Part III. Understanding Theory and Issues in the Field
Theory-to-Practice Paper: “Assessing Vocabulary: Authenticity and Context”
Theory-to-Practice Paper: “Assessing Vocabulary: Authenticity and Context”
This paper, written in the spring of 2012, demonstrates what I had learned when assessing students by putting theory into practice. The project for this class allowed group members to observe an ESL class and then design, administer, grade and analyze an assessment activity for that class.
The topic of this paper reflects the type of assessment that was created for a group of students in a college-prep course at Hawai‘i Pacific University. The course was a content course about International Education, and my peers and I created a vocabulary assessment as an achievement test for the students in the course. This paper explains the assessment itself as well as the planning process and our analysis of both the student results and our ability to create a successful assessment tool.
I think that this is one of the stronger papers I have included in my portfolio as it demonstrates both my knowledge and understanding of the content of the class as well as highlights my writing abilities. In the paper, after the background information about the school, program and class is given, I describe the assessment objectives, as determined by the cooperating teacher, and the specifications of the exam. Further, after listing the students’ results, I reflect on different aspects of the assessment piece and my understanding about creating, administering, and analyzing assessments for students. Other members of the group and I determined the parts of the assessment that we found to be most successful as well as different components that may have required additional attention and revision before being administered to the students. Finally, after completing the analysis of the assessment, I raised a few questions about testing vocabulary in specific contexts that I would like to find answers to with future research. This paper had very few comments or feedback from my instructor, as I was able to edit and revise multiple times before turning it in. I also believe that my reflection of the assessment we created, as well as the questions I developed for further inquiry highlight my ability to think about both the theory and the pedagogy involved with teaching and assessing students.
I am still working on a weakness in my writing—wordiness. There were a few times when I noticed that sentences got away from me and I could have easily broken them up into a few different sentences or changed them to be clearer. Another difficulty I had when writing this paper was with my choice of wording. Sometimes I would choose the wrong word when describing something, such as theories as opposed to principles. Finally, this paper needed a bit more work in regards to APA formatting and how I documented my reference materials.
In conclusion, writing this paper was extremely beneficial because I was able to think holistically about an assessment tool and process. I was able to discover more reasons for testing than just because I am supposed to. This paper and the materials that accompany it can be found at this link.
The topic of this paper reflects the type of assessment that was created for a group of students in a college-prep course at Hawai‘i Pacific University. The course was a content course about International Education, and my peers and I created a vocabulary assessment as an achievement test for the students in the course. This paper explains the assessment itself as well as the planning process and our analysis of both the student results and our ability to create a successful assessment tool.
I think that this is one of the stronger papers I have included in my portfolio as it demonstrates both my knowledge and understanding of the content of the class as well as highlights my writing abilities. In the paper, after the background information about the school, program and class is given, I describe the assessment objectives, as determined by the cooperating teacher, and the specifications of the exam. Further, after listing the students’ results, I reflect on different aspects of the assessment piece and my understanding about creating, administering, and analyzing assessments for students. Other members of the group and I determined the parts of the assessment that we found to be most successful as well as different components that may have required additional attention and revision before being administered to the students. Finally, after completing the analysis of the assessment, I raised a few questions about testing vocabulary in specific contexts that I would like to find answers to with future research. This paper had very few comments or feedback from my instructor, as I was able to edit and revise multiple times before turning it in. I also believe that my reflection of the assessment we created, as well as the questions I developed for further inquiry highlight my ability to think about both the theory and the pedagogy involved with teaching and assessing students.
I am still working on a weakness in my writing—wordiness. There were a few times when I noticed that sentences got away from me and I could have easily broken them up into a few different sentences or changed them to be clearer. Another difficulty I had when writing this paper was with my choice of wording. Sometimes I would choose the wrong word when describing something, such as theories as opposed to principles. Finally, this paper needed a bit more work in regards to APA formatting and how I documented my reference materials.
In conclusion, writing this paper was extremely beneficial because I was able to think holistically about an assessment tool and process. I was able to discover more reasons for testing than just because I am supposed to. This paper and the materials that accompany it can be found at this link.