Student performance grade,
which is the evaluation of the students’ class work and participation in
classes, requires the teachers to write their own quizzes for this purpose. There
are many alternatives to standard quizzes to assess student participation and
performance, and when these are used they may also serve to motivate students
to take the responsibility of language learning, since they will be
accomplishing certain tasks in and outside the classroom, and this
accomplishment will help show students some purpose for language learning other
than passing exams.
Some of these quizzes I
have used myself, and some other ideas were tried by my colleagues and found to
be productive and effective methods that are conducive to language learning and
raising student motivation.
Take-home
exams
The
teacher may assign an article or a short story to be read by the students
outside the class hours. The text may be photocopied and given out in hard copy
or may be uploaded to the class group page to be accessed via the Internet. In
either case, accompanying study questions are also handed out. Afterwards,
students are told that they have about a week to study the text, answer the
questions and that the following week; at an unannounced time they are going to
be given a quiz.
The text: can be an article, a research
article, a short story or a poem.
Questions: emphasize the main points,
details, and clarify the difficult points
i.
Type of the text and
questions
1.
An
article
A
discursive or argumentative article, for instance, may be assigned. Then, the
study questions focus on and clarify the writer’s
Arguments
Examples and what function they serve
Conclusions
Suggestions
2.
A
research article
A
research article can be assigned as the take home exam text. E.g. a
psychological experiment article can be used. Then, the questions emphasize and
clarify
The hypothesis
Experimental design—all the details about
The subjects
Methodology
Results
Significance of the results
Inferences to be made from these results
Generalizations that can be made from
these results and findings
3.
A short
story
Another
option is to use a short story suitable in difficulty to the students’ level of
competence. Then, the questions focus on
o
The background
o
The plot—general
outline and the details
o
The characters
o
Students’
interpretations and responses to the story
4.
A poem
A
poem too can serve as a take-home exam text. Questions may focus on analysis of
the poem or artistic appreciation of the poem.
o
Teach concepts such
as metaphor, analogy, simile, rhyme, and genre.
o
Ask the students to
study the linguistic and artistic structure of the poem.
o
In the quiz ask them
to explain a line or stanza of the poem. Or ask them to explain a metaphor or a
simile. Or just ask them whether they liked the poem, why or why not? Or what
the significance of the poem is.
In
all those examples, after the text is assigned as the take-home exam, if the
teacher wishes, she may hold a problem shooting session, answering questions,
discussing answers offered by the students, clarifying vocabulary, syntax
problems. Then, at an unannounced hour and day, she may give the quiz.
This
way, students can sort out rather complex, and demanding reading tasks. They
also have the opportunity to read for purposes other than doing the
comprehension questions presented in reading handouts.
Field
visit and writing quiz
This
was used by our colleague Asli Baysalli in the beginning of the first semester
in the advanced level and was found to work out well.
o
Assign the students a task, such as a visit to a
museum, a house of historical importance or some place of your choice. e.g.
o
Send the students out on the task with a set of questions
to be answered. For this purpose you may prepare a study sheet or work sheet
that contains a set of questions to be answered during or after the visit.
o
Students do the visit and fill out this sheet
within a week.
o
The following week, you may give a quiz and ask the
students to write up their impressions or answer the questions you have
specified.
Combining
journal writing with essays written in class
Journals
of the students may be used as feed-in data for writing in class, and the
writing product may be graded as a quiz. It is always possible to combine
journals with essays; quizzes are only one of the applications.
One
example is the descriptive essays.
o
Ask the students to make observations in a specific
place or at a specific time of the day, e.g. on the way home, on the boat, on
the bus, on the subway train, in the dorm or activity room.
o
Ask them to make notes of their observations, in
sketch form
o
Ask the students in class to write an essay
describing the place they observed based on the notes they have made in their
journals
o
Students come up with very interesting observations
of a crowded bus, or the boat from Besiktas to Kadikoy, or an alienated
description of their dormitory room, for example.
Combining
reading and writing in a quiz
A
reading handout given by the CC or selected by the teacher herself can be used
for this purpose.
o
First, the comprehension questions for the text are
done, and the text is analyzed.
o
Then, the students are asked to write up a summary,
report, evaluation or the critique of the text.
o Refer to the handout “Critical reading towards critical writing” for more detail on such tasks.
Written
by Zeliha Gulcat, July 2004