Self-assessment

As teachers, we have got used to setting learning goals for each lesson, for each unit and for each course and constantly assessing ourselves what has worked and what has not in order to see how we and our students grow. Students though might find it difficult sometimes to notice their accomplishments. So once we share with them such tool as self-assessment and teach them to use it as well, they will hopefully start noticing. Self-assessment can be viewed and introduced in the lessons via the following means.

1. Daily class ‘Reflection’

At the end of each lesson spend 3-5 minutes getting students to come up with new words they have learnt in the lesson, new grammar structures or functional language. It’s not only important to recall these words but also to ‘put this into the right speech frame’ what I mean is to get students say something like “Now I can..”, ‘Today I’ve learnt’ or ‘in the lesson I’ve used..’

In one of the workshops, led by Mariya Dynnichenko, I have even been introduced to an idea of using special worksheets. Maria shared her experience of using so-called learners’ ‘signposting’ worksheets, which have been designed at their center. So they developed two types of such handouts that are used in the beginning after the presentation phase (more like ‘aims setting’) and in the very end (more like ‘outcomes’). There are special worksheets to reflect the target language of the given lesson – Grammar, Lexis and Functional Language and the skills – Reading, Listening, Speaking, Writing. They are as simple as could be, a student just fills it in with a particular piece of the target language/ skill, for example:

Functional language aims :

а) Today I have learnt [7/10] phrases to express [agreeing/disagreeing]

___________________________________________________________

1. b) I have remembered and used in the tasks the following phrases […,…,…]

____________________________________________________________

Check-list at the end of the lesson:

__ I have used all of the planned phrases

__ I have used a few of the planned phrases

__ I haven’t used any new phrases in the tasks

Surprisingly, it turned out to be more efficient for lower level students to use numbers in these kinds of worksheets ( e.g. used 7-10 words), whereas with higher level students using ‘do my best’ and “use as soon as possible” or ‘use as much as possible’ showed the best results.

2. Whole-course objectives

What I use as another tool to help my students with their self-assessment and self-awareness is setting goals in the very beginning of the course and working with them throughout. First, I get the students aware that when we talk of ‘knowing a language’ we mean a few skills, namely – speaking, writing, listening and reading and a few components, namely – lexis, grammar and situations (functional language).

Next, they have to think of the progress they would like to make in each of these spheres according to a ‘STAR’ goal-setting considering short-term periods like one month and long term-periods – half-course (two to three months) and end of the course. You can be at hand and help students to formulate possible measurable achievements, in terms of lexis. It can be ‘I have learnt 80 new words over this month/ 240 new words over these 3 months/ 500 new words over this course’.

Add a column for ‘my personal input’, which is what I’m ready to do to make it come true besides just attending classes on the student’s part.

Once a month is over, get back to this worksheet and see where the students are, if they feel the progress. Help all of your students find their feats and make sure they all have come up with noticing their headway. If some of them feel behind the plan, discuss what they need to catch up. Do the same halfway through and the most significant time is end-of-course.

Here is the example of “whole-course objectives”.

Get your students write what they feel they have achieved during the lesson and by the end of the course in the same manner. If you keep getting back to their goal-setting ‘checklists throughout the lesson and course, there are high chances they have met their expectations by the end and reached the feeling of accomplishment.