In the worth of evaluation in the educational process, it is highly significant to have brief discussion on the manners and means of making evaluation a really useful process.
Infact, evaluations being a technical job need a detailed insight on the part of teacher to use, it really a useful activity. Following are some of the points that a teacher should keep in mind to ensure improvement of students learning.
Encouraging Self-Evaluation
The teacher must encourage self-evaluation of different aspects of teaching English language. The self-evaluation refers not only to the evaluation of teaching methods and techniques by the teacher himself herself, but also to the evaluation of students’ own performance by themselves.
Self-evaluation assists both the teacher and the students in identifying their strengths and weaknesses, providing them with a solid foundation for implementing appropriate language learning strategies.
Petty and Jensen (1975), have rightly pointed that self-evaluation based on standards that children set themselves, should be an important part of the evaluation. For example, a class might adopt a list of ” rules” for giving; an oral report similar to the following one and use it as the basis for judging the effectiveness of their reports:
- Have an interesting topic.
- Start with good opening sentences.
- Look at the audience.
- Make your voice loud enough to be heard.
- Organise your report carefully.
- Stick to the topic.
- Use good sentences.
- Have a good closing.
The teacher should also practice self-evaluation questions such as the following will help a teacher appraise the oral language programme:
- Do I recognize the need for students to practice oral expression?
- Do I consistently provide opportunities for students to communicate orally?
- Am I willing to work with students?
- How can I improve my own skills in oral expression? Do I set a good example in
my speech enunciating clearly, speaking comfortably and easily, organising my
thoughts logically? - Do I listen to students? Do I give them my complete attention? Do I respond fully to their questions and comments.
Finally, teachers can check students ‘ self-evaluation by using a checklist that may
correspond to the one we have already given in one of the previous sections of this unit.
Undertaking Diagnostic Evaluation
By diagnostic evaluation, the teacher can identify the specific needs, interests, errors, bad habits and weaknesses of the students and make suitable modifications in his teaching methods and techniques.
According to Petty and Jenson (1975), the precision of the diagnosis depends to a large degree on the nature and refinement of the evaluation instrument and procedures.
In some language arts areas, including most oral expression and written composition, evaluation largely subjective and hence teachers and students may refer to standards, models and checklist, etc. to arrive at objective findings and use the same for the improvement of student learning.
To be Regular in Grading and Reporting
Grades need to be given to the students in order to give a sort of more or less concrete rating to students’ performance. Though not quite an adequate system, yet it provides some indication about the students ‘ relative position.
A teacher who is quite regular and particular in awarding grades and sending reports about students’ performance can push the students, parents, school authorities and other concerned, towards ensuring better learning on the part of the students.
This would also entail the maintenance of up to date record of progress of the students in different aspects of learning English language or any other subject.
With the help of the previous and the present record of performance, the teacher can determine trend of students ‘ pace in learning and communicate to all concerned and ensure suitable action from them for accelerating students’ learning.
To Make the Objectives of Evaluation Clear to the Students
The process of evaluation has, is based on the pre-determined objectives of language
teaching. So in order to ensure a purposeful evaluation and improvement in students learning, it is highly essential to make the students clear about objectives against which they are going to be tested and evaluated.
This would put the students in a situation they would ask themselves the questions like the following:
- Do I know the correct use of idioms?
- Do I know how to make nouns from verbs?
- Do I know answers to all the questions given towards the end of each lesson?
- Do I know the summaries of all the poems?
To Ensure Participatory Planning of Evaluation Procedure to Motivate
the Students
As a teacher of English language one should ensure participatory planning of evaluation procedure. Imposition of a schedule of evaluation upon students would make them feel isolated from it and hence they may be disgusted from the same. So in order to motivate the students, it is proposed that you should:
- make clear to the students of which they are to be evaluated;
- encourage them to propose the possible dates and time at which they wish to be evaluated;
- immediately communicate to the students any change in the schedule which should most preferably come later and not earlier than the announced dates.
Never Lose Sight of Individual Differences
As has already been mentioned in this unit, students happen to belong to different strata of society and hence have quite visible differences in their socio-cultural backgrounds, attitudes, intelligence, and resultantly different understanding, etc. of what is taught to them.
With this hard fact in the background, you should not expect equal level of performance from all the students in a particular test of evaluation.
To make the best use of results of evaluation, a teacher should also interpret the same with reference to the intellectual level and physical limitations, if any, in the case of each of the student.
This would help a teacher in adopting a suitable teaching strategy for each student. In other words, you need to adopt a policy of individualized instruction in the light of performance of individual student.