Portfolios

“Research shows that portfolios place additional demands on teachers and students as well as on ... resources” (Burke, Fogarty & Belgrad, 1994, p.9). This statement highlights the need for teachers, lecturers, and students, who are using portfolios for the first time, to be aware of the needs that will be made of them. Apart from the time required to learn about the portfolio assessment method, lecturers have indicated the time-consuming nature of providing formative feedback and the difficulty of collecting and storing portfolios. It has been described as an expensive and time-consuming assessment method (Jones, 1994; Wolf, 1991; Perkins & Gelfer, 1993).

A portfolio is a purposeful collection of students work that demostrates students' efforts, progress and achievement in given areas. (Genesee and Upshur, 1996) 

Portfolio assessment has a strong element of self-evaluation and feedback – both for teachers and students. Educators must understand the powerful benefits to student and teacher education from the process of portfolio assessment as they plan a strategy for its successful implementation. A portfolio is merely a tool for assessment, in a more holistic student-centered approach to education. The portfolio becomes the location of the student’s work; their reflection through writing and student/teacher discussion on the work demonstrates whether the desired outcomes for teaching and learning process have been accomplished or not.

Gottlieb (1995) suggested a developmental scheme for considering the nature and purpose of portfolios, using the acronym CRADLE to designate six possible attributes of a portfolio:

•Collecting: an expression of students' lives and identities.

•Reflecting: thinking about experiences and activities.

•Assessing: evaluating quality and development over time.

•Documenting: demonstrating student achievement.

•Linking: connecting student and teacher, parent, community, and peer

•Evaluating: generating responsible outcomes.

A taste of hell

It is a sublime fragrance that attracts one's, and at the same time, it smells. All of us can use it to save people or to destroy them, to bring to life or to kill their soul. It is one and only has one constant: it transforms anyone who exerts it. Supreme Authority; in other words power, is a vital force, which penetrate the arteries of those who have it; it dictate to flesh and bones as well as turn upside down its masters, completely, has carte blanch. Although, power is a vital factor proper to man life. Us cannot conceive an established society without a source of authority that orientates the people; Power itself is not unique predicament, its difficult relationship with human beings, its presence is not exclusive problem, but its provocations, to which mankind without even trying succumbs. It is necessary to set up some rules and mechanisms in order to control its outcomes, something that should be done through education and nothing else with knowledge, the idea of power will be significant; the capacity to change, and this capacity is inside every one of us.

Judas Iscariot sells down the river Jesus for coin of the realm; maybe it is the reason why a world of does the same thing in a certain point of this life. As educators, Almighty Dollar is controlling the last vestige of dignity, identity and social responsibility; students are the martyrs of those economical arrangements that we are doing with the executive sides. Somebody would ask about the way that I call this I would say human trafficking, not taking into account that detrimental it could be, we are trafficking with their grey matter. Educators are condemning us to the eternal slavery of these parties, which are giving birth to the human race without dreams, without a life project, including each and every this behind the scenes that they hint. The above-mentioned are taking possession of the last throb of the heart, even worst one's last sight. In the pedagogy of the oppressed, the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire (1970) describes the education as a narrative. The relationship between students and teachers, this person put up an argument, plays out according to a script much like that of a play. In this script, the teachers and narrators holding all the facts and the students are empty receptacles to be filled up with the facts. For Freire, the dilemma with this model is that the plot written by those with political and economic power for the purpose of perpetuating oppressive social modus Operandi. The only way to end the tyranny is to rewrite the scenario and construct a different narrative, of what it means to engaged in education[1].

Being in the tight line between the genuine and wicked confuses us when thou are a child in a school. Students take place examined with the perspective of those who neglect, what is the importance of lifeless object; numbers and letters interfere with your in classrooms, with the exception of thy self does not be familiar with their utility. All of us do not imagine the infinite greatness hidden inside them; without may concern you with too much information, learners are a delight in and luxuriate in each moment there. Might be more than a few people do not acquire too much academic knowledge, but they become well versed in how to live in a society. As educators, we cannot play hide and seek from this tangible existence. There are no other possibilities to provide color to our community; it has now. We have to chance the perception of education as soon we get away from our turmoil; we have to give to critical-thinking a room for debate, give them a possibility to think differently. Furthermore, I consider that going to school is just one of our multiple experiences as social beings has to complete and that only knowledge are schools located.

