Appendix 4-Assessment Schedule

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Appendix 4: Assessment ScheduleSpeaking/Writing

Goal 1: To improve learners score in the speaking paper by half a band.

General Overview of the Speaking Assessment Part of the course:

The formative testing dimension of the course was primarily done informally and directly.As far as the formative tests are concerned, I have been able to source a more than sufficient

amount in published materials. This was done in order to ensure a certain amount of content

validity. Where an appropriate (or topical) published test material could not be found, I

developed my own ones based upon published past questions, these can be seen in the

worksheets in appendix 8.

However, as I want to increase the face validity as much as possible for the summative testand owning to the fact that I was unable to find sufficiently realistic IELTS speaking exams

in both course books and practice test materials, I again decided to create my own. This can

be seen in appendix 6 below.

I chose to use criterion-referenced scoring in the summative test to make it as realistic aspossible. Plat and Webber (1990) defines this as a test which measures a students

performance according to a particular standard or criterion which has been agreed upon.

The student must reach this level of performance to pass the test.To this end, the public

versions of the IELTS speaking band descriptors were used. These were obtained from

http://www.ielts.org/pdf/Speaking%20Band%20descriptors.pdf.The tests were recorded and

doubled-marked by a colleague at EIU, who also happens to be an IELTS examiner, in order

to minimize subjectivity and increase reliability, which Hughes (1989:29) describes as the

likelihood of a student achieving the same result on any given occasion.

The students already have copies of the public versions of the band descriptors and hadpractice applying them to dummy candidates. I used this lesson

https://www.teachers.cambridgeesol.org/ts/teachingresources/resourcedetails?resId=6107

from the Cambridge English Teacher Support website. Therefore, they will already had

practice applying the band descriptors to both themselves and other students. This will mean

that they will be able to giv more realistic feedback to their partners during the informal
http://www.ielts.org/pdf/Speaking%20Band%20descriptors.pdfhttp://www.ielts.org/pdf/Speaking%20Band%20descriptors.pdfhttps://www.teachers.cambridgeesol.org/ts/teachingresources/resourcedetails?resId=6107https://www.teachers.cambridgeesol.org/ts/teachingresources/resourcedetails?resId=6107https://www.teachers.cambridgeesol.org/ts/teachingresources/resourcedetails?resId=6107http://www.ielts.org/pdf/Speaking%20Band%20descriptors.pdf


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formative testing.

Lesson Objective Formative Assessment and notes

1 G1O1

To be better able to maintaina flow of speech and givemore extensive answers inPart 1

This will be conducted informally and directly in class.(See green test notes boxes in the course plan for details.)

2 G1O2

To be able to plan moreeffectively for the long turn

(part 2) and to be able to use

the one minute planningtime to brainstorm non-common lexis & grammarand base their speech on

these

This will be assessed directly in class (See test notes forlesson 2) and indirectly throughout the course as it ishoped that the more effective use of planning time byconcentrating on coming up with 10 words of non-common lexis will have a positive effectively on not only

their fluency and coherence scores but also on the lexicalresource mark.

3 G103

To be better able to userepair & clarificationstrategies

This will not be tested formally in class. However, it ishoped that an increase in their strategic competence willhave a positive impact on their subsequent fluency andcoherence scores.

4 G1O4

To be better to use strategies

for dealing with hesitation

Same as above G1O3.

5 G1O5

To produce syllable-finalconsonants, word stress in

multisyllabic words, stress-timed intonation andchunking more accurately.

This will be tested indirectly and informally in classthrough the answering of a part 2 question.

6 G1O6

To produce regular past

tenses more accurately

This will be tested indirectly and informally in classthrough the answering of a part 2 question requiring a lotof examples of the regular past simple.

Summative assessment (Speaking) and notes:

This will involve a fully timed and recorded test using the materials in appendix 6. As

outlined above, the tests will be marked using the public versions of the assessment criteria

and be double marked to maximise reliability. It will take place at the end of the speaking

course as detailed in the course plan.


