jGR, aka the Interpersonal Skills Rubric (ISR) is the second and most important to us of ACTFL’s Three Modes of Communication. Here is some more information about it. I am recommending that you use it in your classes like a hammer in January, for many reasons.
Students in comprehension-based classrooms must show up in a human way, ready to negotiate meaning with their teacher and classmates. If this is true, then we should grade our students in a way that reflects that fact.
Some teachers, recognizing the primacy of communication in language acquisition, have even gone so far as to base 100% of the students’ grade on the Interpersonal Skills Rubric. Communication is, after all, the standard. Using the ISR as the entire grade each term makes a lot of sense to me, since it then aligns 100% with what ACTFL is asking us to do in terms of instruction. Most schools wouldn’t allow it, which is foolish. They “need” more grades.
To adjust to that foolishness, I recommend that the jGR/ICR represent 65% of the grade, with the other 35% free writes, quick quizzes, reading behaviors, or other low-stress indicators of comprehension such as Listen and Sketch (an activity in which students demonstrate their comprehension by sketching what they hear). The 65%/35% percentage is what I’ve been using for over ten years now and it really has worked for me and no one has ever called me on it.
ACTFL describes the interpersonal skill as “characterized by the active negotiation of meaning among individuals” who are constantly making “adjustments and clarifications” to make their message understood.
This accurately describes the story creation process. Therefore, the ISR is an excellent standards-based assessment tool in an Invisibles classroom. It is better than quizzes so it should carry more weight than quizzes. It accurately describes if a student, that day in that class, has aligned their performance with the national standards.
When we assess students’ interpersonal communication, we align our assessment with our instruction. We do not assess based on what a student can “do” with the language since, as has been explained, at this very early stage of language acquisition according to the research a student can only understand and read, and not yet speak and write, just as is true with very small children who require up to five years or more of constant input before they can output at even the most basic levels of speech, let alone writing.
If you want, search in the search bar here for more on frivolous Can Do statements. They do not reflect what the research says about how people acquire languages. We must always keep in mind when assessing our students that their negotiation of meaning in our comprehensible input classrooms will be silent, nonverbal, or at most, take the form of one- word responses, perhaps in English, which is fine.
Since the ISR aligns with ACTFL and not with ideas about language learning put forth by the textbook companies, it is a true heavy hitter that asks students to show that they are participating in a reciprocal back and forth non-verbal way in the authentic acquisition process that is going on around them. It also respects the natural process of language acquisition, which begins with listening and reading and only much later begins to include output in the form of speaking and writing.
What exactly does jGR/the Interpersonal Communication Rubric measure? It measures the quality of the observable non-verbal interaction between students and teachers. Therefore, in the interest of fairness, since it is so foundational to language acquisition, teachers are urged to use it as the primary tool to assess a student’s language acquisition, at 100% if they can get away with it or at 65% if they can’t.
The ISR does the best job of evaluating what kids have learned in a comprehensible input classroom because it aligns curriculum and instruction with assessment and thus accurately reflects the research on how people learn languages while aligning with ACTFL and the national standards.
One example of the two domains of the ICR—the grade level of A—are provided below. I will post the entire list of what a B, C and D are here in a few days.
Domain 1 – Listens with the Intent to Understand:
A (4) – Almost 100% the time in class, you are actively tracking the ow of conversation in class. You are sitting in an engaged way with eyes on the speaker, hands free, sitting up straight and “leaning in” to the conversation. You do not have to be reminded or prompted to sit up and engage in class.
Domain 2 – Supports the Flow of Language:
A (4) – You answer the teacher’s whole-class questions with a word or two. You exert self-control to not blurt in English. You display positive peer leadership when other students need to be guided back into the ow of class. You are often an active member of one of the four student job “hubs” in the classroom.
In no way are such grades mere “participation grades” since they, more than tests that count numbers of points, align with the national standards. Applying the term participation grades to the above rubric is an insult to the years of research and testing that went into its design.
Note that with this rubric students can earn a grade of “A” on interpersonal communication no matter what their readiness for output. We do not expect or grade output in comprehensible input classes.
Consistent use of this kind of authentic assessment pushes the student to higher and higher levels of listening comprehension. Comprehension, much later, leads to output in the form of correct speech and writing. The difference, of course, is that when it is done this way, the eventual speech is authentic, not stilted by memorization.
The students’ eventual output will also be spontaneous, produced because it feels right. Students who are not inhibited by the potential shame of “doing it wrong” will describe the foreign language student of the future. That is because authentic assessment leads to authentic speech output. It’s nice how that works out in favor of the kids, finally.