Conferencing

Having finished teaching ENG 2213 and ENG 3280, I started to give consultations to individual students or a group of students by appointment.

In these two weeks, I met a lot of them who either prepared questions about their drafted assignments or intended to clear any misunderstandings of some key concepts in the modules. That's a good sign. Up to this point, most students asked me how they could design an effective formative assessment task to be carried out in the ESL classroom (which is part of the assessment requirements of the module ENG 3280 and some actually required me to define the formative assessment task conceptually before they planned their assessment strategies for use.

'Formative assessment is not like its summative counterpart in terms of form and mode of delivery. Students, however, do not need to pick up a pen and fill out correct answers on a quiz paper under timed conditions when performing formative assessment. Instead, it takes place minute by minute and hour by hour and is part of teaching and learning process. For instance, the conference between you and me is a kind of formative assessment since I give you verbal feedback which may result in improvement being made in the next step of your learning.' I replied.

Some of my students fully understood this analogy but some still interpreted formative assessment from the perspectives of psychometric assessment paradigm, that is, formative assessment is a tool to judge students rather than to help them improve.

To round up our meetings, I usually said, 'Keep up with your reading and call me if you have further questions about your assignment.'

Carol

Last night, I invited Carol, one of my previous BEd students to give a talk to my ENG 3172 students in my lecture. Carol has just started her career as a primary school teacher since 2008 and is working in a Band 1 school located in Diamond Hill. What she shared with students was how she used portfolio-based approach to support P1 students' learning of writing. Though she only talked about the assessment practice for about 40 minutes, students were very attentive and studied the students' sample work carefully. Towards the end of the talk, students raised some questions concerning the implementation of the portfolio approach in junior primary classroom.

Based upon students' responses, this kind of talk is welcome and actually Carol is in a position to share her experience with the pre-service teachers as she is the real consumer of this alternative assessment approach. Her presence could really bridge the gap between theory and practice. After the talk, I treated Carol for dinner. She really deserved it! We shared a lot of interesting anecdotes when she was still a student in the Institute and she told me about her work and students. What's an interesting evening!

'Effective Feedback'

What is 'effective feedback'?

Should effective feedback be a grade, a mark or a phrase like 'Good', 'Excellent' or 'Well done'?

All of the above is FEEDBACK, but may not be effective one...

Yesterday, I received student evaluation from two groups of students. One is from in-service NSS course and one from BEd students. I was elated as both groups of students gave me very positive feedback which could motivate me to do better and encourage me to continue my good practices. However, I realize that the in-service group gave me some very weird comments such as:

"In this short course, there should be no assignments."

"The course should not be held on Saturdays."

"I think this tutor is young and inexperienced to teach us." (My immediate response is I am not very young.)

What do you think? The above is all feedback but not feedback about how to improve teaching and learning. The feedback given by the teacher participants can't inform me how to improve my teaching nor how to facilitate better learning in this professional development course. Instead, they are purely 'personal' grievances towards the course. And also I would say the last comment is a little bit offensive though I took it as a compliment!! I think being a professional teacher, we should learn how to give effective feedback which can help improve our teaching as well as enhance effective learning.

Pass or Excellent

Yesterday, I met my supervisor, Dave and asked him a lot of advice about the strategies on how to write up the last two chapters which are rather challenging and significant. Dave asked me, "When you submit your thesis, we will rank you based upon 5 grades, Excellent, Very good, Good, Pass and Fail."

I then replied, "I just want to get a Pass as the task of writing a doctoral thesis is so difficult to accomplish.'

He added, " You can't just get a Pass because if the external examiner is tough, you may obtain a Fail."

Having heard about this comment, I felt even more scared than before and didn't know how I should proceed and improve my work.

Luckily, Dave is a very supportive and understanding supervisor who did not really give me too much pressure. Up to now, he didn't say too much about when I should submit the first draft. He simply said, "Try very best to make your thesis consistent and produce a good first draft once you are ready. And jot down every single idea which is useful for your thesis."

Then we went on with our lunch. I felt a bit relieved this time but still worried about my study progress as I was too occupied with the teaching duties and other committments in my working place.

I remind myself, "Be strong and believe I can do it."