The teacher as a teaching aid

The teacher as a teaching aid

Although we now live in a high tech world and have access to a variety of teaching aids, there is one aid that is convenient, portable, uses no electricity, can be used effectively in light or dark and is available all the time. Yes, the teacher him or herself!

In my experience as a teacher I have discovered that I can involve students more in classroom discussion and activities if I follow certain simple steps.

• Movement
• Use body language
• Eye contact
• Gesture
• Facial expression
• Speech
• Student talk
• Names

Movement

Sitting behind a desk or standing on a dais creates a "distance" between the teacher and the students. Try to have an aisle and enough space between the rows so that you can easily reach those at the back. This way you can talk to individual students, allow the shy ones to ask questions quietly without the fear of embarrassment, as well as check their work and help them .

Some movement on your side is essential, because it allows the students to focus on you.

• Stepping forward to emphasise a point, small steps towards different sides of the class lets the student feel that the teacher is taking genuine interest in what he or she is saying.

Use body language

Your body should be in your control. Hold it in such a way that you look alert and awake. Avoid slumping and sagging. Just as too little movement is boring, too much movement can be a distraction.

• When your posture is erect it puts the you in control of the situation and the students realise this. It also encourages the students subconsciously, to become alert as well. You may notice the lazy ones sitting up and paying more attention to what is happening around them.

Eye contact

Make an effort to keep eyes lively, aware and interested. Move them around to take in everything. Fix them on specific students, but not for so long that they become uncomfortable! Avoid focusing on the worst or best students.

• Knowing that the teacher demands eye contact keeps the students alert. It also gives the teacher a feedback on the impact of what he or she is saying.
  This is particularly important in large classes, where "distance" between the teacher and learner is greater, and individual attention is more difficult.
• An effective teacher can control class behaviour to a great extent by the expression of his or her eyes.
• Make sure that you make eye contact with each student, so that it seems you are talking to him or her individually.

Gestures

Arms and hands are a very expressive visual aid. They can be used to describe shapes, actions, movements etc. but, remember to keep still while listening to a student . Otherwise the message sent to the student is that he is being longwinded or boring.

• Habits such as fiddling with notes and books, playing with pens , key chains, or doodling with chalk on the black board can be both distracting and irritating for the student.

Facial expressions

There's nothing worse than a constant frown, which discourages students from asking questions, feeling free to discuss a problem or coming for help.
A smile can work wonders.

• It encourages the student to participate more actively and dispels the notion that the teacher is over critical.
• Look interested while a student is speaking.
• A smile, a grimace, a curl of the lips, raised eyebrows etc. at appropriate moments will send messages as needed.
• Send positive vibes and cultivate a sympathetic and encouraging expression!

Speech

Have you ever heard yourself speak? Do you know what your voice sounds like to others? A low monotone or a high-pitched voice can be difficult to understand or grating to the ears. Does the sound of your voice send students to sleep or running for earplugs?

• Be critical of yourself. Try taping your voice - listen to yourself. Where are you slipping up?
• Make your own personal checklist:
• Are you speaking at the right volume?
• Does the end of your sentence fall so low that students sitting at the back cannot hear?
• Are you hemming and hawing too much?
• Are you speaking too fast?

Student talk

Break the monotony and give students plenty of time to talk! It will keep them alert. Make small jokes, be friendly.

Names
Call students by their name. It sounds warmer and friendlier and lessens the distance between the teacher and learner.

The teacher is the best teaching aid. Be sure that you are using yourself to the full effect.

Testing and assessment

Testing and assessment

I will always remember the horror of receiving my chemistry result when I was thirteen years old. I knew it wasn't going to be high, but to come bottom of the class was very upsetting. It was all made worse by the fact that the chemistry teacher read the results to the whole class, from first to last place. My humiliation was complete. Students can have very negative reactions towards tests and it's no surprise when they too may have had experiences like this.

