If we have a child who is brilliant in writing, but is not communicative in class, then how do we assess him? Do we keep him from the high grade simply because he doesn’t communicate well in class? Chris Stoltz posed that question to the group here about a week ago:
…what happens if a kid manages good output in writing etc., but doesn’t want to “tune in” in class? Does that even happen? My second-best intro student last year, Hamid, HATED talking, answering questions etc., and it was impossible to get him not to sketch during class. He blew the finals away. jGR would’ve assigned him a C at best– he didn’t talk, never asked for clarification, etc. – yet he stomped the final….
Jeffery Brickler responded this way:
You know him best. He is most likely a unique individual in this process. I bet that the number of students who are not “tuning in” and doing well is very very few, perhaps none. What Hamid did demonstrate was that he in fact did some of the skills very well. He didn’t engage very well in terms of speaking or letting you know that he understood, but he did pay attention, otherwise, he could not have made gains.
Another thing to ask yourself. Hamid did very well in the content. He killed the final. Yes. Great. However, life and communication is more than simply knowing the material. You have to engage. We are dispelling the thought that one who is gifted intellectually can simply do whatever he wants. You wouldn’t say he was a good at language/communicator if he never opened his mouth or communicated to you. Therefore, he is not doing everything perfect. He is doing many things very well.
Therefore, you, as he teacher, can determine what you value the most: That he CAN communicate well and chooses not to or that he DOES communicate well.
I support Jeffery’s comment. This is a valuable insight to those of us who use jGR and find ourselves in this kind of situation. In Jeffery’s response can be found the essence of how to deal with the insanity of grading in this comment:
…we are dispelling the thought that one who is gifted intellectually can simply do whatever he wants. …..
That is a valiant defense of jGR and, indeed, it defends the future of the work we are doing here together, as we try to make it clear that in the future language acquisition assessment schools is not going to be characterized by intellectual competition but heartfelt cooperation. That is what jGR is about, and why it is necessary.
And then Jeffery wrote this:
…therefore you, as he teacher, can determine what you value the most: That he CAN communicate well and chooses not to or that he DOES communicate well….
This makes me realize that we indeed are the teachers of our students, as you say above, and that we do what we must to reflect what we see in our students in as honest a way as possible, and that we must assess what is important to us, and we are all different. Hamid succeeds at what he does, Jeffery points out, but:
..he is not doing everything perfect. He is doing many things very well….
This particular comment is at the heart, it describes, the coming changes in language assessment. We still assess in terms of academic gains, yes, but now we are adding into our assessment other things, because it is a language. We are starting to see that assessing kids purely in intellectual terms is not something we can continue to do.
I would add simply to what Jeffery said above that we are not crazy in taking assessment into the realm of observable non-verbal behaviors and tying kids’ grades to that. Learning a language is NOT an intellectual process, but a human one.