World of Workcraft

Well, the system the school uses for student assessment needs some tweaking. Not sure why, but many of the teachers had only hand-written copies of student scores, which then needed to be entered by another set of staffers (me). As well, the scoring rubric is a little narrow, it seems. The entire semester is captured by seven data points, 3 to do with attendance (marked by 0 or 1), and 4 on assigments, totalling 12 points. The 3-band system is based loosely on the IELTS system, which is good for illustrative purposes. However, a greater range of data points would give more depth to the principle of continuous assessment, then partial achievement would be given greater weight; thus, the process would be divided into more steps, each of which given a score.

For example, this image from the internet shows more steps in the writing process. Note too that the arrows are bi-directional - students have multiple chances to improve their performance. Not sure of the process used here yet, but it seems that students may have only one kick at the can, and then the teacher gives the score.

Each of which could be evaluated according to the grading rubric which follows.

I really did like the communicative thrust of the assignments and the exam, that it tries to fit the task into an authentic context. I wonder to what extent test design backwashes into teaching practices. For example, textbooks generally provide little guidance in the way of rhetorical structure of texts. This structural component figures heavily into the IELTS design, and hence the evaluative process here. As well, a greater investment into an extensive reading program would also expose students to a greater number of texts/genre examples. Good readers make good writers.