• Why testing doesn't work
• Reasons for testing
• Making testing more productive
• Learning from tests
• Alternatives to testing
• Conclusions

Why testing doesn't work
There are many arguments against using tests as a form of assessment:

• Some students become so nervous that they can't perform and don't give a true account of their knowledge or ability
• Other students can do well with last minute cramming despite not having worked throughout the course
• Once the test has finished, students can just forget all that they had learned
• Students become focused on passing tests rather than learning to improve their language skills.

Reasons for testing
Testing is certainly not the only way to assess students, but there are many good reasons for including a test in your language course.

• A test can give the teacher valuable information about where the students are in their learning and can affect what the teacher will cover next. They will help a teacher to decide if her teaching has been effective and help to highlight what needs to be reviewed. Testing can be as much an assessment of the teaching as the learning
• Tests can give students a sense of accomplishment as well as information about what they know and what they need to review.
• In the 1970's students in an intensive EFL program were taught in an unstructured conversation course. They complained that even though they had a lot of time to practise communicating, they felt as if they hadn't learned anything. Not long afterwards a testing system was introduced and helped to give them a sense of satisfaction that they were accomplishing things. Tests can be extremely motivating and give students a sense of progress. They can highlight areas for students to work on and tell them what has and hasn't been effective in their learning.
• Tests can also have a positive effect in that they encourage students to review material covered on the course.
• At university I experienced this first hand, I always learned the most before an exam. Tests can encourage students to consolidate and extend their knowledge.
• Tests are also a learning opportunity after they have been taken. The feedback after a test can be invaluable in helping a student to understand something she couldn't do during the test. Thus the test is a review in itself.

Making testing more productive
Despite all of these strong arguments for testing, it is very important to bear in mind the negative aspects we looked at first and to try and minimise the effects.

• Try to make the test a less intimidating experience by explaining to the students the purpose for the test and stress the positive effects it will have. Many may have very negative feelings left over from previous bad experiences.
• Give the students plenty of notice and teach some revision classes beforehand.
• Tell the students that you will take into account their work on the course as well as the test result.
• Be sensitive when you hand out the results. I usually go through the answers fairly quickly, highlight any specific areas of difficulty and give the students their results on slips of paper.
• Emphasise that an individual should compare their results with their own previous scores not with others in the class.

Learning from tests
Finally, it is very important to remember that tests also give teachers valuable information on how to improve the process of evaluation. Questions such as:

• "Were the instructions clear?"
• "Are the test results consistent with the work that the students have done on the course. Why/why not?"
• "Did I manage to create a non-threatening atmosphere?"
  All of this will help the teacher to improve the evaluative process for next time.

Alternatives to testing
Using only tests as a basis for assessment has obvious drawbacks. They are 'one-off' events that do not necessarily give an entirely fair account of a student's proficiency. As we have already mentioned, some people are more suited to them than others. There are other alternatives that can be used instead of or alongside tests.

• Continuous assessment
  Teachers give grades for a number of assignments over a period of time. A final grade is decided on a combination of assignments.
• Portfolio
  A student collects a number of assignments and projects and presents them in a file. The file is then used as a basis for evaluation.
• Self-assessment
  The students evaluate themselves. The criteria must be carefully decided upon beforehand.
• Teacher's assessment
  The teacher gives an assessment of the learner for work done throughout the course including classroom contributions.

Conclusions
Overall, I think that all the above methods have strengths and limitations and that tests have an important function for both students and teachers. By trying to limit the negative effects of tests we can try to ensure that they are as effective as possible. I don't think that tests should be the only criteria for assessment, but that they are one of many tools that we can use. I feel that choosing a combination of methods of assessment is the fairest and most logical approach.

Test writing

Test writing

If you think taking tests is difficult then you should try writing them! Writing a good test is indeed quite a challenge and one that takes patience, experience and a degree of trial and error. There are many steps you can take to ensure that your test is more effective and that test writing becomes a learning experience.

