Authentic Assessment of Language Teaching and Learning as a Component of Whole-School Language Policy

1
Authentic Assessment of Language Teaching and
Learning as a Component of Whole-School Language
Policy

• Jim Cummins
• The University of Toronto

2
Why Do We Need a Whole-School Approach? What
options do we have to reinforce plurilingualism
and language awareness across the curriculum?

• Traditional approaches to language teaching where
  the target language (TL) is taught as a subject
  and isolated from the rest of the curriculum have
  frequently not been very successful for a large
  number of students (e.g., FSL in Canada Irish in
  Ireland) Better results are obtained in
  situations where there is extremely high
  motivation to learn the language and/or
  significant exposure outside school (e.g., these
  conditions are often met in bilingual contexts or
  when English is the target language).
• Content-based language teaching approaches (e.g.,
  bilingual education, CLIL, L2 immersion) tend to
  achieve better outcomes
• Contexts for language teaching have become much
  more complexincreasing diversity means that
  there may be many L1s in the classroomdo
  students multilingual skills have any relevance
  for TL teaching?
• Changes in technology are having major effects on
  all forms of learningwhat are the possibilities
  for TL teaching/learning?

3
Issues for Formative/Authentic Assessment

• What is being assessed? What assumptions are
  being made about what constitutes language
  proficiency? How are these assumptions reflected
  in the emphasis placed on different language
  skills (e.g., speaking, listening, reading, and
  writing) in the curriculum and in the sequence in
  which these skills are taught?
•  
• What is the impact of summative assessment on
  formative assessment? If the final test or
  examination for a particular course focuses on
  written language (e.g., paper and pencil tests of
  vocabulary, grammar, reading, writing), to what
  extent will formative assessment pay attention to
  the development of speaking and listening skills?
•  
• Who is doing the assessing? Obviously the
  classroom teacher will play a dominant role in
  most forms of formative assessment, but should
  students also be involved actively as partners in
  the assessment process? How can self-assessment
  by students be integrated into a broader
  pedagogical philosophy of self-regulated
  learning?
•  
• How does the pedagogical orientation operating in
  the language teaching classroom affect the
  possibilities for formative assessment?
• Formative assessment in transmission-oriented
  classrooms can only assess the effectiveness with
  which students have learned the transmitted
  content however, in classrooms oriented to
  social constructivist or transformative
  pedagogies, formative assessment can focus on
  performance assessmentfor example, the quality
  of inquiry in student projects using the target
  language, etc.
•  

4
Nested Pedagogical Orientations
5
Nested Pedagogical Orientations

• Transmission-oriented pedagogy is represented in
  the inner circle with the narrowest focus. The
  goal is to transmit information and skills
  articulated in the curriculum directly to
  students.
• Social constructivist pedagogy, occupying the
  middle pedagogical space, incorporates the
  curriculum focus of transmitting information and
  skills but broadens it to include the development
  among students of higher-order thinking abilities
  based on teachers and students co-constructing
  knowledge and understanding.
• Finally, transformative approaches to pedagogy
  broaden the focus still further by emphasizing
  the relevance not only of transmitting the
  curriculum and constructing knowledge but also of
  enabling students to gain insight into how
  knowledge intersects with social realities and
  power relations. The goal is to promote critical
  literacy among students

6
New Contexts New Reserch and Theory

• Growth of bilingual/CLIL approachesshould we be
  teaching explicitly for L1-L2 transfer or keeping
  the two (or more) languages completely separate?
• Increasing diversity of student
  populationsbilingual/multilingual students no
  longer the exception in many contexts
• What do content teachers and administrators need
  to know and do in order to implement effective
  content-based teaching and assessment?
• How can technology be harnessed effectively for
  instruction and assessment in plurilingual
  contexts?

7
Enabling Literacy Engagement across the
Curriculum

• L1 and L2 Literacy Attainment
• ?
• Literacy Engagement
• ?

Scaffold Meaning (input and output)
Affirm identity
Extend language
?
Activate prior knowledge/Build background
knowledge
?
?
8
Competencies for Content-based Language Teaching

• TL Attainment
• ?
• Active Engagement with the TL
• (input and output listening, viewing, reading
  speaking, emailing, texting, and writing)
• ?

