Everybody’s Talkin’ Part 2

Designing Speaking Tests

When I was first asked to do the speaking tests last year I really wasn’t sure exactly what to do. My co-teachers told me the basic guidelines regarding time limit and criteria but apart from that I was left to design them myself. I was surprised by how little input and guidance I received from my co-teachers, especially the first time. I tried asking them for advice but they were remarkably unforthcoming. At the time I thought this behavior was very strange but have since learned this ‘passive resistance’ is quite common in Korea. Luckily the previous NET had left some files behind that included the speaking tests he had given during his time at the school. Having nothing else to go on I used those as a basis for designing my own. I did briefly consider focusing the tests on a specific interaction like ordering food in a restaurant or booking a flight somewhere. But instead of this I opted for a relatively unrelated series of questions like the previous teacher had done.

I decided to take all the questions from the chapters in the textbooks that the students had recently studied. It seemed only fair to use questions they had already encountered and theoretically already studied although this turned out to not necessarily be true. One of the problems I have is that I can’t make leveled speaking tests – the students, regardless of level and proficiency, have all meant to receive the same test. Therefore the questions I choose from the textbook have to cater to all levels of proficiency. This does not seem practical to me but I suspect there must be some official reason of which I am unaware. In practice though I have to remove some of the questions for the low level students.

As I said I use the recently studied textbook chapters as the source for questions. For example in this year’s grade 3 test I took two questions from a ‘listen and speak’ exercise in the textbook. I didn’t teach this exercise in my classes as it was covered by my co-teachers in their own classes so I don’t know if the students had any specific problems with it. I don’t know exactly how the teachers deliver it either. Basically though the students listen to the following dialogue:

Girl: What do you like to do?

Boy: I enjoy camping.

Girl: Do you enjoy fishing, too?

Boy: Yes, I do.

And then they listen to this dialogue:

Girl: What do you like to do?

Boy: I enjoy hiking.

Girl: Do you enjoy traveling, too?

Boy: Not really.

So you can see the basic structure it is trying to teach. Once they have listened to the dialogue they are to practice with a partner. Again I don’t know exactly how the teacher arranges this in the classes. There is vocabulary to go with the exercise in the textbook too: Camp, hike, fish, travel, cook, take pictures, swim, ski, and shop.

From this exercise I made two questions for the speaking test. So my question 6 is:

6. What do you like to do? (Page 111)
• Why do you like doing it?

The first part, ‘What do you like to do?’ comes directly from the textbook and the second has been added by me. For my question 7 I ask 1 or 2 of the following:

7. Do you enjoy cooking? (Page 111)
• Do you enjoy taking pictures?
• Do you enjoy hiking?
• Do you enjoy shopping?
• Why / why not?

I feel that this is relatively fair. The first part of the question is quite straightforward and has been covered in class. The second part gives the students room to say what they want. It is here they can impress me and really display their ability, or not as the case may be. Some students shine in these sections – They often come up with interesting, idiosyncratic answers. I love it when the students reveal their individuality. Even though they are stressed by the experience many inject humor into their answers. Of course some students are less successful. Whilst the first part has been covered in regular class I do give examples and practice reasons they can give for the second part in the revision class that precedes the tests. However, when a student comes out and is stumped I always try and prompt them for answers. In fact I am sure if my co-teachers could hear me they would say I help them too much. For example, if a student has said ‘yes, I enjoy cooking’ but freezes when I ask ‘why?’, I will, after giving them some time, say something like – ‘because of delicious food? Do you like eating delicious food?’ This is along the lines of what we practiced. If they the say ‘yes’ I say ‘so, ‘I enjoy cooking because I…like…eating…delicious…food.’’ But hopefully they follow the prompt and take over the sentence before I finish it. They won’t get a top mark for this but I can still give them a mark.

