Assessing Young Language Learners
There
are many challenges for researches and many questions arise regarding how young
second language learners learn, there can be many purposes of assessment as
well as different procedures and experiences to share about this specific
field. But one thing that seemed to me very important and that has been proven
to be true thanks to my short teaching experience is that children need to be
taught in relation to their world. At the age of 7 or even 8 they find non-sense
those activities an expressions used when you are evaluating their process
through tasks, for example if they find a strange word they immediately lost interest
in such activity. Moreover, they do not respond to any word that is similar to
their L1 and that do not have encountered at least once in their learning
process, as stated by McKay (2006) “if children have never seen or talked about
the sea or sandcastles, they may not be able to respond to the instructions in
the input, regardless of the general language ability”. So for the sake of
students’ good performance it is not recommendable to take them out of their
boxes, it does not mean that we cannot provide them with different strategies
to motivate them and new topics for them to learn, yes of course we can, but it
might be under their comfort, they must not feel the pressure of that change by
means of expanding their world. Moreover, I think That as an ethical fact it is
beneficial for all the stakeholders that who teaches an specific level feels comfortable
with the audience she/he is working for, working with children is not difficult
but is a serious matter, I mean, whatever the reason, input, face, comment,
opinion and sentiment that you as teacher have towards a child will define what
the will do concerning his learning experience.
I agree with you in the fact that teaching children is a serious thing to do but I would like to ask you why you say it that at the same time, it is not difficult? I would like to tell you that for me, it is. It is difficult but sometimes people (mainly directors and coordinators)underestimate that job because of the contents that are not advanced for us, but as a teching experience it is not easy.
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DeleteYes Yury sometimes we feel more confortable with certain audiences, When I said that it wasn't difficult to work with children it is because I find easy to get along with them and understand what they try to express to me, and when I say that it is a serious matter this comment is regarded to the impact we have over students learning process and perceptions. That's why teaching young learners must be taken as such.
DeleteHi Yessi! I understand what you said about providing young learners with enough input and with activities which relate to tangible things known by them so that they do not feel disoriented and taken out of their comfort zone. However, l consider that we do need to challenge our young students a little bit more but in a way that does not make them feel discouraged. I do believe that most of the times we do not try new things with our students not because we do not think they will be able to do them or will respond to them, but because we are affraid of getting out of our own confort zone. Children have so much potential, that they could surprise you anytime. :)
ReplyDeleteYes, it is true, that's why I said that making new things but without make them feel pushed. You know,one thing that I learnt some days ago, is that they like to create games for themselves to play, in that way I could assess speaking!! as they had make their own game they felt motivated and willing to speak in english when playing. :) they are just awesome
DeleteWhen you state that 'Moreover, they do not respond to any word that is similar to their L1 and that do not have encountered at least once in their learning process' I disagree with your first statement. I think that when students find out that in the target language there are some words that are identical or very similar to their native language, this encourages them and gives them a sense of easiness towards the target language.
ReplyDeleteAm I interpreting well what you stated? If not, please let me know.
Hi Maritza! When I said that "they do not respond to any word that is similar to their L1 and that do not have encountered at least once in their learning process" I wanted to mean that they cannot stablish a relation between words if they haven't even explore that word in their L1 context. May be I was not that accuarte when eexplaining that pont. I' sorry ;)
DeleteI totally agree with you when you say that working with children is a serious matter. I have short experience teaching, and when i have done it, it has been with kids. For my surprise, and as i have read it many times, every time i teach a class i find different situations, different ideas and different abilities. Maybe, when you are not a teacher and you have nothing to do with this field, people can think that it is a matter of going to a classroom, give a class, grade students and that is all. But, only us, teachers, know the importance of preparing and planning a class and trying to take into account different students' needs so that our teaching and their learning experience is a successful one.
ReplyDeleteIn fact I agree with you, Assessing young learners is a very difficult task since it nnot only involves the process of assessment itself. I mean, we as teachers need first to make them appropiate, make them aware and teach them a little bit of autonomy towards learning the language. due to the fact that are yonug learners they usually tend to be reluctant and that's why we need to be careful with the process of assessing those kind of students.
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