Scaffold Meaning (input and output)
Affirm identity
Extend language
?
Activate prior knowledge/Build background
knowledge
?
?
9
Scaffold Language

• Graphic organizers
• Visuals in texts
• Demonstrations
• Gestures
• L1 transfer
• Hands-on experiences
• Collaborative group work
• Learning strategies (planning tasks,
  visualisation, grouping/classifying,
  note-taking/summarising, questioning for
  clarification, making use of multiple resources
  fortask completion)
• Language clarification (explanation, dictionary
  use, etc.)

10
Prior Knowledge and L2 Learning

• Nowhere is the role of prior knowledge more
  important than in second language educational
  contexts. Students who can access their prior
  knowledge through the language and culture most
  familiar to them can call on a rich array of
  schemata, whereas students who believe they can
  only use that knowledge they have explicitly
  learned in the second language are limited in
  their access (Chamot, 1998, p. 197).

11
Beyond Transmission Opening Up the Classroom
Space for Student Creativity

• Tomer arrived from Israel in Grade 6 with no
  English
• Madiha arrived from Pakistan in Grade 7 with no
  English
• In a normal classroom their English oral and
  written production would be severely limited for
  1-2 years while they are acquiring basic English
  skills. Their literacy engagement (in English)
  would also be very restricted because of the gap
  between their English language skills and both
  the curriculum and books in English that they
  might want to read.

12
Classroom Consequences of Shifting from
Monolingual to Bilingual Instructional Strategies
13
Tomers Identity Text

• I think using your first language is so helpful
  because when you dont understand something after
  youve just come here it is like beginning as a
  baby. You dont know English and you need to
  learn it all from the beginning but if you
  already have it in another language then it is
  easier, you can translate it, and you can do it
  in your language too, then it is easier to
  understand the second language.
• The first time I couldnt understand what she
  Lisa was saying except the word Hebrew, but I
  think its very smart that she said for us to do
  it in our language because we cant just sit on
  our hands doing nothing.

14
(No Transcript)
15
(No Transcript)
16
(No Transcript)
17
Kantas Perspective

• And how it helped me was when I came here in
  grade 4 the teachers didnt know what I was
  capable of.
• I was given a pack of crayons and a coloring book
  and told to get on coloring with it. And after I
  felt so bad about that--Im capable of doing much
  more than just that. I have my own inner skills
  to show the world than just coloring and I felt
  that those skills of mine are important also. So
  when we started writing the book The New
  Country, I could actually show the world that I
  am something instead of just coloring.
• And that's how it helped me and it made me so
  proud of myself that I am actually capable of
  doing something, and here today at the Ontario
  TESL conference I am actually doing something.
  Im not just a coloring personI can show you
  that I am something.

18
Lisa Leoni
What I love about using identity texts as a
teaching strategy is that it validates students
cultural and linguistic identities. They also
help connect what students are learning in the
class to their prior lived experiences and when
these connections happen, learning becomes real
for them because they are using their language
and culture for purposes that have relevance for
them. Most importantly, they end up owning the
work that they produce. The book The New Country
was written by Kanta, Sulmana and Madiha when we
were studying a unit on migration. It represents
the immigration story of all three girls.
19
Bilingual Instructional Strategies

• If cross-lingual transfer is occurring naturally,
  then it makes sense to give it a helping hand and
  teach explicitly for transfer
• A bilingual instructional approach might include
  the following strategies
• --where cognates exist, draw students
  attention to them
• --encourage students to create and web-publish
  bilingual books and projects
• --engage in sister-class projects where both
  languages might be used for knowledge generation
  (e.g. Chinese L1 might be used to carry out
  Internet research on a topic but output would be
  in English TL).

20
The Cognate Connection
speed velocidad velocity sick enfermo infirm
meet encontrar encounter
21
Sister Class Projects

• Pre-cursors The work of Celestin Freinet in
  France and Mario Lodi in Italy Both Freinet and
  Lodi used the printing press to create texts and
  newsletters for sharing with sister classes (and
  community members) while Lodi also used
  audiotapes (spoken letters) that resulted in
  students becoming aware of and analysing regional
  varieties of Italian
• The DiaLogos Project Grades 5/6 students in
  Rhodes/Kassos (Greece) and Toronto (Canada)
  (Kourtis-Kazoullis, 2001).