The textbook exercise I took these questions from also tries to focus the students’ attention on an aspect of pronunciation regarding stressed and unstressed vowel sounds. For example:

Focus on Sounds Listen and Practic

_________o__0______O__________o_O
A: Do you enjoy surfing the internet? ↑ B: Not really. ↓

Here the unstressed ‘o’ and ‘u’ from ‘enjoy’ and ‘surfing’ are contrasted with the stressed ‘i’ in ‘internet’. I should really be listening out for this in the tests but have to admit I didn’t notice it once. It is as if my ears are simply not trained to pick up on this kind of thing. I will have to train them!

I also try and include a visual element in the test paper as well. So for example the grade 1 test paper includes the following questions:

8. Do you know this symbol? What does it mean? (Page 92)

[Photograph of the recycling symbol]

9. How does he go to school? (Page 91)

[Photograph of a boy on a bike going to school]

10. What are the girls doing? (Page 90)

[Photograph of two girls playing table tennis]

I hope the visual element provides a kind of stimulus for the students. It breaks up the test and means they are not just listening to me. They have an image to go with the questions.

In conclusion I have to say I am not satisfied with the way I put the tests together. I don’t think there is necessarily anything wrong with the questions. But I think I could be designing it better and choosing questions that would better help me gauge proficiency in grammar, understanding, vocabulary and pronunciation. The ‘testing’ aspect is challenging. Obviously I know when a student’s pronunciation is off or their grammar is not right but sometimes I think I’m not that attuned to identifying these things. I constantly worry that I’m not giving students appropriate marks. I wish I had even a minute to process and think about each test once I have given it. Instead what happens is as soon as one student stands up another one sits down. This means I’m making my grading decisions very quickly without any real reflection. However if I had 1 minute in-between students the whole process would take twice as long. My co-teachers are not going to agree to that.

I didn’t think I had that much to write about concerning the speaking tests but it turns out I have more to say than I thought. In tomorrow’s blog post I will talk about ‘question types’ and the revision classes. I would really love to hear some comments and suggestions about designing the tests. I wanted to attend some lectures at the KOTESOL conference about designing tests but they were on at the same time as other lectures I wanted to attend more. Maybe next year I can attend some.

Everybody’s Talkin’ Part 1

Speaking Test Round Up Monday 24^th to Friday 28^th October

Over the next two weeks I will give every single student in my school a speaking test. I have been through the speaking test cycle twice before now and it is my least favourite part of the school term. Giving 200 or so 1 or 2 minute speaking tests in a row is a really unpleasant way to spend a couple of hours. After a little while I normally want to run screaming from the room. It can be a truly draining experience. Part of the difficulty however is not letting the students see my frustration. Obviously I want to provide the best environment for them as possible. I don’t want to convey my irritation with the process during their tests. Remaining visibly upbeat as my co-teachers rush one student in after another can be difficult.

At the beginning of our TESOL course I wrote in an early blog post about my dissatisfaction with the compromised nature of the speaking tests. I don’t think it is really possible for me to accurately gauge a student’s ability using the current format the school has for speaking tests. The first problem is the length of time given for each test; the grade 3 students get 90 seconds, the grade 2 students get 1 minute and the grade 1 students get 2 minutes. Within the 1 or 2 minutes I have meant to give each student a score out of 10 in 4 categories – vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar and understanding. It is remarkably difficult to ascertain a student’s true ability in any of these areas in the time given. To complicate matters all the students are given the test paper, the list of questions I will ask them, at least a week in advance of the test. This means they can just prepare a stock answer, a set answer, to the questions. Another issue is the fact that, although ostensibly marked out of 10, I have been told not to mark students below 5. The reason being that we don’t want to damage the students self esteem or confidence. This means that if a student literally sits there and answers nothing, not a single question, they will still get 5 out of 10 in each category.

I hate it when the students just sit there and don’t answer. I do everything I can, within the time limit, to prompt and elicit answers from the students. I’m practically feeding the answers to them sometimes.

I can understand why the speaking tests are arranged this way. Primarily time constraints are to blame. They can only take a certain amount of time away from regular classes for the speaking tests. Each class actually loses two classes – 1 is spent preparing for the test and another spent actually giving them. The students are given the questions in advance so that they all have a good chance. However, even though they all see the paper beforehand and I devote an entire lesson to practicing the questions some students still turn up for their test completely unprepared. This frustrates me, especially when students who are perfectly capable just haven’t practiced. All they would have to do is spend 30 minutes revising and they would get a good mark.