• The elements of a good test
• Validity of a test
• Reliability of a test
• The affect of tests
• Other features of a good test
• Assessing difficulty
• Conclusion

The elements of a good test
A good test will give us a more reliable indication of our students' skills and it ensures that they don't suffer unfairly because of a poor question. How can we be sure that we have produced a good test?

• One way is very simply to think about how we feel about it afterwards. Do the results reflect what we had previously thought about the skills of the students? Another simple way is to ask the students for some feedback. They will soon tell you if they felt a question was unfair or if a task type was unfamiliar.

Validity of a test
A good test also needs to be valid. It must test what it is meant to test. A listening test that has very complicated questions afterwards can be as much of a test of reading as listening. Also a test that relies on cultural knowledge cannot measure a student's ability to read and comprehend a passage.

Reliability of a test
A test should also be reliable. This means that it should produce consistent results at different times. If the test conditions stay the same, different groups of students at a particular level of ability should get the same result each time.

• A writing test may not be reliable as the marking may be inconsistent and extremely subjective, especially if there are a number of different markers. Thus to try and ensure the test is more reliable it is essential to have clear descriptors of what constitutes each grade.
• In an oral interview it is important to ensure that the examiner maintains the same attitude with all the candidates. The test will be less reliable if he is friendly with some candidates but stern with others. You should try to ensure that the test conditions are as consistent as possible.

The affect of tests
We must also bear in mind the affect of our tests. Has the test caused too much anxiety in the students? Are the students familiar with the test types in the exam?

• If a student has never seen a cloze passage before she may not be able to write a test that reflects her true ability. The solution to this is to try and reduce the negative effects by using familiar test types and making the test as non-threatening as possible.

Other features of a good test
Other features of a good test are that there is a variety of test types and that it is as interesting as possible.

• A variety of test types will ensure that the students have to stay focused and minimise the tiredness and boredom you can feel during a repetitive test.
• Finding reading passages that are actually interesting to read can also help to maintain motivation during a test. A test should also be as objective as possible, providing a marking key and descriptors can help with this.

Assessing difficulty
Another important feature of a good test is that it is set at an appropriate level. You can only really find this out by giving the test and studying the results. Basically if everyone gets above 90% you know it is too easy or if everyone gets less than 10% it is obviously too difficult. For tests that aren't so extreme you will need to do some analysis of your test. You can do this by analysing the individual items for difficulty.

• In order to do this mark all of the tests and divide them into three equal groups, high, middle and low.
• Make a note for each item of how many candidates got the answer correct from the high and the low group (leave aside the middle group). To find the level of difficulty you need to do a quick calculation.
• Take one question and add the number of students from the high group who have the correct answer to the number from the low group.
• Then divide this by the total number of people from both groups (high and low). It is thought that if over 90% of candidates get the answer right it is too easy. If fewer than 30% get it right it is too difficult.
• Also bear in mind that if most of the answers are in the 30's and 40's it would be best to rewrite the test. It's the same if most of the answers are in the 80's and 90's.
• The final step is to reject the items that are too easy or difficult.

Conclusion
Always bear in mind though that the difficulty of an item may relate to whether it has been covered in class or it may give an indication of how well it was understood. Such test analysis can give us information about how effective our teaching has been as well as actually evaluating the test. Evaluating tests carefully can ensure that the test improves after it is taken and can give us feedback on improving our test writing.

Below is a suggested procedure for writing a test.

• Decide what kind of test it is going to be (achievement, proficiency)
• Write a list of what the test is going to cover
• Think about the length, layout and the format
• Find appropriate texts
• Weight the sections according to importance/time spent etc.
• Write the questions
• Write the instructions and examples
• Decide on the marks
• Make a key
• Write a marking scheme for less objective questions
• Pilot the test
• Review and revise the test and key
• After the test has been taken, analyse the results and decide what can be kept / rejected.