Evaluation Dictation

Peter Clements, UK

Peter teaches ESOL in the Adult Lifelong Learning sector in and around Canterbury, Kent, UK. He started out teaching ESOL in 2007. He works with a variety of students from inside the European Union as well as long-term UK residents from numerous other countries. E-mail: peter.clements@talktalk.net

Menu

Background
Method
Language focus
Conclusion – evaluating the evaluation

‘In his functioning as a facilitator of learning, the leader endeavours
to recognize and accept his own limitations.’
Carl Rogers Regarding Learning and Its Facilitation

Background

As is the case in most government co - funded organisations, tutors are required to produce formal lesson plans which have to be available for inspection by funding providers and for quality control purposes. Using the space provided on the lesson plan for post lesson evaluation, I have made regular use of it as a means of maintaining a diary or ‘reflective log’ of lessons and learning experiences. It is from one of these that the following activity has been taken.

The activity came about as a result of a conversation after the lesson with a student from Lithuania who suggested how a dictation activity we had done in class might have been improved. She made a very valid point and after weighing it up in my evaluation notes I decided to use and expand them as the basis for an activity for the following week.

Other circumstances had impacted on the class dynamics that week and I felt that it would be a good idea to acknowledge that all of us had been affected during that particular evening class.

Method

The evaluation below, separated into four paragraphs was given to groups of four students so that each pair could dictate a different paragraph to their partner.

After reading and recording their texts in writing, the group then re-formed to decide upon the order of paragraphs and to discuss what meanings they had personally got from their piece of text and then the complete evaluation text.

Language focus

Finally, the students examined the target language and vocabulary in more detail and made a note of base adjectives, comparatives and superlatives. These were language points that the students needed to be aware of in order to compare people or places in a later speaking assignment.

The text below is in four roughly equal paragraphs:

“Lesson Evaluation from 12 May 2011”

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“This particular evening the students seemed more tired than usual which may have been because of the warm weather. Although no hotter than the last couple of weeks, there was that kind of muggy, stuffy atmosphere in the air that that is typical when it has been hot and sunny for a long time without rain. I introduced the first activity and used a Power Point slide to show the students what to do.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The dictation exercise was fun and livelier than if I had simply read it out myself and this was the most exciting part of the lesson. However, it meant that just one person in each pair had to do all the writing. Afterwards, one of the students said she thought it would be better if the speakers and listeners could swap over half way through so that both would be able to share the work equally. I think this was a helpful suggestion and would be more effective.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The students wrote the differences between two texts in lists. Although slow in getting started, while I was speaking to someone else, they became less self–conscious and more talkative and the class became much more animated. It is usually best when the students work like this and there was a more creative atmosphere in class at this point and lots of good English was being used. I think if I had left the students to do the sentence writing on their own instead of using the white board, it would have been more useful for them.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The students still seemed quite tired. In fact, I felt tired myself. I hadn’t realised at the start of the lesson that one student had just flown in from Moldova earlier in the day. Understandably he was probably more tired than anyone else but he didn’t show it. I think I would have been tired as well if I were him. In conclusion, the students worked hard. I hope they found some of the lesson useful but I think I did most of the talking instead of the students. I need to let the students do more speaking next week”.

Conclusion – evaluating the evaluation

The activity seemed to go well and the practical outcomes were achieved, in that the text was successfully dictated to a reasonable degree of accuracy. The groups discussed the order of paragraphs which led to some variation as the text still made sense but they all seemed to agree on which one was last. Likewise, the adjectives and comparatives were wrung out of the text and listed.

The important part, the meaning to the students, along with the affective element, was not as obvious or even possible to measure. The student, who made the suggestion about the previous lesson, while not named in the text, seemed to glow in the knowledge that her idea had been taken into consideration and used. Others acknowledged that the muggy weather had contributed to a rather sluggish session. But I think it showed them that no-one expects the impossible. I hope I managed to convey the empathy that I had felt, and I believe that they felt listened to and valued. But I didn’t expect them to say it, rather, only to feel it. And if they felt as I hope they might have done, then the activity was a success.

Please check the How the Motivate your Students course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Building Positive Group Dynamics course at Pilgrims website.
Please check the Creative Methodology for the Classroom course at Pilgrims website.