Quizzes are helpful in assessing students' vocabularies.
Introduced by authors Wiggins and McTighe in their book Understanding by Design, the Backward Design method is often used to teach foreign languages, first identifying what must be learned and then creating supportive instruction and assessment. Foreign language acquisition progresses on a continuum in which each unit requires some prerequisite knowledge from the previous unit, making regular assessment an important tool in the instruction process. Simple to design, easy to score and generally based on specific content, quizzes can be an excellent choice for frequent quick assessments of students' learning throughout a unit.
Instructions
1. Review the National Standards for Foreign Language Education, supported by the U.S. Department of Education, which defines content standards for foreign language instruction; these standards, known as the 5 C's, are Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons and Communities. Review these standards frequently in order to keep the curriculum aligned with them and to make sure assessments and quizzes support them.
2. Develop a theme for what students should be learning that has value outside of the classroom, interests your students and addresses Communication, Cultures, Connections, Comparisons and Communities. Teach a unit on food, for example, using the theme "How does diet impact daily life?" Create quizzes to support this theme.
3. Write clear and concise learning objectives that support the goals or standards. Specify exactly what students will know or be able to do at the end of a unit. For example, state the objective "Students will be able to name common foods" for a unit under your food theme. Use your specific objectives as the basis for assessments, including quizzes.
4. Develop a specific guideline for what will be considered acceptable evidence of proficiency, such as "Students will be able to correctly identify 85% of vocabulary words from the unit." Use this objective to create appropriate quizzes to assess the percentage of vocabulary students can understand and use properly.
5. Make a vocabulary list of words students need to know in order to meet the learning objectives. Include vocabulary for common foods, mealtimes, traditions or customs pertaining to eating and constructing sentences to communicate about food under your theme of food and diet, for example. Account for the students' level and existing vocabulary when deciding what to include in the vocabulary for each unit.
6. Choose the format you will use for your quiz according to the students' age or foreign language proficiency level. Quiz questions can be multiple choice, fill in the blank, matching exercises or open questions in which students use the unit vocabulary to form sentences or write an essay. Design quizzes with short answers, using longer answers for tests.
7. Write questions two different ways for the same word. For example, if the vocabulary word being quizzed is the word "meat," ask students to provide the foreign language translation. Later in the quiz, use the word "meat" in the foreign language and ask for the English translation. Mix translations like this to provide greater practice for students, increase the cognitive functions exercised and offer more feedback opportunities to assess students' translation abilities.
Tags: foreign language, common foods, Communication Cultures, Communication Cultures Connections, Comparisons Communities, Connections Comparisons