At this point, I would like us to share the impact that our study of assessment as made on us so far. To do so, I would like to state the following questions:
- Has your conception of teaching and learning changed? How?
- Have you been reflecting on your teaching practices lately?
- Have you consider making some changes? Which ones?
- What strategies are you planning to use to make those changes happen?
As it has been previously said, teaching is all about making decisions and I would like to share a decision that I have made lately. I decided to carefully reflect on my role as a teacher and to try to analyze how successful or not I have been and why.
Thinking about our discussion of the principles of language assessment, I realized that I had little knowledge about designing successful tools of assessment. I discovered that I was making huge mistakes when designing formal tests for my students. Firstly, I used to design the tests in either two ways; on the one hand, I used to give my students the suggested test provided by the textbook. On the other hand, I used to look for exercises on the topics and organize them to fit the test design. Those two decisions were mistaken because they were based only on my conception that the tests were appropriate for my students. Among other things that I should have thought of; I never thought about how my students were going to feel like when they were exposed to the test; I did not ask myself if they were familiar enough with the kind of exercise they were asked to perform or if they were familiar with the instructions that were given.
Another mistake was that although from the beginning of the cycle/course I knew when the tests were supossed to be administered and the topics that each of those had to cover, I used to wait until days before the due date for the draft of the test to be given to actually design the test. By that time, I used to think that it was not ok to design the test in the last minute. However, I never thought about how those decisions were affecting my students learning process. Now, I realize that if I had thought of the test in accordance with the lessons, I would have helped my students to have much better outcomes. For example, if I had exposed my students to the same kind of exercises that I presented in the test, they would have been more successful because they were already familiar with those type of exercises. I used to desperately wonder: Why are they underlying when I am asking them to circle? And I used to tell myself: It is because they are not taking time to read the instructions. Now, I know that it was my responsability to first make my students familiar with the exercises before using them in the test. At that time, I had no idea about key concepts of students' assessment such as: washback, validity, authenticity, among others. I can say then that the lack of knowledge and reflection on my teaching practice affected negatively my students learning process.
As a general conclusion, I would say that although we all have made different kinds of mistakes in our teaching practice, the most important thing is that we learn from those mistakes and that we try as hard as we can to avoid them in the future. I would finally say that we should think of our mistakes as the basis in the construction of the successful teachers we want to be.