Both dignity and virtue, which have within an ace of fade away from the right side of the earth, are latent in honest men, but they succumb to the mediocrity of those who govern our communities. They will never be true leaders, but criminals. I feel remorse for all the blood we had sacrificed, aside from I bear in mind there will be a true to life, one with hope and honesty. All those who follow tyrant leaders are as despicable as those people are. Those are traitors of their societies that are why I despise them.

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[1] Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the oppressed. [New York]: Herder and Herder, 1970.

Speaking and Listening skills

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As mention in the last entry, English language teachers can assess progress in language or skill acquisition and usage. There are four key language skills that the students will acquire: listening, speaking, reading and writing. The order in which these are list coincides with the class of skill acquisition and the instruction. One cannot learn how to read before learning how to speak. It is crucial when developing lesson plans always keep this sequence in mind, to allow the most natural progression in language attainment.  Language skills are grouped into the categories of receptive / productive or oral / written.  In this entry,  we will focus on listening (Receptive and oral) and speaking (Productive and oral).

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Listening is an active process in which the listeners select and interpret information (visual and auditory) and relate this information to what they already know. During the process of listening,  we are subject to the following steps: receive an aural stimulus, convert it into words, attach meaning into words, relate the message to past experiences and choose a proper response. Why is it necessary to teach listening? ‘Listening has used significantly more that any other language skill in daily life. We can expect to listen twice as much as we talk, four times as much as we understand, and five times as much as we write (Rivers, 1981). Therefore, an urgent reason for teaching listening skills is because listening is the basis for communication. 

On the other hand, speaking skills are closely related to the listening skills. In conjunction, listening and speaking can be taught as communication skills. Meaningful communication is a very challenging skill for the students as they often feel that they understand their teacher and peers but have trouble communicating outside of the classroom. Therefore, it is necessary for teachers to present to students patterns of real interactions. According to the British linguist D.A Wilkins (Rogers and Richards, 2001, 154): the communicative approach stressed for the real communication in the classroom so that the students are inspired to develop their language system, not just proving them the opportunity to practice what they already know. Students will learn the language by struggling to communicate and the teacher will help them by motivating them to work with the language. As stated earlier, effective communication (listening and speaking) is the number one reason that most of your students take English lessons. Even though your students, especially the adult ones, understand how useful and valuable this communication is, motivation may still be a challenge for the teacher.  

Types of Listening and Speaking activities 

Listening activities and Speaking activities in the classroom. 

H.D.Brown (2007) offers a simplified list of micro-skills and macro-skills (for conversational listening). The macro-skills isolate those skills that relate to the discourse level of organization while those that remain at the sentence level continue to be called micro-skills. [1] 

	Speaking	Listening
Micro skills	Refers to producing the small chunks of language (phonemes, morphemes, words, collocations, phrasal units)	Attending to the smaller bits and chunks of language, in more of bottom-up process
Macro skills	Imply the speaker’s focus on the larger elements; fluency, discourse, style, cohesion	Focusing on the larger elements involved in a top-down approach

In spite of the two models of listening and speaking are identified: the bottom-up and the top-down processing models. For example, bottom-up strategies are based on the language found in the discourse and include listening for details, recognition of related ideas, and word order patterns. The top-down strategies are based on the listener's background knowledge of the topic and include listening for the main idea, forecasting the outcomes, and summarize the discourse. 

For EFL/ESL students,  both approaches are needed when teaching listening skills. (Nunan, 1997).

In the same way,  there are particularly aspects of the spoken language that can influence the listening process and comprehension. H.D. Brown (1991) presents a comprehensive list of these factors:

What makes listening difficult?

