The Course
The course is called Upper Intermediate IELTS Writing Preparation and is designed to help students to prepare for the writing portion of a standardized language test called IELTS (International English Language Testing System). The test has two modules—Academic (used primarily for admission into university) and General (used for a variety of purposes, including immigration). The students in this class are preparing to write the Academic Module of the test, so the course is designed to help them develop the skills required to receive the scores they need on the writing paper.
The Learners
The students range from 18 years of age to about 40 years of age. Some of them have recently finished high school while others have work experience. All of them are going to be applying for admission to either undergraduate or graduate programs in North American universities. Some of them need to achieve a minimum score of Band 6 overall on the test, while others need a minimum of Band 6.5 or Band 7, depending on the faculty they’re applying to and whether they’re applying to an undergraduate or a graduate program. They are from a range of countries including Mexico, Brazil and Iran.
The students have already completed three modules of the course. They are simultaneously enrolled in another IELTS preparation course, a reading and vocabulary course, that covers the same topics as the writing course. This week’s topic for both courses is agriculture. Much of the vocabulary building around each topic happens in the reading course.
The Learning Objective
The academic module of the IELTS writing test has two tasks. In Task 1, the students need to extract information from a table, a graph, a chart, a map or a diagram and present the information in a written text. The challenge for students is to present the information in a way that makes it meaningful for the reader—the tendency is to do it in a mechanical way, just reciting the details, so that the important information doesn’t stand out. This tendency is more pronounced in learners who are unfamiliar with the task and/or whose language competence is lower. The learning objective is therefore for students to be able to present information clearly and in a meaningful way so that the reader will understand the full picture. They can do this by including generalizations about the data rather than just regurgitating a list of figures.
The Instruction
Students will already have been introduced to this type of task and will have looked at an example task with two possible responses—one that presents the information in a mechanical way and one that presents it in a more meaningful way. They decide which one is more effective and analyse what makes it more effective.
The Assessment Strategy
There will be two stages in the assessment for this task—first the students will receive feedback from a representative reader, in this case a classmate. They’ll then be given a chance to revise their writing if they wish and will be given feedback by the instructor.
Students will be broken up into two groups—each group will be given a different pair of maps showing changes to a farm over a twenty-year period. They will then extract information from the maps and write a text outlining changes to the farm. The text they’ve written will be exchanged with another student who will need to draw the maps based on the text they’re reading within a fixed amount of time. They will also assess how meaningful the text was for them in helping them understand the situation using a checklist they’ll be given before the writing task is undertaken. This is the first stage of the assessment.
Once this stage has been completed, the writer has the option of revising their text, which they will then submit for assessment by the instructor. The instructor will use a rubric to assess how well the writer presented the information. Again, this rubric will have been given to the students before the do the writing task.
Instructions to students for the assessment
Spend some time carefully looking at the two maps and determining what changes have occurred between 2001 and 2021. Then write a text explaining how the farm has changed over that twenty-year period. A classmate who has not seen the map will then use your text to draw two maps of the farm. Remember to write an introduction and to include generalizations about the information.
Your goal is to make your description clear enough for you classmate to draw the farm accurately. They will assess you on how easy it was for them to imagine and understand the situation clearly.
You will also receive feedback from your instructor using the assessment rubric. You can revise your writing before submitting it if you want.
Rationale
This is a non-credit course and the ultimate assessment of the students’ skills is their performance on the official IELTS test. The focus in the course is therefore on formative rather than summative assessment. My aim is for assessment to make it part of the learning process, to let students know how they’re doing. There will not be a final course mark for this course, so the assessment is not needed for this purpose.
The assessment should be a way of enhancing learning and letting students gauge how their writing skills are developing. Knowing that a classmate is going to read their writing gives them a real audience for their writing and helps them understand that writing is not just an academic exercise. In a test preparation course, it’s easy for students to lose sight of the purpose of writing and of their target audience. The tendency is for them to present detailed information without generalizations or comparisons so that important information does not stand out and no context is provided for the reader. This assessment helps them keep the purpose for their writing in mind and also to know who their target reader is. That way they can see the real world purpose for this type of writing—clear, meaningful communication of information. This helps them understand how to present the information in a way that the reader can understand / imagine the situation.
Having to produce meaningful writing for their classmates gives this writing task a more real-world purpose and it should also be emphasized to students that this task is similar to what they may need to do in academic contexts or work contexts in the future.
References
F Tuzi. (2013, June 11). Language Assessment: Concepts and Issues [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/L_spva8QbXs
F Tuzi. (2014, August 4). Alternatives in Assessment [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/TSfYddYvF_g
Comments
Post a Comment