INFORMAL ASSESSMENT

Colombia’s Education System is actually a complex process of changes and transformations, because there are a lot of different controls that are affecting the educational processes as the political and economic ones, which are not thinking in the society’s demands or necessities.

So, it is important to know that at the beginning of an assessment it’s necessary to look for tools and strategies in order to organize the information collected, the instruments, techniques and other resources to improve the assessment in our institutions.
However, there are difficulties to implement informal assessment in the Colombia’s educative system as the limited interaction of ideas, opinions and suggestions between students, teachers, administrators, the government and between the general community, to try to make decisions and conclusions about successful ways to evaluate the educational processes and to improve our practices as teachers.
Then, plan a new model of informal assessment requires a new role for the evaluation system as an important element for get information and take decisions, giving autonomy to schools to revise the information and make transformations to improve the learning process in their Ss and institutions.

Also, it is important to design a curriculum, according to the objectives and competences, associating the evaluation strategies with the Ss capacities or abilities to observe and promote authentic and meaningful actions.
For that, the new teachers today must to become agents and guides of change in the teaching practice.

“Evaluate competences instead of guidelines, is like evaluate results instead of processes”.

SPEAKING

The ability to function in another language is generally characterized in terms of being able to speak the language.

For speaking it is important to know how to articulate sounds in a comprehensible way and also an adequate vocabulary to develop the linguistic, sociolinguistic and conversational skills that enable the speakers to know how to say what to whom and when.

It is relevant to provide opportunities to practice the target language in meaningful contexts and situations and planning time with the Ss for prepare and extend oral presentations to increase levels of fluency and accuracy and to facilitate the language acquisition, because Ss need to negotiate meanings and manage the interactions in terms of who says what, to whom, when and about what.

Speaking include routines, because we all have it to help us when we are speaking spontaneously. So, for second language speakers routines can be essential in facilitating comprehension.

For speaking activities, it is necessary to have clear objectives and develop strategies in which learners can follow their own process and encourage creative language uses as the “3P” instructional cycle:

1. Presentation (activity, textbook, teacher)
2. Practice (drills, workshops)
3. Production (applications)

This “3P” strategy is very useful if we want to follow a sequence and be organized.

Also, to communicate and speak it is very important the motivation because Ss must to participate, make an effort and have nice attitudes to achieve the goal of learning the language. This can be made by funny dynamics, plays and other classroom interactions, but it is necessary to avoid make Ss to speak out in front of the whole class at the beginning of a course.
As teachers, we have to encourage students confidence, to make Ss trash in their work and opinions. Most of them are afraid to make mistakes and they are shy because they think their English level is not good or English is difficult to learn. So, it is necessary to create a low-anxiety classroom environment, as a clue to help and motivate Ss to communicate.

“Make mistakes should be seen as a natural part of the learning process”.

WRITING

Writing is a process which includes planning, drafting, revising, editing, sharing, evaluating and other strategies. Writing is one of the most important four skills.

Planning or prewriting is and activity do it in the classroom that encourage Ss to write as: group brainstorming (ideas), clustering (words), Wh-questions (How, Who, what, why, where, when), etc.

In drafting or writing, the Ss visualize important facts.

Sharing or responding can be oral or in writing. Peer responding can be meaningful by having Ss responding to each other texts in small groups or in pairs.

Revising is to motivate, examinate, review and see the feedback of the writing activity.
Editing is important because Ss can see the connection between an exercise and their own activity.

The evaluating strategy helps Ss to be more responsible for their own writing.

So, as teachers we have the responsibility of creating and engaging contexts for Ss writing, with meaningful, motivating and new experiences.

“For successful writing activities, it is important to create the need of communication if we want to bring communicative skills to our classrooms”.


LISTENING

Listening is a receptive skill that includes responding activities rather than producing, meaningful activities and real use of the contexts, because all people listen in different ways, depending on the reasons for do it as specific information, details and attitudes.

This skill helps to understand stories, songs, readings, to identify different accents and speeds of speech because some people speak more slowly and with more pauses and others speak fast.

Listening involves understanding spoken language when the speaker uses body language to support the communication through gestures and facial expressions. It helps the listener to understand what the speaker is saying.

This skill also includes hearing the difference between common sounds, identifying important words, recognizing differences in the information as commands or questions, identifying main ideas and understanding a variety of sources as teachers, classmates, visitors, cassettes, videos, etc.

Some types of listening comprehension activities are: true/false, detecting mistakes, guessing definitions, skimming general information, scanning limited information, answering questions, note-taking, paraphrasing (rewriting the listening text in different words), summarizing, solving problems, predicting and interpreting.

The activities in a listening lesson can be developing by using 3 stages:

Introductory activities (plays, songs, topics, titles, pictures).
Main activities (comprehensive activities).
Post-activities (talk about the topic and relate it with our lives and give opinions about the activity).

"For this language skill it is very important to look for interesting activities, to have a clear objective and discuss the opinions and suggestions with the Ss, because they must to play an active role in listening activities".

¡READING!

Reading is one of the four skills where the objective is one of the most important aspects, because reading is not only a receptive skill, is an active skill that include cognitive abilities as predicting, guessing, understanding, inferring, anticipating, etc.

Teachers should prepare interesting activities to motivate students and look for flexible and varied activities, giving big importance to the background knowledge of the students, because it’s meaningful for learning processes.

Some strategies to improve reading skills are:

· Pre-reading: to improve student’s interest in the topic and motivate them asking for the
title, the pictures, the topic, etc. In these pre-reading activities, Ss are asked for find answers to given questions based on the text.

