Thinking like an Assessor

As in the article is stated, during the learning process we must look for evidences that not only show the superficial or obvious knowledge acquired from any contents but a deep understanding from them. It is very usual to associate the word assessment with grades, which come up as the advisable method to measure whether the students learnt or not. Undoubtedly this is the most basic way to view the culmination of a learning process, because our goal is not only focused in getting grades at the end of a unit but to create the instances in which the students can show evidences of their understanding through its practice. It means that teachers can control the process from the very beginning to the end through the application of formal and informal ways of assessing in order to check how students have assimilated the tasks and how they have worked related to achieve our goals. Therefore we can say that assessment is not only a way of grading students but one to give a point of reference about whether our teaching practices have been effective or not according to the expected results. That is why it is fundamental to have pre- determined what our goals are, before we plan the further activities, because teaching without regarding an aim, seems to be a waste of time and effort in the classroom.
We can not conceive to teach something just for the fact of getting marks, on the contrary we must teach, thinking in how we can guide our students to develop the necessary skills which allow them to extract a deep understanding from the different units taught. In that way we will be aware about what are the suitable tasks which can make them to transfer abstract pieces of information into the real world, assuring a fruitful teaching and learning process, because the more we focus our lesson on the reality, the more students will learn, while at the same time they may have the opportunities to make the necessary connection to reach a true understanding. If we as teachers are able to show them how adults solve x situation in the real world, I am sure that we would obtain better results than only teaching meaningless and isolated units. Therefore the students ‘performance will depend on how teachers plan their lesson looking for: the statements of the goals, the correct design of the core tasks or activities, and finally the application of a balanced type of assessment which allows to measure permanently the level of understanding achieved by students related to each unit seen in class.

GAINNING CLARITY ON OUR GOALS

It is well known that in the education field the backward design should be coherent with the goals proposed by the government, the questions is what are they? According to my own educational perspective we have not been able to get an agreement in order to discover what society really needs. That is why we work separately pursuing different goals what distorts the results obtained in the system. From my point of view the purpose of learning other languages should be known first by teachers and then by the students. If we regard that learning other language is a vital tool to have access to different pieces of information, we must focus our teaching on its use and application and forget for a while our current way of teaching which just points to explore the theoretical aspects of it. Therefore I think that the process should pursuit the development of practical skills among the students, in order that they can use them as a true means of gaining in communicative competences which are necessary to insert in this global world.
The problem is how we can become a bilingual nation if we are not able to set up our goals clearly?. May be, the answer is in the design area which has two main problems according to the chapter: the aimless coverage of contents and isolated activities which
In my opinion are the responsible that lessons pursuit neither a deep understanding nor the transferability of big ideas, together with the misperception that teachers show to
promote probably unconsciously the learning of the contents by heart what is seen as the right method to get understanding by the students without regarding the most relevant part of the process which is to take this information to the reality through its application in daily and common situations. The only way to revert this phenomenon is through the improvements of our current teaching practices, which should have a free access in order to obtain progressively better results in education along with the state of long-term goals which allow students to fulfill with the requirements to learn a foreign language.
As a conclusion I would say that is impossible to impart a ‘quality education’ without regarding the fact of promoting the inquiry, analysis and transfer capacities on the students, because they arise as essential to bring contents to life and extract a real understanding from them.