (12) indicated that they sometimes practiced before an exam. The ‘sometimes’ option was included as each respondent would have had at least two previous experiences of oral assessment at the time of answering, and so may well have had different experiences before each assessment. These results were intriguing as, while there is no standard practice before an oral assessment in terms of specific classroom activities, there is always at least some form of practice. This issue of awareness is an important one that will be returned to later.
The second question asked the respondents which of the following occur before taking an oral exam. This list was compiled from discussions with colleagues about what activities they regularly employed when preparing students for the oral exam. Respondents were able to choose more than one option.
An ‘other’ option was also offered, with one respondent offering another action, albeit one that actually appeared in the list of options above. One anomaly evident at this stage was that all of the students who had stated in question one that they received no practice opportunities proceeded to choose actions from the list above. This links to the issue of students’ awareness of what we as classroom practitioners do with students. While we are perfectly aware that doing a particular activity in class is for the specific purpose of practicing for a test, are our students as aware of what we are trying to do? This was something that became more evident as the later questions are analysed.
The next question required the respondents to focus on one activity from the list in question two and give a reason why they regarded this particular activity as being beneficial. Respondents were able to choose more than one option.
Interestingly, the two activities that were considered the most beneficial correlated with the two from the list that occurred most often prior to exams, namely students choosing topics from the course book to practice (C) and students working in groups similar to the format of the exam (F). With regard to choosing topics from their books, comments such as ‘because it helps to learn about topic[s] which may be in the exam’ and ‘because they are similar to exam format and they… prepare us’ were representative of the responses given. As for working in exam-type groups, remarks such as ‘because it is [the] same style with [the] real exam’ and ‘because if students can practice before exam they will feel more relax[ed] during the exam’ typified the reasons giving for preferring this task.
While not chosen as often as the aforementioned tasks, option B, an explanation of the criteria used during grading, was another significant choice, with half of the respondents indicating that this happened in class. ‘Because it is giving you more information and you can speak longer’ and ‘students can try [to] examine themselves before the real exam’ were representative of the responses given by those who chose this task. Thinking back to Underhill’s and Luoma’s assertions on informing those taking the test about what the test involves, it was interesting that this figure was not higher, given that it is standard practice to go through the criteria of any form of assessment with all students prior to any particular exam. Again, this raises the issue: are our students as aware as us of what we are trying to do?
The follow up question required the respondents to then do the opposite and focus on one activity from the list in question two and give a reason why they regarded this particular activity as less helpful. As with the responses given to the question asking about the most useful activities, the two activities that were considered less beneficial correlated with the two from the list that occurred least often prior to exams, namely the teacher videoing students and allowing them to watch this video (E) and students watching other groups perform the task and commenting (G). With regard to the videoing process, Luoma (2004: 39) highlights the advantages of recording the discussion, as they may be used in self reflection of speaking skills. However, any advantage overlooks the fact that students, teenage students in particular, may not like this method, as indicated by numerous responses. The idea that it heaps extra pressure on students is summarised thus, ‘I think the other students’ judgments about the others can make a pressure.’ Another issue pertaining to the videoing of practices is that this doesn’t occur in the exam and therefore ‘it is not helpful because of not [being] included in exam.’ When it comes to watching other groups, it seems that the respondents didn’t always see the benefits of observing others completing the task. ‘It doesn’t develop our oral skills,’ noted several, while another popular response is typified thus: ‘some students cannot be relax[ed] in front of other students when they are talking.’ Naturally, the age of the students, the majority being in their late teens and being extremely self-conscious in front of their peer group, is also a factor in disliking these methods. Another, particularly thematic notion throughout the responses was exemplified in many answers to this question. ‘We don’t know what is good and bad’ was an answer given by many. Can we expect the students to be able to assess to any effective level using criteria, especially when they are undoubtedly very conscious of speaking out in front of their peers?
The next question asked the respondents to think of one thing that would benefit them if it were done before the oral exam and how would this help. Several obvious themes emerged from this question. The word ‘practice’ appeared in almost every response, in some cases not defined any further than with this single word. However, this key concept of practicing was given greater explanation by many. The two main themes that appeared throughout the responses were those of 1) gaining experience of the exam situation by learning how to cope with group dynamics, and 2) gaining awareness of the possible exam subjects. Responses exemplifying the former were remarks such as ‘practice which [is] like [the] oral exam can give some experiences before the exam’ and ‘practicing for oral exam will be benefit for us because we can get some experience like the exam.’ For the latter, responses such as ‘the teacher can help us about [the] topic, therefore students can learn and they can be successful in the oral exam’ was typical of numerous responses. These suggestions are rooted in the types of activities already being employed by teachers, while reinforcing the notion that pure self-assessment is impracticable: if the students had their way they would know exactly what they would be talking about and with whom. The consequences in terms of being able to assess a natural, true-to-life example of a student’s oral ability in such a situation need no explanation.