22
DiaLogos Focus on Meaning

• Greek students carried out extensive research in
  both English (e.g. on the web) and Greek (e.g.
  local museums) on topics such as ancient Greece
• As a result of this research, students wrote to
  the editors of Dr. Dig magazine (a web-based
  archaeological magazine intended for students) to
  complain about their use of the term Elgin
  Marbles (marble statues taken from the Parthenon
  by Lord Elgin in the early 1800s whose ownership
  is currently under dispute between Greece and the
  UK)

23
DiaLogos Focus on Language
Student from Canada Katerina I didnt have
much of a Christmas this year because I was
moviong and we didnt put up a tree and stuff
like that but it was fun moving and stuff. On
Christmas eve we went to my aunts house and had
a big feast and me and cousin Maria were
chilling out. On New Years eve we went to my
moms friends house and clebrated it there and we
brought in 1999 we with a really big
bang!! BYE FOR NOW KATERINA!!!!!!!!! E
xpressions in the letters from Canadian students
such as stuff like that, and stuff, chilling
out, with a really big bang, we had a blast and
whaz up, fueled the students curiosity and
resulted in critical analysis of language forms.

24
DiaLogos Focus on Use

• Students collaboratively completed a short story
  begun by Evgenios Trivizas (a well-known Greek
  childrens writer) called The Dance of the
  Ostriches
• 80 different stories were written. 59 stories
  were written by the students in Greece (35
  stories in Greek and 24 in English) and 21
  stories were written by students in Canada (9 in
  Greek and 12 in English). Some texts included
  both languages, reflecting students attempt to
  use the target language.

25
Pedagogies of Choice School-based Auditing and Improvement of L2 Teaching and Plurilingual Development Pedagogies of Choice School-based Auditing and Improvement of L2 Teaching and Plurilingual Development Pedagogies of Choice School-based Auditing and Improvement of L2 Teaching and Plurilingual Development Pedagogies of Choice School-based Auditing and Improvement of L2 Teaching and Plurilingual Development
Instructional Options Current Realities Where Are We? Vision for the Future Where Do We Want To Be? Getting it Done How Do We Get There?
Content How do we adapt curriculum materials to link with students prior knowledge and cultural background (e.g. purchase dual language books) and also to promote critical thinking about texts and issues (e.g. whose perspectives are represented in a text)?
Cognition How can we modify instruction to evoke higher levels of literacy engagement and critical thinking?
Tools How can we use tools such as computers, digital cameras, camcorders, web pages, etc?
Assessment How can we complement mandated standardized assessments in order to present to students, parents, and administrators a more valid account of student progress? (e.g. a role for portfolio assessment?)
Language/Culture What messages are we giving students and parents about home language and culture? How can we enable students to use their L1 as a powerful tool for learning? Can we increase students identity investment by means of bilingual instructional strategies (teaching for transfer)?
Parental Involvement How can we engage parents as co-educators in such a way that their linguistic and cultural expertise is harnessed as fuel for their childrens academic progress?
26
Types of Cross-Lingual Transfer

• Transfer of concepts (e.g. understanding the
  concept of photosynthesis)
• Transfer of cognitive and linguistic strategies
  (e.g. strategies of visualizing, use of graphic
  organizers, mnemonic devices, vocabulary
  acquisition strategies, etc.)
• Transfer of specific linguistic elements
  (knowledge of the meaning of photo in
  photosynthesis)
• Transfer of phonological awareness

27
(No Transcript)
28
(No Transcript)
29
Rethinking Traditional Language Teaching

