Teachers often wonder how to manage evaluating their learners' oral skills during class. Common complaints are that there is not enough time, there are too many students, there is too much to get through with the curriculum. Granted, many of these complaints are true, but if we are organized and efficient with our time we can manage to evaluate our learners on a more personal basis.
Evaluating learners during class while they are working on a speaking activity is a great place to start. One idea is to create a "feedback comment card" for each student. Start by putting each learner's name on an index card or small slip of paper. Every day pull out two or three of these cards and make sure that during the speaking activity you manage to watch (and evaluate) the learners whose names you have drawn. Write down their strengths and weaknesses (or areas to improve) and also a couple of phrases or words they used that you thought were good (these could be words/phrases you have been working on or some other expression they may have picked up along the way).
Do this every day, with two or three students, and after a couple of weeks you will have evaluated them all, on a very personal, specific basis. Then, start over and begin again, so that over the course of a month or two, each learner is evaluated several times. At the end of a unit or semester/month, give the learners their cards so that they may see what is working for them and the areas they need to improve in.
Example comment card:
|
Name: Strengths:
Weaknesses:
Words/phrases I noticed you using:
|