critical thinking of " More Unintended Consequences of High-Stakes Testing" (Gregory J. Cizek, university of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

More Unintended Consequences of High-Stakes Testing

(Gregory J. Cizek, university of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

The Long History High-Stakes Tests

In my opinion, the history of High-Stakes test was very cruel, because of relate the story of minimum competency exam that took place when the Gilead Guards challenged the fugitives from the tribe of Ephraim when they tried to cross the Jordan River. They would drag away and kill man, if they knew that man was a member of  the tribe of Ephraim, but he couldn’t  pronounce the “H”, when they demanded “Say Shibboleth”, he just said Sibboleth instead of Shibboleth.

It was not a fair, because some men had a good intelligence, but they couldn’t pronounce some word well, so they would die. It could undermine the mental of the man and made forty-two  thousand people of Ephraim died there.

I hope that Gilead Guards should have abandoned their test altogether because it was unclear whether  Ephriamites  really had opportunity to learn to pronounce “shibboleth” correctly, because we knew that the burden of so many oral examination was a top-down mandate, so it is not effective to keep doing the high-stakes tests. Whether the test had done for same reasons. I think will more effective, if they do  the  test base on their intelligence, or their ability, not  base on the pronouncing of “H”. 

critical thinking of journal "Listening Comprehension for Tenth Grade Students in Tabaria High School for Girls".

1.      Related  literature (theoretical background)

The researcher conducted a research about listening comprehension for tenth grade students in Tabaria  high school for girls. The researcher told that the role of listening  as tool for understanding and emphasized it as a key factor in facilitating language learning. I absolutely agree with this statement, because in my opinion listening will be a tool for understanding when someone talks to others. It is supported by a statement of Howatt and Dakim (1974),” listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying”. In this research, the researcher use terms of language processing that learners need access to both top-down as well as bottom-up processing strategies. It appropriate with the statement of Nunan in 1991, that Bottom-up processing strategies focus on the individual components of spoken and written messages, i.e. phonemes, graphemes, individual words and grammatical elements which need to be comprehended in order to understand messages. Top-down processing strategies, on the other hand, focus on macro-features of text such as the writer's or speaker's purpose, topic of the message, the overall structure of the text. When we use the term of bottom-up listening, it can help the listener use grammatical cues to organize the inputs into constituents, for example, in order to recognize that in the book which I lent you (the book) and (which I lent you) are major constituents rather than (the book which I) and (lent you). As well as the top-down listening strategies, on the other hand, involve the listener in assigning an interaction to part of a particular event, such as storytelling, joking, praying, complaining, assigning persons, places, and things to categories, inferring cause and effect relationships, anticipating outcomes, inferring the topic of a discourse, inferring the sequence between events, and inferring missing details. Listening  decode a message that the speaker is delivering, the listener must actively contribute knowledge from both linguistic and non-linguistic sources. In other words, listening is a two-way process involving reception, decoding of input, and production that involves predicting and compensating.

2.       Objective of the study

The objective of this study is to identify the reasons that make some female students in high school master the English language skills while other female students do not master it. Why this paper is focused for female, because I think the researcher want to know the main obstacles facing female students in deriving listening skills. So in this paper the researcher will answer  the following questions: What are the reasons behind attracting some female students to learn English while others do not show the same affection? What are the methods used in learning listening skills? And what are the difficulties facing those female students in learning listening skills?

3.      Methodology

The researcher distributed the questionnaire among Tenth grade students in Tabaria High School for Girls in the city of Irbid, Jordan. I think why the researcher focused his research in that school because the problems in listening have their origins in high school where few students have been the recipients of listening teaching. in my opinion, why the researcher used a questionnaire in this paper, because he want to find out the kind of methods used in teaching English skills and the kind of difficulties students face.

critical thinking of “Guidelines for selecting grading criteria”

Chapter 11                                          Grading and Student Evaluation

 “Guidelines for selecting  grading criteria”

            A teacher needs guidelines for selecting grading criteria when she/he evaluates a student in the class. The guidelines are needed by teacher to make an effective evaluation. When the teacher follows the rule of guidelines for selecting grading criteria, students will get their own satisfaction, because they know that the teacher does not provide the rating cause of something else, but it cause of their ability. I agree when all of components of final grade need to be explicitly stated in writing to student at the beginning of a term of study with a designation of percentages or weighting figures for each component. When in the first meeting, the teacher should give the percentages of every component that will evaluate in the class, and then the students will follow the rule of the class, so there is no misunderstanding between students and teacher’s evaluation.