I find myself cheating the system sometimes. Maybe I will give a better mark to a student whose proficiency is low but who is clearly trying. Sometimes I will give a student a high mark because I know how good their English is from speaking to them in and out of class.

Sometimes I am incredibly disappointed and genuinely upset by the speaking tests. I have mentioned in earlier blog posts that my grade 3 classes are mixed level. I have talked about how in these classes there are some students whose proficiency is so low they are simply not being catered to by my lessons. The fact that these 1 or 2 or 3 students in each class are being left behind is understood and seemingly accepted by my co-teachers. I feel so bad when I’m giving my lessons and see one of these kids just staring blankly into space and knowing that I am not going to do anything about it. So when one of these students comes to do their speaking test and just sits there and can’t answer anything I feel awful.

So far I have given all of the grade 3 tests. I did them all over Thursday and Friday – all 250 of them. I was exhausted afterwards. However, I am glad to have them out of the way. I still have most of the grade 1 and grade 2 students to do.

In my next blog post I will write about how I design the test and how I deliver the revision lessons where I practice the questions with the students. There is definitely room for improvement in both areas.

If anyone has any suggestions that might help improve the way my school conducts its speaking tests please let me know.

‘Once More Unto the Breach’

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility

KING HENRY V

Monday 24^th, October, 2011

Note: This blog post was written on Monday 24^th October at school. However, I did not have a chance to actually type it up until today. The sections in bold however were added on Friday 27^th October.

I arrived at school with a heavy heart this morning. I am sure, dear reader, that you want to know the reason for this heavy heart? I arrived at school knowing that my co-teacher for every single class for the next two days is Pak Anna. The prospect of having to deal with her attitude for several hours leaves me cold. True to form she spent all four of our classes today pacing restlessly at the back of the room intermittently reading a book and looking all the while like somebody murdered her puppy dog. What’s wrong with this picture? She is an educated, 30 year old, professional woman who has lived abroad, completed a master’s degree and yet from her behaviour you would think she is a petulant child or moody teenager. I’m growing tired of it. If she was having personal problems or if everyone received the same treatment from her I could ignore it but I am the only recipient of this behaviour. She is sweetness and light with all the teachers as far as I can tell.

(Pak Anna really caused me some problems this week. All week I have been extremely busy preparing and giving speaking tests. The fortnight devoted to the speaking tests is by far my busiest period of time in the school year. Pak Anna is aware of this. Yet this week she insisted on getting me to prepare outlines for all the lessons for winter camp because, she said, she needs to let the students and parents know what the program is going to be. Now this may be true but the winter camp doesn’t actually start until the middle of January next year. It seems very early to have prepare for winter camp)

However, I was not to be deterred. The classes today were the high level, orange, grade 1 classes and I love teaching these classes; they are collections of some of the nicest, loveliest kids you could ever hope to meet. So, I tried to block Pak Anna from my mind and focus on my lessons.

There is however another reason for having a heavy heart and weary aspect this week and that is speaking tests. Over this week and next I will give every student in the school a speaking test. The two week speaking test cycle is a grinding, grinding chore. I will discuss it in full in my next blog post. All I want to say here is that it has affected my lesson plans with regards to the second methodology assignment. The assignment is due on the 5^th November and should focus on a reading or listening based lesson. This is a problem. Nearly every class I have for the next two weeks will be either speaking tests or preparing for speaking tests. The only classes that won’t be are my grade 3 classes on the 3^rd and 4^th of November or my grade 1 classes today. The grade 3 classes are a little too close to the deadline for comfort and anyway they should be conversation classes according to the schedule. This leaves my grade 3 classes today. Knowing this I scrapped the lesson I had planned on the irregular past tense and modified a storytelling lesson I used during my last winter camp.

The Misadventures of an Amateur Storyteller.