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Goal 2: To improve the learners score in both task 1 and task 2 of the

IELTS writing paper (Move them up by a half a band score)

General Overview of the Writing Assessment Part of the course:

All of the tests, both formative and summative, are either taken from past papers books,published IELTS teachers resources or course booksor very closely based upon published

past papers, which will mean that they will have a higher content validity than if I had

created them myself. The tests content validity will be further enhanced by the fact that will

require the learners toperform the behaviour that is being measured(Brown 2003:22).

The tests will becriterion-referenced as per the live exam and marked using the publicversions of the assessment criteria, namely task response/achievement, coherence and

cohesion, grammatical range and accuracy and lexical resource, available at

http://www.ielts.org/PDF/Writing%20Band%20descriptors%20Task%201.pdf&

http://www.ielts.org/pdf/Writing%20Band%20descriptors%20Task%202.pdf.

Subjectivity is inevitable when it comes to marking writing (Harris/McCann 1994:55). Thiswill be lowered as I am a newly trained up IELTS examiner, however, in order to ensure that

subjectivity is kept to a minimum, I will get a sample of each of the students scripts

doubled marked by a more experienced examiner in my department.

I will have to mark a large quantity of scripts over the period of the course and this mayimpinge upon my ability to mark consistently (Brown 2003:21). In spite of this, the large

number of samples collected may positively impact on the overall reliability of the data

collected.

The summative test, administered at the end of the course, will be taken from CambridgeIELTS past papers book 9 P 101 & 102. These can be seen in appendix X.

Lesson Objective Specific Assessment Details and notes

7 G2O7

To be better able to respond tothe prompt

This will be tested directly, consisting of an informal

writing in class. It will be timed to increase the realismof the test. However, they will only be given 30
http://www.ielts.org/PDF/Writing%20Band%20descriptors%20Task%201.pdfhttp://www.ielts.org/PDF/Writing%20Band%20descriptors%20Task%201.pdfhttp://www.ielts.org/pdf/Writing%20Band%20descriptors%20Task%202.pdfhttp://www.ielts.org/pdf/Writing%20Band%20descriptors%20Task%202.pdfhttp://www.ielts.org/pdf/Writing%20Band%20descriptors%20Task%202.pdfhttp://www.ielts.org/PDF/Writing%20Band%20descriptors%20Task%201.pdf


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minutes as the planning stage will have already beencompleted. Construct validity may be reduced as I amnot only testing whether they can respond to theprompt but their writing ability in general.

8 G2O8

To be better able to use

checklists and the errorcorrection code as a way tonotice errors and upgrade theirown writing.

This will be tested indirectly throughout the rest of thecourse. They will not be required to proofread theirscripts before they are handed in. However, those thatdo will see a positive impact in their scores, especiallyin the lexical resourceandgrammatical range andaccuracy criteria.

9 G2O9

To be better able to use avariety of complex sentences

This will be assessed by an informal timed in classwriting of a task 2 question taken from P.101Cambridge IELTS practice tests 8. Theface validityofthe test will be impacted upon due to the fact thatteacher support will be offered throughout.

10 G2O10

To be better able to present an

overview which highlights maintrends/ key features.

This will be tested directly and informally in class.Face validity will be increased by using CambridgeIELTS past papers Book 7.

11 G2O11

To be able to paraphrase theprompt more effectively in task1/2.

Tested directly and informally in class and indirectlythroughout the whole course.

Summative Assessment (Writing) and notes:

This will involve a fully timed test taken from Cambridge IELTS past papers book 9 p101.

A copy of the test materials is given in appendix X. As outlined above, the tests will be

marked using the public versions of the writing assessment criteria and be double marked to

maximise reliability. It will take place at the end of the course as detailed in the course plan.

Documents

Appendix 4-Assessment Schedule