ENG520 Assignment 2 Solution and Discussion

[zareen]

MA ELT
Testing and Assessment (Eng520)

Fall 2019
Assignment No. 1
Total Marks: 20
Lectures: 1-12

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Q1. Suppose you are a language classroom teacher and can use a variety of assessment tools and strategies to assess the students’ performance. Keeping this in mind, discuss any five assessment tools which, you think, are appropriate for your classroom.
(52 =10Marks)
Q2. SOLO Taxonomy is a systematic way of describing how a learner’s understanding develops from simple to complex when learning different subjects or tasks. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a set of three hierarchical models used to classify educational learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity. Keeping this in mind, write down any five differences between SOLO Taxonomy and Bloom’s Taxonomy.
(52 =10Marks)

[zareen]

@zareen said in ENG520 Assignment 1 Solution and Discussion:

Suppose you are a language classroom teacher and can use a variety of assessment tools and strategies to assess the students’ performance. Keeping this in mind, discuss any five assessment tools which, you think, are appropriate for your classroom.

As students work with mathematical tasks, they should be able to: explain, interpret and justify what they know in their own ways, not just present what others have said about the topic
make and explore connections that are not immediately obvious
speak to their peers about the personal strategies they have used to arrive at their solutions
provide evidence of their learning based on explicit criteria
create new ways to express ideas, insights and feelings; e.g., making models or representations as they devise various ways to solve a problem, justifying their solutions, creating simulations, working with what they understand in new situations or contexts
take action when they recognize that their understanding of issues, problems and ideas could be improved.

Teachers can use a variety of assessment tools and strategies to assess student performance. Some of these strategies and tools include:

anecdotal notes
observation checklists
conversations
portfolios
question and answer
checklists, rating scales and rubrics.

[zareen]

@zareen said in ENG520 Assignment 1 Solution and Discussion:

Q2. SOLO Taxonomy is a systematic way of describing how a learner’s understanding develops from simple to complex when learning different subjects or tasks. Bloom’s Taxonomy is a set of three hierarchical models used to classify educational learning objectives into levels of complexity and specificity. Keeping this in mind, write down any five differences between SOLO Taxonomy and Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Advantages of the SOLO model for evaluation of student learning

• There are several advantages of the SOLO model over the Bloom taxonomy in the evaluation of student learning.
  * These advantages concern not only item construction and scoring, but incorporate features of the process of evaluation that pay attention to how students learn, and how teachers devise instructional procedures to help students use progressively more complex cognitive processes.
  * Unlike the Bloom taxonomy, which tends to be used more by teachers than by students, the SOLO can be taught to students such that they can learn to write progressively more difficult answers or prompts.
  * There is a closer parallel to how teachers teach and how students learn.
  * Both teachers and students often progress from more surface to deeper constructs and this is mirrored in the four levels of the SOLO taxonomy.
  * There is no necessary progression in the manner of teaching or learning in the Bloom taxonomy.
  * The levels can be interpreted relative to the proficiency of the students. Six year old students can be taught to derive general principles and suggest hypotheses, though obviously to a different level of abstraction and detail than their older peers. Using the SOLO method, it is relatively easy to construct items to assess such abstractions.
  * The SOLO taxonomy not only suggests an item writing methodology, but the same taxonomy can be used to score the items. The marker assesses each response to establish either the number of ideas (one = unistructural; _ two = multistructural), or the degree of interrelatedness (directly related or abstracted to more general principles). This can lead to more dependability of scoring.
  * Unlike the experience of some with the Bloom taxonomy it is relatively easy to identify and categorise the SOLO levels.
  * Similarly, teachers could be encouraged to use the ‘plus one’ principle when choosing appropriate learning material for students. That is, the teacher can aim to move the student one level higher in the taxonomy by appropriate choice of learning material and instructional sequencing.