I was nervous going into the first class today because I didn’t think that I was as prepared as I should have been. I had prepared but was not completely happy with the preparation. I originally found this particular storytelling lesson online and then I adapted it for winter camp. I further adapted it for the lessons today. Before getting into the lesson I should mention I couldn’t record it. I didn’t know I would need the school camera today so I didn’t book it last week. Unfortunately, some other department had It all day. I can’t really complain. Instead I took a series of photos of the whiteboard which I will try and insert into this blog post. If you can see them here then I managed to do it. Also, due to the reshuffling of students, teachers and rooms all of today’s classes were held in the English village; the nicest, warmest, most inviting, student friendly room in the school.

Pre-Storytelling.

After a throwaway suggestion in methodology class I have been starting classes with different ways of saying ‘Hello. How are you?’ Last week it was handshakes and ‘how do you do?’ and this week it is high-fives and slang. I write ‘are you alright?’ on the board. I point at it, knock on the board and say ‘are you alright?’ and gesture for the students to repeat (which they immediately do in full voice – I love teaching the orange classes) I ask what it means. Each time there were a couple of students answering in Korean so I say ‘in English’ in mock exasperation. There were guesses like ‘how do you do?’ and ‘is it okay?’ so I write ‘= How are you?’ on the board. I have them repeat it two or three times and then I write, ‘yeah, I’m alright. You?’ on the board and go through the procedure again. Then I go through it for both parts. Then I gesture and ask the students to practice it with their partner. Next I write ‘y’alright?’ and ‘m’alright’ on the board and go through it again. Then I write ‘alright?’ and ‘groovy baby!’ and go through the procedure again. I show a 10 second clip of Austin Powers saying ‘groovy baby’ and ask what it means – ‘great’, ‘happy’, ‘very good’. I write these suggestions on the board and write ‘I’m happy, I’m great, I’m very good, I’m very happy’. I bring a student to the front and practice all three examples with them. On the last one I explain that we high-five as we do it.

After the student I’ve practiced the examples with sits down I get all the students to do the last example with their partner including the high-five. (I wrote this blog on Monday and am typing it on Friday. Since these classes on Monday students have been high-fiving me and saying ‘groovy baby’ all over school. The head of the English department, Son Sujong, asked me what was going on. I had to explain the whole ‘groovy baby’ and high fives concept. Very amusing.)

This whole process took maybe 5 minutes at the most.

Moving over to the second whiteboard I write ‘groovy baby = I’m very happy.’ I ask ‘when are you very happy?’ a couple of times. Invariably, a student will shout ‘Saturday’ or ‘Friday’ or ‘holiday’ so I write these on the board. I am trying to elicit ‘birthday’ so I can lead into the story which is about a birthday present. To this end I underline the ‘day’ part of the words and ask ‘what other ‘day’ is a happy day?’ Strangely, I think every class answered ‘Christmas’ before ‘birthday’. Very quickly however someone does say ‘birthday’. I write it on the board. From ‘birthday’ I want to elicit ‘birthday presents’ and ‘party games’. I ask ‘what happens on your birthday?’ Very quickly I get the following answers – ‘presents’ and ‘party’. I put a square round presents. ‘What do you do at a party?’ I ask. This results in various answers such as ‘singing room’, ‘play computer games’. From ‘play computer games’ I ask ‘what other kind of games do you play?’ Oddly not a single student said ‘party games’ so I just write ‘party games’ on the board and ask if they know what they are. The response was a generally muted silence or suggestions of ‘baseball’, ‘football’, or ‘singing room’. So I explain we are going to play a party game – ‘In Britain, in England, we play party games at birthday parties. One game is called ‘Simon Says’. I write it on the board. ‘Do you know Simon says?’ Of the four classes only one responded overwhelmingly in the affirmative. The others looked baffled. I discovered that describing Simon Says conceptually is actually rather more difficult than one might expect. I was up for the challenge though. First, I tried to demonstrate. I asked everyone to stand up and proceeded to demonstrate. ‘Simon says ‘stand on one leg’’. I stand on one leg. They generally understand they are to copy. ‘Simon says ‘touch your nose’’. They all follow along. ‘Touch your head’. Everyone touches their head. At this point how do you explain this is wrong? At this juncture, on two occasions, Pak Anna just decided to intervene and explain the rules in Korean. I was unhappy with this. On the third occasion I wrote ‘Simon says touch your head’, ‘Simon says touch your nose’ and ‘stand on one foot’ on the board. I put ticks beside the first two and a cross beside the third. This seemed to do it. Regardless of how each class got there they all eventually got there. One more thing I did before the game started was to ask ‘what month is it?’ In each class at least one person answered ‘October’. I write it on the board. Then I ask ‘who has a birthday in October?’ I don’t know what I would have done had there been no students with a birthday in October. Thankfully there was at least one in each class. I choose a student and write their name on the board. Next I explain I am substituting ‘Simon say’s' for the name of the student, e.g. Ji Yon, who has an October birthday i.e. the game will be ‘Ji yon says…’ Finally we play the game for a few minutes. The students seemed to enjoy it and it could happily have gone on much longer. I don’t have time for this and so I stop it after a couple of minute.

