Quotations for English Assessment in Spanish Primary Schools - Assignment Example

Insert Quotations for English Assessment in Spanish Primary Schools On the kind of extra-curricular activities that may be introduced to improve fluency in English. For question 6, etc.: Realize that your students’ goals might not be as lofty as yours. Many Spanish students just want to improve their fluency and have their grammar and pronunciation corrected—or praised—by a native speaker. If you have a textbook, use it; if you have access to any of the Penguin “Games for Grammar Practice,” these are pure gold. The “Instant Ideas” series provides solid reading, listening, and vocabulary practice using real news items. You’ll save a lot of time by planning your syllabus and schedule for each class ahead of time. And relax—most of your students will be friendly, easy-going, and eager to share information about their culture with their foreign teacher. (Just make sure they share it in English.) Papadopoulos, Niki. ‘Teaching English in Spain: The Down and Dirty Guide for Prospective Teachers.’ TransitionsAbroad.com. Web. 7 Jan 2011. 2. On what constitutes ‘fluent’ English (For question 2): Language Awareness: The trainees need to make the transition from simply being a native of their language to being technically knowledgeable in English. While academically this includes language mechanics, it must also include cultural use and understanding. Major topics are: a. Grammar. Covers word classes, simple sentence elements, complex sentences and clauses, verb time and tense, aspect and conditionals and modals, phrasals and voice. b. Phonology. Covers phonemics, word stress and intonation, sentence stress and intonation, rhythm and intonation, and connected speech. ‘TEFL Spain – TEFL Course Outline.’ TEFLSpain. Web. 7 Jan 2011. 3. On the English courses available in Spain: The two main schools are Opening English School, the company I worked for, and Wall Street Institute. The students learn grammar through interactive computer language programs and then sign up for group classes with native speakers. The material is standardized, so teaching is as easy as reading and following the binder. Little preclass preparation is necessary. You do have some opportunities to plan extracurricular activities, a relaxing way to get to know your students (both schools accept only adult students) and have some fun. Other English language schools in Spain include Berlitz, the Cambridge School, and the British Institute. Then there are small private schools [also]. Eineigel, Susanne. ‘Teaching English in Valencia, Spain: A Great Place to Combine Work and a Vacation.’ TransitionsAbroad.com. Web. 7 Jan 2011. 4. Students’ attitude towards learning English- Data Analysis (for question 3): Sample table: Question Number and Question Mean Responses Std. Dev. 1. Studying English in Junior and high school caused fear and unpleasant feelings 1.9 342 0.886 3. Communicating with foreigners is basic purpose of studying English 1.67 342 0.887 4. Like to learn English through grammar translation 3.27 342 0.891 5. I fear making grammar errors while speaking English 2.58 342 0.93 6. Like to learn English in an all English environment 3.01 342 1.02 7. Like to be able to listen and understand everyday English 1.37 342 0.656 8. I think it is enough to be able to read in English 4.03 342 0.744 9. I think that the skills of listening, reading, speaking and writing are of equal importance 1.49 342 0.766 11. In English learning I want to focus only on reading 3.78 342 0.822 12. In English learning I want to focus only on listening 2.04 342 0.963 13. Speaking is the skill I want to learn most 1.91 342 0.894 14. Reading is the skill I want to learn most 2.57 342 0.866 15. Writing is the skill I want to learn most 2.87 342 0.908 Following this analysis method, question 3 reveals that communication with foreigners is generally seen as the basic purpose of studying English [also]. Lin, Hsiu-Ju & Warden, Clyde A. ‘Different Attitudes Among Non-English Major EFL Students.’ The Internet TESL Journal. Web. 4 Jan 2011. 5. Furukawa (2006) refers to this point by stating that “excessive use of dictionaries puts too much stress on students and hinders them from leaning English.” As an alternative to this, the idea of the SSS (Start with Simple Stories) program was first introduced by Sakai Kunihide, a professor at the University of Electro-Communications, who advocated the Three Golden Rules: No dictionaries while reading Skip over difficult words Stop reading when it is boring or too difficult. Furukawa, A. ‘SSS Extensive Reading Method Proves to be an Effective Way to Learn English.’ SEG (Scientific Education Group). Web. 6 Jan 2011. 6. For six year olds, naming objects, body parts, days of the week, months of the year and being able to understand simple instructions, being able to speak simple sentences are some of the ways to test children. One should test coherence of ideas and expression, fluency. They may also be able to narrate simple stories. Activities for students to overcome the fear of English and to build confidence and improve proficiency (for questions 12-15): Repeat: In this task, test takers repeat sentences verbatim. The sentences are presented to the test taker in approximate order of increasing difficulty. Sentences range in length from 3 words to 15 words. The audio item prompts are read in a colloquial manner. The Story Retelling items assess the test takers’ ability to listen and understand a passage, reformulate the passage using their own vocabulary and grammar, and then retell it in their own words. This elicits longer, more open-ended speech samples than other items in the test, and will allow for the assessment of a wider range of spoken interactions. Performance on Story Retelling will feed into Fluency and Vocabulary scores. [Pages 3 – 6] ‘Versant English Test.’ Pearson Education (2008). PDF File. 7. Scoring patterns for assessing ESL proficiency (for questions 12-15): Overall: The Overall score of the test represents the ability to understand spoken English and speak it intelligibly at a native-like conversational pace on everyday topics. Sentence Mastery: Sentence Mastery reflects the ability to understand, recall, and produce English phrases and clauses in complete sentences. Performance depends on accurate syntactic processing and appropriate usage of words, phrases, and clauses in meaningful sentence structures. Vocabulary: Vocabulary reflects the ability to understand common everyday words spoken in sentence context and to produce such words as needed. Performance depends on familiarity with the form and meaning of everyday words and their use in connected speech. Fluency: Fluency is measured from the rhythm, phrasing and timing evident in constructing, reading and repeating sentences. Pronunciation: Pronunciation reflects the ability to produce consonants, vowels, and stress in a native-like manner in sentence context. Performance depends on knowledge of the phonological structure of everyday words as they occur in phrasal context. [Page 11] ‘Versant English Test.’ Pearson Education (2008). PDF File. 8. On Methodology: The syntactic approach to childrens question acquisition has been important for two reasons: 1) it is sensitive to change in language proficiency and has consequently enabled a description of the childs progressive acquisition of the grammatical structures underlying questions, showing that greater language proficiency leads to more complex syntactic structures; and 2) it has provided a framework for discovering the syntactic rules that the child is presumed to use to generate such utterances. Because of these reasons, syntactic descriptions have been very useful in advancing our understanding of the process of question development in a second language. Lindholm, Kathryn J. ‘English Question Use in Spanish-Speaking ESL Children: Changes with English Language Proficiency’. Research in the Teaching of English. Feb 1987, Vol 21, no. 1, pp. 64-91. Web. 6 Jan 2011. 9. Rubric used in assessing English speaking ability in primary schools in Spain may be found in Initiation ¥ Initiates speech and asks questions ¥ Uses appropriate attention-getting devices ¥ Speaks spontaneously Response ¥ Responds appropriately to questions/statements Conversational Strategies to Clarify and Continue Conversations Using: ¥ Circumlocution ¥ Survival strategies ¥ Intonation ¥ Self-correction ¥ Verbal cues Vocabulary ¥ Incorporates variety of old and new vocabulary ¥ Uses idiomatic expressions appropriate to topic ¥ Speaks clearly and imitates accurate pronunciation Structure ¥ Uses verbs in utterances when necessary with appropriate subject/verb agreement ¥ Makes nouns and adjectives agree ¥ Uses correct word order and article adjectives Cultural Appropriateness ¥ Uses/interprets cultural manifestations appropriate to the task (e.g., greeting, etc). ‘Second Language Proficiency Examination For Modern Languages.’ The University of New York (May 2000). PDF File. Read More