            Teacher’s assessment in the class will make students change their behavior to be better, because they know that attitude is the important thing in evaluation, so they will do the best in the class to get the best score from the teacher. Motivation is essential for the student to change their behavior, and to increase the value of student. When the teacher gives a motivation, students will more interest to study, so the correlation between teachers and students in the class will more effective if the teachers follow the guidelines for selecting grading criteria.

short story

English department......

I don’t know why, I love this department, whereas I don’t have enough basic  in this mayor, as like as the other friends. They have enough skilled in this mayor, although there are some of them as like me.  It did not make me down, because I still keep my spirit to learn English more detail.

The important thing that can keep my spirit to study hard is my mom. When I feel tired to study, confused with the assignment, ashamed of my lack of ability, I always occur to my mom. All of my feeling such as tired, confused, and embarrassed change to  be a new spirit that came from  inner self, and it support me  to be better  person for my mom and people around me. Therefore, my mom is the biggest spirit in my life, and my mom is also the reason why I am staying here now.

In English department, I have some difficulties, whether adapt it in English environment, with my friend, or in teaching learning process. These things are usually met by the other of my friends, but all of us have different difficulties. There are four important components in English, there are speaking, listening, writing, and reading. The all of these things have relation or connection each other. When we join in English department, we will learn English detail.  So when we have some difficulties in English, we have to study harder than others to make sure that we have same level with our friends.

In short, if we have some difficulties in English, we have to more practice all of the component of English, because English is foreign language.  Keep our spirit! And think  one thing that will keep your spirit!

Thank you!

summary of Wuthering Heigths Chapter 1 to 3

WUTHERING HEIGHTS

by Emily bronte

Wuthering Heights is the name of Mr. Heathcliff’s dwelling. There is someone who name Mr. Lockwood, want to rent Wuthering Heights. He comes to Mr. Heathcliff’s dwelling to check the building which will be his rental house. When he came there, he paused to admire a quantity of grotesque carving lavished over the front, and especially about the principal door, above which among a wilderness of crumbling  griffins and shameless little boys, he detected the data “1500” and the name “ Hareton Earnshaw.” Mr. Lockwood wants to ask about the history of that building, but he is not sure, so he does not do it.  When he got into the Wuthering Heights, he noticed every room carefully. Then, he spent his time for a while and came home.

The next day, after finishing dinner, Mr. Lockwood decided to return to Wuthering Heights. When he arrived there, he felt annoyed, because he was not in welcome with a friendly by host. After a moment, he decided to stay there, because of the weather is still bad, and he asked someone to show the way home, but there is no one who want to do it. During he stayed there, there has been a mess, one of them is Mr. Lockwood was flown by two hairy monsters, and it made him hurt. Afterward, Zillah is the domestic servant, helped Mr. Lockwood to treat his injuries. And then, she brought him into the Mr. Heathcliff’s secret room. When Mr. Lockwood took a rest there, he looked and read some books about Catherine Earnshaw, Catherine Haethcliff, and Catherine Linton. After reading the books, he had a strange dream about Wuthering Heights. Later, he woke up, because of the branches of trees on the window. When he looked at the window and stretched an arm out to seize the importunate branch, instead of which his fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand. He was frightened, and then he shouted loudly. Then Mr. Heathcliff came and scolded him, because Mr. Lockwood dare to come to his room. After the incident, Mr. Lockwood back to his house and asked to his maid everything about his neighbors.

video analysis of Geum Chon Elementary school open class.

    part 2 (video analysis of Geum Chon Elementary school open class.)