• Teaching L2 as a subject typically yields
  disappointing results for a large majority of
  students except in situations where there is
  extremely high motivation to learn the language
  and/or significant exposure outside school (e.g.,
  these conditions are often met when English is
  the target language).
• Committee on Irish Language Attitudes Research
  (1975)
• Those who received Irish-medium instruction in
  their school years were ten times more likely to
  be now using Irish intensively than those who had
  studied Irish as a subject only.
• Evans (1976) on Welsh
• To state the matter bluntly, this policy, at
  least until quite recently, has been a disastrous
  failure. Even minority Welsh speaking elements in
  these second language schools i.e.,
  English-medium with Welsh taught for 30 minutes
  per day frequently failed to retain their
  natural bilingualism and lapsed into becoming
  monoglot English-speakers. (pp. 54-55)
• The major problematic assumption in teaching
  languages as subjects is the misconception that
  we first have to learn the language and only then
  can we think about using it. Under these
  circumstances students frequently never cross the
  threshold to using the target language in a way
  that is identity-affirming.

30
The Potential of Bilingual/Trilingual Programmes

• L2 immersion and bilingual education can
  contribute very significantly to revitalization
  of threatened languages.
• Basque Autonomous Community (Cenoz, 2008)
• Steady increase in Basque proficiency (over
  16-year olds) from 24.1 in 1991 to 30.1 in
  2006
• gt90 of primary students are now in bilingual
  (30) or full Basque-medium (60) programmes.
  Less than 9 are in Spanish-medium programmes
  with Basque taught as a subject at the secondary
  level, more than 80 of students are in bilingual
  or Basque-medium programmes
• Evaluations have consistently shown over the past
  20 years that students in Basque-medium (Model D)
  schools are more proficient in Basque than
  students in bilingual (Model B) schools who, in
  turn, are more proficient than students in
  Spanish-medium (Model A) schools Minimal, if any
  differences exist in Spanish between the three
  models.

31
What Is English Language Proficiency?Conversatio
nal Fluency

• The ability to carry on a conversation in
  familiar face-to-face situations
• Developed by the vast majority of native speakers
  by the time they enter school at age 5
• Involves use of high frequency words and simple
  grammatical constructions
• ELL students typically require 1-2 years to
  attain peer-appropriate levels.

32
What Is English Language Proficiency?Discrete
Language Skills

• Refers to the rule-governed aspects of language
  (e.g., phonics, spelling, grammar, punctuation,
  etc.)
• Can be developed in two independent ways
• (a) by explicit instruction, and
• (b) through active and extended engagement with
  literacy
• ELL students can learn these specific language
  skills concurrently with their development of
  basic vocabulary and conversational fluency.
  However, there is little direct transference to
  academic language proficiency (e.g., vocabulary
  knowledge, reading comprehension).

33
What Is English Language Proficiency?Academic
Language Proficiency

• Includes knowledge of the less frequent
  vocabulary of English as well as the ability to
  interpret and produce increasingly complex
  written language
• ELL students typically require at least 5 years
  to attain grade expectations in language and
  literacy skills
• In order to catch up to grade norms within 6
  years, ELL students must make 15 months gain in
  every 10-month school year
• Because academic language is found primarily in
  books, extensive reading is crucial in enabling
  students to catch up
• Frequent writing, across genres, is also crucial
  in developing academic writing skills.

34
Sample of Most Frequent 150 Academic Words
accelerate achieve adjacent contribute convert create fluctuate focus formulate notion obtain obvious
sequence series shift affect alternative analyze criterion crucial data function generate guarantee
occur passive period signify similar simultaneous approach approximate arbitrary define definite demonstrate
35
Impressive Evidence for the Effects of Extensive
Reading in L2 Acquisition

• From Krashen The Power of Reading (2nd edition,
  2004, pp. 4-5)
• Elley (1991) also showed that free reading had
  a profound effect on second language acquirers in
  Singapore. In three studies involving a total of
  approximately 3,000 children, ages six through
  nine, and lasting from one to three years,
  children who followed the Reading and English
  Acquisition Program, a combination of shared
  book experience, language experience, and free
  reading (book flood), outperformed
  traditionally taught students on tests of reading
  comprehension, vocabulary, oral language,
  grammar, listening comprehension, and writing.

