Are you listening?

Assessing listening is not such as easy as we thought. Teachers think they are right at the moment of assessing students. There are many aspects that make listening difficult but it is obvious that we overestimate evaluative process, mainly in the perceptive skills. Teachers can’t observe neither the process nor the product in the performance of the listening. This is one of the many factors that make listening more complex. Another aspect that is ignored by teachers is to consider all the skills not as a separated item, it is essential to take into account that all the skills complement each other.

In the case of listening, speaking is the ideal complement. Even when it is clear that in classrooms our students listen more than they speak. However we need to strengthen the two skills to develop them equally. As it is said a good listener is a good speaker. 

Numbers, grades, and more numbers

Ignorance is one of the key aspects that do not allow advance and improve education. Many teachers are expert in some specific subjects. However, they are ignorant in many issues surrounding the "mystery" to assess our students. I mention it as a “mystery” because is something that few people know, it is not so easy neither simple as many have tried to implement, actually some have not deciphered yet.

I can bet that many teachers don’t have any single idea of the principles of language assessment. After reading this chapter, I realize that what we think we know about assessment, it is nothing in comparison with what we should know. We don’t know and actually we don’t care what makes a good test. This happens due to the fact that teachers must use their free time to think and make tests, to this last, you can add the time we spend grading them; as I always say it is not the best paid job to do all what we have to do. I am not defending the negligence of the teachers, but we must be realistic.

However, it can be said that teachers have been learnt gradually how to improve their methods to assess students. Anyway it is not enough; teachers should learn to give more than grades. Numbers don’t teach at all, I mean numbers don't describe your performance. As the author mention the only thing we create giving to our students just grades, is a competitive environment in our class, and the idea is to create a cooperative learning.  Students need more than just a single number who classify them upper some students and lower than others. It that what we are teaching our students? To feel better and worse than others?