     2. The nature of student-teacher

 The teacher may present some parts of the lesson, such as when working with linguistic accuracy. At other times, in this video the teachers are the facilitator of the activities, but the teachers  do not always themself interact with the students. Sometimes they are a co-communicator; but more often they establishe situations that prompt communication between and among the students. This video shows that the students interact a great deal with one another, They do this in various  configurations: pairs, triads, small groups, and whole group.

 3.   Characteristic of teaching and learning process

Based on the analysis of this video, the teachers use the communicative language teaching in teaching learning process in the class. The most obvious characteristic of CLT is that almost everything that is done is done with a communicative intent. Students use the language a great deal through communicative activities such as games, role plays, and problem-solving tasks. Activities that are truly communicative, according to Morrow (in Johnson and Morrow 1981), have three features in common: information gap, choice, and feed back. An information gap exists when one person in an exchange knows something the other person does not . In communication, the students have a choice of what they will say and how they will say it. True communication is purposeful. So when the teacher as the advisor or the speaker give the instruction to the student, the student can receive the massage well, so there is feedback between the teachers and the students interaction in the class. Another characteristic of CLT is the use of authentic materials. It is considered desirable to give students an opportunity to develop strategies for understanding language as it is actually used. Finally, the teachers noted that activities in CLT are often carried out by students in small groups. Small numbers of students interacting are favored in order to maximize the time allotted to each student for communicating.

 4.     Teacher’s response to student’s error

In this video when the students make mistakes or errors, the teachers tolerate during fluency-based activities and are seen as a natural outcome of the development of communication skills. Students can have limited linguistic knowledge and still they successful communicators. When the students make mistakes in pronoun a word or the sentences, the teacher directly give the truth way to pronoun the words or the sentences. 

video analysis of Geum Chon Elementary school open class.

video analysis of teaching method
Geum Chon Elementary school open class.

CLICK HERE for watching the video

This video shows a teaching learning process in a class. In this video, there are two teachers who teach in the class. The teachers use communicative language teaching method to teach the material in the class; the material is about “My Daily Routine”. The teachers started the class by asking the students condition, the students’ feeling, about the weather, and the differences of weather and time between in Korea and New York. Next, the teacher will show the students a video and the teachers ask them to guess what they are going to learn. Before that, the teachers play a game with a song of names of days to attract the students enthusiasm in learning in the class.

The teachers play the video and order the students to guess the lesson. The video shows an activity of someone everyday. After the video was played, the students guess what they are going to learn. Next, they learn about “my daily routine”. The teachers mention a question as “ what time do you get up?” and then the teacher guides the students to answer the question by answer as “ I get up at seven everyday”. Moving to another activities, the teacher asks the students to guess some pictures that the teacher showed, and tells her what kind of they  are routine, and then arrange the pictures.

After that, the teacher suggest the students to open their book and watch a video that related to daily routine, “what time do you get up?” and “what time do you go to bed?”. The students repeat what said in the video. After finishing this activities, the teachers give instructions for a game, namely daily routine real game. Afterwards, the students play the game in their each group around five minutes. After finishing the game, the teacher shows one more time a video about someone routine as the closing of the meeting.

This paper will analyze four points in the teaching learning video. They are role of teacher-student; the nature of student-teacher; characteristic of teaching and learning process; and teacher’s response to the student’s error.

1 Role of teacher-student

In this video, the teacher acted as the facilitator and guider. The teacher using a simple word to communicate to the students, so the student can understand well the instruction of the teacher. During the activities the teacher acts as an adviser, answering students' questions and monitoring their performance. The teacher might make note of their errors to be worked on at a later time during more accuracy-based activities. At other times the teacher  might be a co-communicator' engaging in the communicative activity a long with students (Littlewood 1981).

For the next points of this teaching learning video, just wait in the next post!