8th Post: Assessment

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This time I wanted to start a post with visual poetry: the chaotic text above is a representation of the song we keep listening to year after year...important is your final grade ('la nota'), the rest is just there and makes noise. The reason why I post this home-made poem is very obvious: the putrefact qualitative assessment stystem we are stucked in. This leads to a dominating summative, hetero final pattern of assessment were the student has little room to improve... whether he passes or he fails. I think this video explains accurately what is meant with stuck in this system (again, I reference Corin -chatterboxonlinesite- here): 

And I would add this one where Chomsky is at his best, enlighting us on education...

In any case, all assessments can be valid depending on how and what we are evaluating. However I prefere formative, continuous and qualitative assessment, as well as ipsative and self-assessment. The room to improve language skills as a student is huge and enriching. You integrate, little by little, new structures, vocabulary, strategies, style... You learn to know yourself through them, and the more you are conscious of how you work as a student and which are your interests, the more you improve in your language skills, regardless of which skill you are working on. To me this is the main reason why these type of assessments are generally more fit than the former exposed, which are needed as well when standards are stablished and tested. 

I passed a competence-based test in every language I know, usually to get certificates. The last ones I did were at Pompeu Fabra (PCCL) for English and French. Both of those tests had different parts (oral production and listening comprehension; writing expression and reading comprehension) which were designed accordingly with the kind of language competence and skills being evaluated. The hardest and longest exam I have passed until now is the C2 in Catalan (CEFR). There were tools from multiple choice test, an oral interview, vocabulary exercises and essay writing. I did the exam twice: once when I was still in "batxillerat" and the other one during my second year at university. I picked up my official Catlan proficiency certificate two months ago, and I am very proud of it! 

What I most enjoyed of this examn was the essay writing tutoring with my Catalan teacher. Writing is one of my passions and she really gave me excellent positive feed-back on my writings. Surprisingly, the part I most enjoyed to do during the official exam was the oral production part. 

Yes, I am satisfied of the assessment I have received here at university. Sometimes I have agreed more with my teachers and sometimes less, but in general I can say I am happy with the assessment of my learnings. I have had very good teachers who value the on-going process of learning in between these capitalist orientated education pattern... I have been given he right tools to improve my poorest skills and encouraged to work on my best skills from a Humanistic point of view, which I really appreciate.