hectic week

This is the toughest week. I have to think of a concept of a learning blog. I have look for materials and the right curriculum for a listening session. I have modified this concept a lot of times, which made me confused. Looking for a suitable listening material for beginners isn’t easy. At first I just put in all the materials without thinking twice. After I consulted it with my lecturer, I realized that I cannot put everything, the ones I put in need to have a purpose. Then I searched the right curriculum for a beginner level, after that I searched for a suitable listening material. Then I adapted several materials with my own way of speaking. The construction of this blog still continues even at this very second.Wait and see :)

Assessments in a Different Perspective

http://www.ioxassessment.com/index.php?cPath=24

Last Friday was a hectic day, I needed to be an MC (Master of Ceremony), wanted to donate blood, noon has already passed and I haven’t eaten anything. Suddenly my friend told me,” Grace lets go to class.” I was shocked. I didn’t even remember that I have a class that day. The week before my teacher told us that we would have a “make up” class on the following Friday.

We rushed to class, and by the time we reached the class, my classmates looked at us, it turned out that an hour already passed since the class started and they were having a group discussion. I was assigned to the group with Nancy in it. Miss Tika gave me the subject and told me that I only got 5 minutes to read it and understand it. Honestly, I don’t understand a damn thing in that article.

Luckily, the article was about types of assessments and I had the same topic once in LTM (Language Teaching Methodologies) so I already had a rough idea about it. The main idea of the article was types of assignments which are diagnostic, formative, and summative assessments.

The first type is diagnostic assessments, usually in the form of a pretest, or oral communication, to know the standard of the class to serve as a guideline throughout the course. The next type is formative assessment, formative assessments takes form as written assignments either in class or home assignment throughout the course. The last type is summative assessments, or usually known better as final exams to know the growth of the students and to know whether the teaching method is effective or not. A good teacher should combine all three types of assessments

A lot of teacher in Indonesia tends to forget that diagnostic assessment is a very important part of a teaching-learning activity.  They only think about the final result (summative assessment) which isn’t really a good practice. A teacher should know the strengths, weakness, and the average ability of the class for a subject to be absorbed optimally by the students. In conclusion all three assessments are very important in a teaching-learning activity.