Grades are an illusion. They reflect nothing real. They show how hard kids work and if they attend class and that is all. There is a huge disconnect between the fact that we give tests and homework to kids and the fact that language learning is an unconscious process.
We claim to deliver flow of language and we know that we have to do that for our students to actually acquire the language. We know that any class time not spent on comprehensible input is really just wasted time, and then many of us turn around and grade a kid on some homework or test – usually in the form of output – that the kid did for us, largely forgetting all the discussion her about those little formative assessments as being key along with incorporating our grading into the Three Modes of Communication, the biggest thread here over the past year.
Even those little quick quizzes are not accurate measurements of what they learned. If grades involve conscious effort, then how can we grade kids if we are teaching them using what is an unconsious process?
We teach them using a bewilderingly powerful process that is unconscious, then we turn around and grade them on what they do for us with their minds consciously. This is academic hypocrisy. Robert is right. We need to grade principally in terms of the three modes. Robert we need to hammer out some kind of manifesto in Breckenridge this summer on this.
Let’s grow long beards and sit around and smoke cigarettes and argue about it before we actually produce a document refusing grades in our language classes. Oh wait. We can’t do that because: 1. we would get fired if we didn’t grade them, and 2. who wants to smoke in Colorado? But let’s grow the long beards. We have to be allowed to act on our beliefs in SOME area!