This is essentially the entire warm up for the lesson during which I have hopefully activated both content and linguistic schema. I.e. knowledge of birthdays and associated vocabulary. This is my ‘lead in’ where I want to ‘engage students with the topic of the reading’ – the topic being birthday presents.

After I ask the students to sit down I explain something along the lines of – ‘so that was a birthday party game. Do you think it was a good birthday party game? (Wait for responses) What about birthday presents? What is a good birthday present? What do you want to get on your birthday? You may or may not be surprised to learn that 13 year old middle school kids have rather a lot of suggestions for things that would make a good birthday present. For example – ‘money, MP3 player, Smartphone, Nike shoes’ (whoever said these kids weren’t materialistic?) Despite the abundance of examples not one, not a single one, said ‘pet’ or ‘cat’ or ‘dog’ which is what I was trying to elicit. After a few suggestions I had to bring it up myself. ‘What about a pet?’ Once suggested though there were generally murmurs of assent. This is how I transition into telling the story which, you may have already guessed, concerns a pet given as a birthday present.

After the transition I give them the handout and draw their attention to the first picture. The picture depicts a woman standing outside a building with the word ‘pets’ emblazoned on the window. In asking the following question I (think) I am employing a top down, type 1 activity. The concept, the topic, has already been introduced and now I want the students to predict further content and produce possible meanings. I ask the students to speculate – ‘I am going to tell you a story about this woman. What do think it is about? What do you think will happen?’ The students early guesses were all mostly correct – ‘the woman goes to a pet shop’, ‘she buys an animal’, ‘the woman buys a birthday present’. In retrospect I should have asked more questions to build on this and to encourage more prediction and speculation. I could have asked – ‘what does she buy? Who does she buy it for?’ etc. Instead I simply confirmed their earlier suggestions – ‘That’s right this story is about a woman who buys a pet as a birthday present. ‘Before I tell the story however, there is a second small activity I want the students to complete. I direct the students to the next section of their handout. Note that there is one handout for every two students so they are working with a partner most of the time.

Activity:

BEFORE LISTENING

Complete the sentences with words below. Write your answers on the line.

Languages pet shop delicious send rich

1. If you have ten million dollars, you are _____________

2. An animal that lives in your house is a ______________

3. Your brother lives in another country. It is his birthday, so you ____________ him a present.

(There are 6 sentences altogether)

These sentences are not taken directly from the story but they are all conceptually related to it. I am not sure how to define this activity. It has meant to engender thinking about the story to follow and encourage speculation or guided speculation. Broadly therefore is it a top-down, type 1 activity? Is this still classed as activating schema? Does this activity ‘provoke students to get in touch with that knowledge or schema’ to which the sentences conceptually relate? I am not sure. I give the students a few minutes to complete it and then I check the answers. I write number one on the board and elicit the answer. ‘If you have ten million dollars, you are what?’ When they answer ‘rich’ I write it on the board next to number ‘1’. I do this for all 6 sentences. As I get to each missing word and write it on the board I ask ‘what does it mean?’ Initially, they almost always answer in Korean so I say ‘In English! Tell me what it means in English’ again in mock exasperation. This will briefly stump them before, for example, they explain ‘rich’ as ‘having many money’. ‘Okay’ I say, ‘rich means having many money, having lots of money.’ And so on.

