The ESL Classroom as Community:
How Self Assessment Can Work

Dulany Alexander
Operation Bootstrap, Lynn

I teach English as a second language at Operation Bootstrap in Lynn. Our population is mostly Hispanic adults. We have three levels, with about 75 students per year enrolled. One-third of our students are welfare recipients, one-third are funded under our Department of Education grant, and one-third are funded under JTPA monies. This means that our funders mandate the BEST test for measuring both student gains and our program’s performance.

This definition of progress as “moving from one BEST level to the next” can mean, that for learners who don’t keep “progressing,” we don’t get paid. It can also leave little room for learners or teachers to assess learning as it relates to learner goals or interests or to how the curriculum or instruction meets these goals or interests.

It is for all these reasons and more that we decided to focus on developing assessment tools that would help us and our students look at what and how they were learning.

Why We Took A New Look
Some time ago, we noted a pattern in our student enrollments and “terminations.” Students who entered the program at Level 1 were likely to advance to Level 2, yet few of them advanced to Level 3. Level 3 was largely comprised of students who entered at Level 3 or who had spent only a brief time in Level 2.

One of the factors at work was discouragement. After the dramatic learning curve that is almost certain to result from attending class for 20 hours a week, the normal leveling of the curve at Level 2 felt to the students like failure, either theirs or ours. Ours is a student centered program; the students can see that their choices determine what is taught in class. Yet we were failing to help students gain control over what and how they learned.

In an attempt to start thinking about the what and how of learning, I devised a weekly evaluation form to use within our program. Some of my goals were:

For Me:

• To have a better sense of what’s happening in the students’ lives so that we can build on that in class
• To know which activities engage them
• To address short-term problems
• To understand each student’s measure of success.

For the Students:

• To see the week as a collection of activities
• To recognize how and when English is used outside of class (and how to extend those activities)
• To separate personality (notably the teacher’s) from classwork, to be able to critique the activities without anyone feeling defensive
• To help determine the direction of the class
• To isolate problems so they become workable
• To identify individual growth and successes
• To learn to set (and articulate) short term goals.

We used the weekly evaluation form (see appendix) in our program at all three levels for several months. Although the class time necessary to complete the evaluation decreased as the students became more familiar with it, it was a pretty dry activity that qualified as the week’s most boring activity. Gradually, each teacher found other ways to meet her own goals.

GROUP ASSESSMENT
I came to see that my goals could be better served by other means than this form. For example, criticism of the class activities didn’t need to be a weekly event or done individually. It is easily done as a group activity. We now periodically brainstorm a list of the week’s activities and the students “vote” with one of four descriptors that the group chooses (fun, helpful, interesting, confusing…). The vote invariably shows that every activity suits some students and not others.

What is indispensable is that the classroom activities include asking each student to focus on his or her specific learning process: what’s working, what’s not working, how are you attacking the problem, and how can you be helped? If the student has no clearer idea of his or her own situation than “I need help with English,” then the process of learning this language is completely out of his or her control. If it doesn’t seem to be happening, the student sees no choices other than to give up or try to find another teacher who can “make it happen.”

Few of our students attended college; the majority experienced too few successes to remain in high school until graduation. Now they are adults with other responsibilities. The biggest success may be finding a new apartment; the biggest problem may have been a sick child. These events could certainly overshadow any language acquisition goals. If that is the reality of the student’s life, student and teacher need to realize that language learning can not always be the highest priority. Some weeks, intentionally exposing oneself to English reading/writing/speaking/listening wherever possible is all that can be done.

SELF-ASSESSMENT IN THE CLASSROOM
But in a more ideal week, the student needs to know how to advance the overall goal of “learning English.” The process starts with a self-assessment exercise. Most students have a pretty good sense of how they compare to their classmates at a particular skill. For most students, it follows that each has strengths and each has weaknesses. In my class, I begin by asking each student to name which is the hardest and which is the easiest for him/her: reading, writing, listening, or speaking.

We work from this crude self-assessment to refine our definition of the problem. For example, if Carmen says that speaking is the hardest for her, does she mean pronunciation, or grammar, or vocabulary, or shyness? If the former is her answer, the group brainstorms ways for her to work on pronunciation in school and at home. If another student’s strength is pronunciation, we look for ways to use that student as a resource. We work with a volunteer tutor, if appropriate. Having agreed on what language issue is the special target of each student, we as a group can be ready to offer ongoing suggestions and encouragement. More important in the long run is that the student learns to use self-assessment and goal setting as tools to manage the immense task of learning English.

Language learning is a lengthy process for most of us. None of our students will master English before leaving our program. Some students will leave to work, some because they must move too far from school, some because their families can’t afford their time for school, and some because they’ve decided that “perfect” English is not a realistic short-term goal. The skills that enable the student to treat learning English as a personal project, whether in school or out, begin with assessment and goal setting. These are probably as valuable as anything else we teach.

Originally published in Adventures in Assessment, Volume 4 (April 1993),
SABES/World Education, Boston, MA, Copyright 2003.

Funding support for the publication of this document on the Web provided in part by the Ohio State Literacy Resource Center as part of the LINCS Assessment Special Collection.