B1 Empower vocabulary test

Vocabulary test

This test was designed with the tool of Google Forms, which is usually used to create surveys and tests that people can answer online. 

The test is based around the vocabulary of the first six units of the “B1 Empower” book, which talk about common and personality adjectives, tourism, travel collocations, money, clothes and appearance, work, jobs, -ed and –ing adjectives, get collocations, sports and activities, education collocations, and multiple-word verbs.

The items are multiple-choice questions or fill-in-the-gaps, the students must choose the correct or most appropriate answer, and the test is designed to last 30 minutes. 

Here is the link to answer the test:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1It9HArAPMXa95J_cIqT4VIB0gV8zh_l2bG1nJlpHTLI/prefill

My experience during the process of making this test was not the best. Although the tool is very easy to use, my teammates were not helpful, so it made the experience stressful. Also I found difficult to organized the different types of items in the test, and there was a lot of vocabulary in the units and it was hard to choose which words to put on the test.  

Hot Potatoes test

Hot Potatoes test

In this blog post I present to you 3 sections of a test. The test was designed by other two classmates and me and the items are based around three reading materials that our learning evaluation’s teacher gave us in the class and these are:

1. Homework, written by Bhaswati Ghosh.

2. Concept Mapping, written by Tricia Smith, Ed. D.

3. Evaluation and Grading, written by Peter Elbow and is a passage from his book "Everyone can write: Essays Toward a Hopeful Theory of Writing and Teaching Writing"

The test was made with a software called “Hot Potatoes” and it allows you to create different kinds of activities you can use in tests. Some of the kinds of exercises you can create with Hot Potatoes are:

1. Fill-in-the-blank activities

2. Cross words

3. Put in order a sentence

4. Matching elements

5. Multiple-choice questions

6. Short-answer questions.

Specifications

The test has three sections and there are 10 items per section. Each section concerns a different topic. During the first section, you need to match the term with the corresponding definition and it´s about types of concept maps. The second section is a true-or-false activity and you must read the statements and determine if they are true or if they are false according to the reading about homework. And last but not least, the final activity is a fill-in-the-gap exercise and it based on the reading about evaluation and grading.

Here are the links to answer each section:

Matching elements- Concept Mapping

HTM file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5DWQbOLcAxxUmV2dG01ajB4VEU

Hot Potatoes file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5DWQbOLcAxxbGs4elQxOHBiS3M

True or false- Homework

HTM file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5DWQbOLcAxxbGQ4U2E0bGVkQ0U

Hot Potatoes file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5DWQbOLcAxxajQ3WFBocVZITW8

Fill in the gaps- Evaluation and grading 

HTM file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5DWQbOLcAxxby0weE4xNk9yX00

Hot Potatoes file: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B5DWQbOLcAxxUlJ5QnNQd3FiWkk

Lastly, the experience of designing the test provided me with a bigger understanding of what it implies and how much time you take doing it. Also Hot Potatoes is a very useful tool to make test and it’s easy to use. 

Communicative competence video

Hello, in the following video I talked about a concept that has a lot of influence in the way we approach language teaching and language learning, and that concept is COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE. I also explained what linguistic competence, and why choosing to focus on communicative competence rather than in linguistic competence is more useful. I talked about the five strands of communicative competence and I talked a little bit of syllabuses and their relationship with communicative competence.

I got to the conlusion that the desired outcome of the language learning process is the ability to communicate competently and effectively, not the ability to use the language exactly as a native speaker does or just learn the grammatical and phonetic rules of the language. And that we, the teachers, should organize our syllabuses to help students reach that goal. 

Communicative competence

The topic represented in the following map is communicative competence. For this concept map, I got the information from two Jack C. Richards videos (Video 1 and Video 2) and previous knowledge. In the map, you will be able to see the definition of communicative competence, the contrast with linguistic competence, the five strands of communicative competence, and how we can focus a syllabus on communicative competence. 

Communicative competence is the ability to understand and use our knowledge of the language effectively in communication, making language appropriate for the context. For the context, I refer to the situation, the age of the participants, the culture of the participants, the formality of their relationship, the setting, among other factors.

On the other hand, linguistic competence is the ability we have to create accurate sentences that are grammatically correct, and it focuses more on accuracy rather than in fluency. Communicative competence has five strands to focus on and these are accuracy, fluency, complexity, appropriacy, and capacity.

Accuracy refers to the use the language in ways that it is grammatically and phonetically correct. Fluency is the ability to keep the flow of communication going and use our language resources to avoid speech breakdowns. Complexity refers to what extent your language has developed, how much your vocabulary, your knowledge of the grammar or your technical language has expanded. Appropriacy is the ability to adapt your language after reflecting the conditions of your context. And lastly, capacity refers to how much you can express yourself with what you know about the language.

Our ultimate goal as teachers is that our students can be able to master fully the target language, in other words, that they develop communicative communication and for that we can organize our syllabuses to focus them on communicative competence, focusing them on functions, tasks, fluency activities, and different context

In conclusion, we need to stop only focusing on the grammar aspects of the language and start focusing on language as a whole, helping our students to develop communicative competence so that they not only produce accurate sentences but that they also can use all their resources to express themselves in every context they can be in effectively and in an appropriate way.

Evaluation- mind map

The main objective of this blog Is to create a portfolio and share all the work that I have have been doing during the course of learning evaluation in an organized way that can show my progress throughout the course and my improvement at the end of it.
The first task in this blog is a mind map about evaluation, which I will explain in the following text

"Evaluation"-mind map 

Evaluation is the systematic gathering of information and it facilitates decision-making and helps determine the value or worth of what you are evaluating. We can evaluate procedures, services, products, classes, teaching, learning, material and many other things.

We can also evaluate communicative competence which consists of four aspects: discourse competence, grammatical competence, socio-linguistic competence and strategic competence.

Evaluation is based on evidence, which in SLT is language, both, written and spoken. However, evaluation is sometimes based on beliefs and there are two types of beliefs: rational beliefs, which are ideas based on evidence; and irrational beliefs, which are ideas that have no evidence.

Evaluation is different in every learning theory, and there are three learning theories: behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism.

Behaviorism is the theory that has as purpose habit formation and says that students have learned when their behavior is modified. The behavior is modifies through the association of stimulus-response, and with help of reinforcement, which motivates the learner to keep doing what we consider is a correct behavior.  Congnitivism sees the mind as an information processer and tries to explain how information is received, organized, stored, and retrieved by the mind. And last but not least, constructivism believes that learners construct new ideas and concepts, based on prior knowledge, it prepares students to problem solve in an active and collaborative environment.

Some conditions that influence our learning process are the exposure to the target language, the opportunities you have to use the language, motivation, and instruction.  

Lastly, evaluation is really important in education an it can be helpful for both, teachers and students, and it's vital that they are aware of it's importance and that evaluation is not just giving grades because it's a requirement but it is a process  that helps us make decisions and improve.