The Story

Once this task is completed I ask them to turn to the other side of the handout which has a series of pictures relating to the story. I tell them to look at the pictures as I read the story. As I read it I say the relevant number at each picture section so they can follow the pictures. I put on my best jackanory voice and read the story. They seem to follow it very well. Quite a few students laugh at its conclusion and quite a few seem to think it is disgusting.

The Birthday Present

A rich woman was thinking about her mother. It was her mother’s birthday, and she wanted to send her mother a nice birthday present.

The woman went to a pet shop. She saw a beautiful bird. The bird could sing, and it could speak seven languages. It cost fifty thousand dollars. The woman bought the bird and sent it to her mother.

The next day the woman called her mother on the telephone. “Mama,” asked the woman, “How do you like the bird?”

“I’m eating it right now,” her mother said. “It’s delicious.”

I tell them to turn to the next part of the handout and I read the story again this time without the number cues. Again I check the answers. (See below example) I write 1 – 8 on the board and ask the students what the answer is for each and what the words actually mean i.e. number 1 is ‘thinking’ so I ask ‘what does this mean?’ Again they first answer in Korean and I say ‘in English!’ Some students point at their head to explain thinking. This is good enough for me. How do you explain what ’thinking’ means? This activity, and the others leading up to this point, so far constitute the first several steps in the basic methodological model for teaching receptive skills. There was a ‘lead in’. As the teacher I have directed comprehension tasks. The students have listened for the task and then I directed feedback. Is this right? I hope so.

Activity:

CHECKING YOUR UNDERSTANDING

Listen to the story again. As you listen, circle the correct word.

1. A rich woman was (thinking / talking) about her mother.

2. She wanted to (make / send) her mother a nice birthday present.

3. The woman went to a (flower / pet) shop.

(There are 8 sentences altogether)

The next activity is structured in the same way except there is no ‘lead in’. This time I just tell the students to fill in the missing words as I read the story. I again check the answers, writing them on the board as we go. Then I ask the students to practice the dialog with their partner. They readily do this without much prompting causing me to wish I could teach the orange students all day every day. Whilst they are doing this I go around listening and helping out here and there.

Activity:

Write the missing word on the line. Check your answers. Then read the conversation aloud with your partner. A begins.

A. B.

1. May I help you? Yes, I’m looking for a birthday _______ for my mother.

2. How about this ____? Maybe. What can it do?

(There are 6 lines of dialogue for ‘A’ and ‘B’ each in total)

The next activity was the final activity although it was not designed or intended to be. I had hoped to get on to further activities – one in which the students retell the story in their own words and then tell their version (which they initially write) to their partner. The other involved giving a ‘present’ (a letter) to someone else in the class. Unfortunately my timing is clearly not very efficient because I didn’t have time for either of these. Instead the final activity was a dictation exercise. I tell the class I will read a sentence three times and they have to write it down. There are six sentences. I was surprised at how much the students seemed to enjoy this activity and how readily they collaborated with their partner. It would have been completely different with the mid or low level classes. After I read each sentence for the third time there were nearly always students shouting for ‘one more time’. Anyway, after the sixth sentence I check the answers on the board. I make them swap their answers with another pair and elicit the correct answers as I write them on the board. The students are severe markers of their peers – even the smallest spelling mistake or bad handwriting is considered fair game. I didn’t even say I was giving prizes.

At this point I was pushing the time limit in each class so I just check some additional words from the dictation sentences and it is time to say good bye.

Overall I am reasonably happy with how the classes went. There is definitely room for improvement but I believe I have a foundation to work on. I hope I am implementing the correct and appropriate strategies for teaching listening activities in this lesson. I would love to know what someone else thought.

‘Groovy baby!’