To conclude, listening and speaking are difficult skills to master, specially for non-native speakers because of the differences between written and spoken language. As a language teacher, we aim to train to all students to become effective communicators, so active communication skills must consider incorporating other linguistic skills such as stress and intonation and morphosyntax. Instead of making use of activities that acquire repetition and memorization of sentences and grammatical patterns, activities that required learners to negotiate meaning and interact with the world listening and speaking is more that coding and decoding information. Nevertheless, since speaking and listening are so closely intertwined, we must pay attention to challenges students face when listening to authentic discourse.  Listening and speaking includes: paying attention (eye-contact), understanding (reflect what they just heard) and responding (give feedback either verbal or written).

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[1] "Receptive Teaching Skills. Brown ,( n.d.) Web. 7 June 2013 <http://fabitateacher.blogspot.com/>.

[2] Preparing Listening Questions: Assessing Listening Skills. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ingilish.com/preparing_listening_questions.htm

The meaning of numbers

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Approaches, theories, and methods have increased as well as the challenge for learning. But, how to measure the English store of learning reached? The word that immediately comes to our mind is assessment, and it is not a misconception to think about that word if we consider that our educational environment is full of evaluations, tests, quizzes and some others assessment tools. It is then important to present assessment and testing as different terms in meaning instead of presented them as synonyms. Assessment is an urgent part of any educational process as it determines whether standards to ensure the objectives been met. Educational assessment affects to make decisions about the effectiveness of curriculum, policies, syllabus and textbooks and in some cases, funding. As Scanlan (2012) stated, assessment helps teachers answer crucial questions in order to evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching practice. Educators must take active responsibilities such as, raising serious questions about what they teach, and how they teach. Accomplishment is not the only signaled by the completion of the unit, but also by the extent to which students have engaged with the topic at hand. This entry argues that a distinction should be made between impact assessment and evaluation and that the role of positivist approaches is best conceived of as contributing to the former. 

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There are two main reasons that assessment is necessary in learning: First, accountability, which means that many teachers still have the challenge of external pressures to give students a grade. It is think that teachers may have been a group of generator of grades rather than a meaningful process of education, to being able to report students and to be reported by the Minister of Education with the standardized test (Saber-Pro). Moreover, provide solid experience and results to the prospective students. To summarize, acquire reputation. Notably, positivist logic inferences are in favored in these discussions. A child’s behavior may be affected by extenuating circumstances. We have to belong and labeled to a certain category or group, In all cases, we should not pay more attention to the meaning of the number, instead of paying attention at the learning process.  Second, program improvement, once assessments are complete the results are evaluated to determined how well student learning outcomes. If the goals are complete and which ones need to be revised. Testing are being using to measure how much of the assigned materials students are mastering, how well student are learning materials, and how well student are meeting the stated goals and objectives. [1] Education should serve to liberate and promote opportunity for all of us. All of this got it hard to smarter consumers who are looking for academic excellence. Therefore, assessment must fulfill several purposes. 

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To conclude, assessment is an ongoing process developed along any learning course which allows the instructor or teacher to observe the learner’s achievements, improvement and performance (Brown, 2003). For carry out this process, teachers should use different tools such as journals, tests, quizzes, portfolios, blogs, etc can be used. It suggests that testing is a component of the assessment process, and a test is a tool used by teachers for assessing general or specific aspects of learners’ performance in a determine domain (Brown, 2003). As educators, we have the responsibility to become more effective teacher not offering definitive answers to questions, but rather than providing new insights into teaching and learning process, and explore deeper into the students' mind in order to generate critical thinking. I truly believe that we have to face the way of seen the world from different points of view without escaping from the reality, one's reality. As Chandra Mohanty (2001) states, pedagogy is not only about the act of knowing, but also about how knowledge related into the power itself. [2]

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[1] Differences between Testing, Assessment, and Evaluation. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://istudy.psu.edu/tutorials/testing/TestingAssessment2.html

[2] Henry A. Giroux | The War Against Teachers as Public ... (n.d.). Retrieved from http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13367-the-corporate-war-against-teachers-as-pu

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