The next issue the respondents were asked to consider was one thing about the exam format that doesn’t help their performance. As with the previous question, two prominent themes emerged, the first relating to those doing the assessing and second to the topics that they would have to discuss in the exam. For many respondents, having teachers that they are not familiar with is a cause for concern: ‘students can see the trainers during the exam - it makes them under stress.’ Furthermore, some felt that different assessors would bring about different grades: ‘including different teachers in every class because their grade is very different for every student.’ This again relates to this issue of students simply not being as aware of everything that goes on in terms of assessment, i.e. that assessors will be working with a set of criteria. The second theme received many responses such as ‘not knowing the topic before the exam makes [the exam] more difficult.’ This issue of knowing the topic again reflects the impracticalities of self-assessment in this context, i.e. it falls on the wrong side of the line between facilitating fair and reasonable test preparation and maintaining the premise of authenticity and unrehearsed performance.
The next question asked the respondents how they feel about the oral exam, on a sliding scale from the lowest of not positive (1), to OK (3) through to very positive (5). The responses break down as follows:
The mean response to the question was 2.38, indicating an average of slightly less than Ok. Four respondents did not answer this question. The respondents were then asked to justify this in the following question, explaining why they feel like this about the oral exam. Again, some clear themes could be identified from the responses given, linking in this case to the aforementioned notion that the group discussion format favours particular personality types at the expense of others. The words stress and anxiety featured regularly among replies from the ‘not positive’ end of the scale, as well as the fear of making mistakes in front of their peers: ‘When student[s] make a mistake in one thing, they can lose concentration very quickly and their grade can decrease because of that.’ At the other end of the scale were responses such as ‘it helps us to see our oral ability’, ‘I think it will be good because I trust myself and my friends’ and ‘it’s useful to speak fluently.’ Although the mean average veers towards the less positive end of the scale, there are significant numbers of responses at both ends of the scale, indicating that feelings about the oral exam are more based on the individual personality of the respondent.
Conclusions
Students tended to find the tasks that they had been exposed to most frequently to be the most useful when practicing for an oral exam. Conversely, those tasks to which they had received less exposure were deemed to be the least useful. So, do they benefit from activities that they are repeatedly exposed to or are there other reasons for these responses? Students are possibly benefiting from the washback effect, whereby teachers’ classroom practice is influenced by the means of assessment, and that the activities most often undertaken are by default, the most ‘beneficial’. Furthermore, through trial and error teachers may use techniques such as videoing and having students watch and assess each other less frequently after receiving less than positive response to such tasks from students. Given the age group taking the exams, this is conceivable. Activities related to recreating the exam situation should, consequently, not harm the sensibilities of sensitive, teenage students.
Utilising a particular task or even explaining criteria to a group of students is no guarantee that the students will regard these actions as beneficial or even remember having done them in class. This perhaps reinforces the notion that they generally perceive as beneficial that which they do most often. Awareness of what we do, or rather lack of it, was a continuing theme throughout the responses, with answers to many of the questions asked indicating that the students do not always know what we are trying to achieve in class with any given activity.
The field of language assessment is a complex one, the complexity of which we as teachers don’t fully realise ourselves until we get involved in this area of the field. With this in mind, we must appreciate the benefits of sharing assessment criteria and grading techniques with students while remembering that they may not be able to do very much with this information in terms of evaluating themselves or improving their classroom performance. Effective classroom practice when preparing students for an oral exam would, therefore, involve highlighting the fact that criteria will be used to assess the exam takers and that they will be assessed according to these descriptors without expecting them to use these to develop their performance to any great extent.
References
Botsman, P.B. (1972) Collective Speaking with Older Learners, ELT Journal 26: 38-43, Oxford University Press.
Cook. G. (1989) Discourse, Oxford University Press, Oxford, England.
Council for Cultural Co-operation, Education Committee, Modern Languages Division, Strasbourg (2001) Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: learning, teaching, assessment, Cambridge University Press
Farid, A. (1979) Developing the Listening and Speaking Skills: A Suggested Procedure, ELT Journal 33: 27-30, Oxford University Press.
Knight, B. (1992) Assessing Speaking Skills: a Workshop for Teacher Development, ELT Journal 46: 294-302, Oxford University Press.
Luoma. S, (2004) Assessing Speaking, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Norton, J. (2005) The Paired Format in the Cambridge Speaking Tests, ELT Journal 59: 287-297, Oxford University Press.
Thornbury. S, (2005) How to Teach Speaking, Longman, England.
Underhill. N, (1987) Testing Spoken Language: a handbook of oral testing techniques, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Istanbul
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