Getting to Know You

Getting to Know You

INTRODUCTION

I teach LINC (CLB levels 3-4-5) which is an ongoing language program. My students are senior women. This means that students can join the class any time and leave the class whenever they are progressed to the other level. So there is no beginning and no end of the program.

When a new student comes to the class, I introduce myself and ask every student to introduce herself to the new classmate. They have had a lot of practice to do that during the school year.

It is a kind of welcome given by all of us. Then I think that the new student feels better and is ready to introduce herself. This is the first step but not the end of the story.

PBLA –Portfolio Based Language Assessment

The first entry of the portfolio is the autobiography of the student. On that piece of paper, she has written some information about herself. There is no format and no content frame. Students write whatever they want about themselves. So the portfolio is the property of the student. It can be confidential if the student does not want to share it. However, a lot of students are happy to share the information with their peers. It is not very convenient for students to open the portfolios of their peers and read their stories. Now I intend to create electronic portfolios. The following task is an example of the electronic portfolio.  

Speaking Task for Assessment

I am planning a speaking task “Getting to Know You”. It is an interesting and interactive topic. Students are going to demonstrate their language competencies: How can they interact socially & share information? In other words, it shows how able they are to use bits and pieces of language to communicate in different social environments. I would use a voicethread for this activity.

This will be a follow up activity after the topic: “Introduce Yourself” that we did in the class.

I have prepared a snapshot of a number of cropped images the students are supposed to talk about in this activity. For example, a picture of Toronto suggests the question: How long have you been in Canada/Toronto? A picture of an English book suggests: How long have you studied English? So the instruction is that each student should talk about these topics.

The Activity:

The instructor will be the first to start talking about herself. Students will be encouraged to post their pictures.

Criteria for Assessment & Criteria for Success

Students will have a chart prepared by the instructor to use for their assessment. The criteria for success is scoring.

Self-assessment – the student can listen to her introduction and edit to make it better.

Peer assessment – students can listen to their peer’s voice and make oral comments based on the assessment chart.

Then the teacher will listen to them and make the final (oral) comments using the chart, for example, she will mention certain things that students did not, but she will not repeat students’ comments. This assessment will be aligned to the corresponding CLBs.