Assess me and learn: Formatively assessing oral communication in the primary English classroom

• Autor(a) principal: Medina, Susana Passos
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10362/142973
• topic: Avaliação; Avaliação formativa; Avaliação sumativa; Autoavaliação; Grelhas de observação; Comunicação oral; Inglês na sala de aula; Ensino básico; Ensino de língua estrangeira; Assessment; Formative assessment; Summative assessment; Self-assessment; Observation grids; Oral communication; Primary English classroom; Foreign language teaching; Domínio/Área Científica::Humanidades::Línguas e Literaturas; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Ciências da Educação

The present research project focuses on developing assessment tools, namely observation grids, that assessed learners’ oral communication skills, both formatively and summatively. This research discusses the observation grids’ design and implementation. It also involved the students in their own assessment process through self-assessment and self-assessment criteria creation. It intends to answer the following research questions: (i) how can observation grids be designed and implemented to efficiently assess spoken production and spoken interaction? and (ii) how can I involve my students in the process of formatively assessing themselves regarding their oral communication skills? The research project was developed in a private school during the first school term and involved a group of twenty third grade learners. Oral tasks in pairs and groups were implemented, and three different observation grids were used to formatively assess the students’ oral skills. Lastly, students were asked to orally present a group project, and one observation grid was used to summatively assess it. In total, four observation grids were designed and implemented for this study and filled in by both the researcher and the cooperative teacher. Simultaneously, students participated in creating three self-assessment criteria and were asked to fill in a self-assessment grid after performing the speaking tasks. At the end of the study, a questionnaire was handed out to students to gather their thoughts about the self-assessment process and their perceptions of assessment. This research project concluded that observation grids are a useful and efficient assessment tool. Regarding design, the more detailed and accurate the grid is, the more guided the teacher’s observation becomes, helping the teacher gather important information about the students’ oral skills. It has also concluded that observation grids benefit from the addition of a notes and comments section, in which there is space for the teacher to collect more qualitative data to support the checklist section of the grid. In terms of implementation and assessment type, the analysis of the results gathered from the student questionnaire and the self-assessment results show that students seem to feel more nervous and show higher performance anxiety levels when being summatively assessed. On the other hand, when a formative assessment was carried out through informal non-intrusive observation, the results show calmer and less anxious feelings from the students. Lastly, most students showed positive feelings towards self-assessing, and this process seemed to influence their confidence levels and foster positive feelings towards learning the language.