36
The Centrality of Literacy Engagement

• Amount and range of reading and writing
• Use of effective strategies for deep
  understanding of text
• Positive affect and identity investment in
  reading and writing
• Guthrie notes that in all spheres of life (e.g.
  driving a car, doing surgery, playing golf,
  gourmet cooking, etc.) participation is key to
  the development of proficiency. He notes that
  certainly some initial lessons are valuable for
  driving a car or typing on a keyboard, but
  expertise spirals upward mainly with engaged
  participation (2004, p. 8).

37
PISA Reading Engagement

• For example, data on the reading attainment of
  15-year olds in almost 30 countries showed that
  the level of a students reading engagement is a
  better predictor of literacy performance than his
  or her socioeconomic background, indicating that
  cultivating a students interest in reading can
  help overcome home disadvantages (OECD, 2004, p.
  8)

38
Empirical Support for the Role of Engaged Reading

• Drawing on both the 1998 NAEP data from the
  United States and the results of the PISA study
  of reading achievement in international contexts,
  Guthrie (2004, p. 5) notes that students
• whose family background was characterized by
  low income and low education, but who were highly
  engaged readers, substantially outscored students
  who came from backgrounds with higher education
  and higher income, but who themselves were less
  engaged readers. Based on a massive sample, this
  finding suggests the stunning conclusion that
  engaged reading can overcome traditional barriers
  to reading achievement, including gender,
  parental education, and income.

39
(No Transcript)
40
(No Transcript)
41
Rethinking Language Teaching Methods and
AssumptionsHistorical Trends

• Exposure and input are clearly important (e.g.,
  John Carrolls work on time-on-task in the 1960s)
  necessary but not sufficient condition for L2
  learning counter-evidence of a linear
  relationship is provided by Clare Burstalls
  research in the UK in the 1970s, early vs. late
  French immersion comparisons, and bilingual
  education evaluations
• Grammar-translation method replaced by the direct
  method in late 19th century. The direct method
  embodied the monolingual principle (Howatt,
  1984). Later audiolingual and audiovisual
  approaches also emphasized instructional use of
  the TL to the exclusion of students L1, with the
  goal of enabling learners to think in the TL with
  minimal interference from L1. The monolingual
  principle is also incorporated explicitly or
  implicitly in many communicative language
  teaching (CLT) programs.

42
Current Assumptions in CLT

• Policy and practice operate as though the
  monolingual principle had been established as
  axiomatic and essentially common sense.
• Cook (2001), for example, points out that most
  teaching manuals consider the avoidance of L1 as
  so obvious that no classroom use of the L1 is
  ever mentioned (p. 404).
• Recent methods do not so much forbid the L1 as
  ignore its existence altogether. Communicative
  language teaching and task-based learning methods
  have no necessary relationship with the L1, yet
  ... the only times the L1 is mentioned is when
  advice is given on how to minimize its use. The
  main theoretical treatments of task-based
  learning do not, for example, have any locatable
  mentions of the classroom use of the L1. ... Most
  descriptions of methods portray the ideal
  classroom as having as little of the L1 as
  possible, essentially by omitting reference to
  it.
• (p. 404)

43
Three Monolingual Instructional Assumptions

• In second or foreign language teaching,
  instruction should be carried out exclusively in
  the target language without recourse to students
  L1
• All recourse to L1 by teachers or students
  (e.g., bilingual dictionary use) is discouraged
• ( direct method assumption)
• Translation between L1 and L2 has no place in the
  teaching of language or literacy
• In L2 teaching, use of translation by teachers
  or students represents a regression to the
  discredited grammar/translation method
• In bilingual programs, use of translation is
  assumed to equal the discredited concurrent
  translation method
• Within bilingual and dual language programs, the
  two languages should be kept rigidly separate (
  two solitudes assumption)

44
THE DEVELOPMENT OF ACADEMIC EXPERTISE
Teacher Student Interactions
Maximum Cognitive Engagement
Maximum Identity Investment

• Focus on Use
• Using language to
• Generate new knowledge
• Create literature and art
• Act on social realities

• Focus on Meaning
• Making input comprehensible
• Developing critical literacy

• Focus on Language
• Awareness of language forms and uses
• Critical analysis of language forms and uses