· Reading: to improve Ss understanding, inferring, acquiring vocabulary and to develop
linguistic and sociolinguistic knowledge of the Ss. In this strategy it is important to look for key words, skimming (looking for general information) and scanning (looking for specific information). It is also important to look for the main and the principal ideas, to analyze and interpret the reading text, story, book or another activity.

· Post-reading: the Ss apply the knowledge in other readings and contexts, integrating the
reading with the other skills (writing, listening and speaking). Post-reading is a strategy for reflect, for think in the most important aspects of the reading, to conclude and share what you learn and what you understand.

Other strategies as evaluating and commenting are important to interpret and understand a reading activity.

¡Let’s go to enjoy and read a lot!

ACTIVE LEARNING, LEARNING STRATEGIES AND AUTONOMY

Learning and autonomy are close related, because both are essential to use effective learning strategies. They are necessary for the learning orientation and the learner autonomy too.

So, the learning is an important part of the foreign language, because it is not only important for improve language learners in vocabulary, basic structures or accumulating the necessary linguistic and communication skills; learning skills puts the learner in active control of their own learning process.

However, the context, the culture and different practices have a big influence in the learning; they are important factors that give motivation and develop the learner autonomy, because the learner can participate, create and evaluate the process, depending of his necessities, levels and interests. So, students do not receive and do not absorb knowledge provided by teachers in a passive manner.

The learning is seen as an active, autonomy, mental and constructed process, where there are specific and self-directed steps taken by learners to enhance their own learning, which is based on cognitive learning theories about learning strategies.
So, Active Learning strategies include the management of the learning and activities as: needs assessment, planning, monitoring and outcome evaluation. It also involves emotions, motivation, attitudes, routines for self-encouragement, reduction of stress and anxiety; and the idea to ask questions for clarification and cooperation with others for communication.

In Active Learning the students are the center of the learning process. That’s why it is necessary that students take part and decisions in the design of activities, as an excellent opportunity to participate and improve the learning process.

In my specific case, as an assistant teacher for a girl with learning difficulties, I have been developing a lot of activities that involves active learning, learning strategies and specially the autonomy, because when you interact with this students, you start modifying the activities in order to make it significant, but easy for them.

Some of the commands that I usually use as learning strategies are to motivate and encourage the student to be more confident, autonomous and self-secure as:

• Try to do it by your self!


• You can do it!


• Take the decision!


• Don’t use the sentence “I don’t know”.


• Think about it!


• Re-read the question or the sentence!


• Try to answer the questions and to participate!


• Try to do your best!


• Focus your attention making contact eye!


• Use self-monitoring!


• Take important notes!


• Try to be organized!


• You are very good, excellent!

All those commands and other learning strategies imply the necessity to create an appropriate environment for students to improve their learning, depending of the amount of students in the class, of the age, the learning level, and the time for the activities.
Also, is important to have clear objectives since the beginning of a lesson plan or activity, and create a space to the students where they can make self and group evaluation about the learning process, with all the aspects that it involves.

NON-VERBAL BEHAVIOR

Non-verbal behavior is an important aspect of any culture; it is the communication without words, is the body language where the face is used as a great deal.

In the non-verbal behavior are used the hand signals, shrugs and head movements for express emotions, attitudes and demonstrate personality traits.

Non-verbal behavior also varies across cultures and some are common across the world. That means that there are other ways to understand each other using hands, signs, draws or songs, depending of the culture, the context and the needs.

So, the non-verbal behavior is very important, because it helps to use the language in real situations, using the body as an useful tool to establish communication.

ERRORS AND FEEDBACKS

When we as teachers decide to correct our students, we have to be sure that we are using correction positively to support learning, because not all errors should be corrected and they are normal during the learning process.

It is important to know that errors occur for many reasons: A learner may make errors when assumes that the target language and the native language are similar, when really they are different; the incomplete knowledge and the complexity of the target language gets confuse to the students; spelling is difficult and teachers don’t keep in mind that the errors of a beginner are different from the errors of an advanced student.

Correct errors make a negative impact on students’ confidence and motivation (affective filter). So, teachers should not correct every error, because it may develop a barrier and students will be afraid of making mistakes and will not speak or study English with pleasure.

We as teachers must establish clear objectives in our lesson plans, discuss the learning process with our students and give feedbacks besides immediate correction. It depends of the activity and we should explain our reasons for not correcting, so that our students have a better understanding of what we do and why we do it, or in the case of correction, why we don’t always do it.

CHAIN DRILLS


Chain drills are exercises that allow learners to practice dialogue, build vocabulary and develop ideas about a familiar topic using repetition as the primary teaching strategy. It was a key feature of audio-lingual approaches to language teaching through oral practices.

Nowadays, we know language learning is a complex process, is more than a list of structures to be memorized…Drilling can be a useful technique in the classroom, if we used it appropriately.

In question and answer drills, the prompt is a question and the response is the answer, as “Can I have a (pen) please?”, “Yes, here you are”. The word in brackets can be substituted during the drill. This example tell us that in all drills, learners have little choices, because there is one correct answer and the main focus is on getting it. But, drills can provide learners with intensive practices in pronunciation, listening and speaking words, phrases and sentences.

Also, drills can help to the teachers in the classroom management and to recognize if the new language is causing pronunciation problems, because most teachers use drilling regularly in the classes and they are focus in the pronunciation, especially in the sounds.

In my opinion, drilling is very useful but for young learners, because it is working without thinking in the natural process of the discourse and it must be developed with some cognitive support.

“This technique can be boring sometimes and students may get upset”.