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Group 7: Anita, Henry, Vincent, Ben, Catherine, Sanduni

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Group 7: Anita, Henry, Vincent, Ben, Catherine, Sanduni

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Q1)
Method A:
Method A has a higher reliability. According to the marking done by the teacher in method A, it can be seen that the teacher  spot out all mistakes in the paper such as grammatical,etc. This means 1) the teacher have taught such content (grammar,etc) to the kids which is why the teacher made sure she corrected that mistake to show the students where they are lagging behind) 2) the teacher followed the rubric that is provided for the marking as usually, a rubric requires teachers to point out all grammatical mistakes, structure of sentences, accuracy,etc.  Such marking system allows students of similar level to attain similar grades and is also more transparent.

Method B:
This method possess lower quality of reliability. It can be seen that marks were given based on the creativity of the students instead of grammatical mistakes, organization, etc. Such marking is not favorable and reliable because 1) it does not allow students to develop their English language proficiency as it emphasizes creativity 2) the marking criteria of the teacher is totally different from the marking criteria in the public exam system.  Such marking will not allow students to spot their mistakes and correct them. In fact, it will encourage students to believe that creativity is the main emphasis of English writing instead of grammar, accuracy, organization, etc.

Q2)

Method A:
It can accomplish a high level of validity. First, the marker is required to locate and indicate every single grammatical mistake such as missing articles. That way, students are less inclined to make the same grammatical mistakes in the future, increasing the students knowledge in grammar use. Moreover, the method coordinates with the intended outcomes of the written assessment, which are to provide feedback for students to improve, as well as identify underlying reasons or problems of learning difficulties.

Method B:
It fails to accomplish a high level of validity. Although it can encourage students to think creatively and think outside the box, language accuracy (which is the intended learning outcome) cannot be achieved through marking method B. The comments given to students didn't mention to the students on how to improve. Finally, as for the consequences, such lenient marking can end up as a disadvantage for students in public exam as the assessing criteria is totally different from that of method B, it is more stringent and harsh, and public exam markers point out every single mistake. Creativity holds marks, however, grammatical accuracy, organization, etc., holds equal emphasis.

Method B

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Q1)
Method A:
A higher quality of reliability and is appropriate for teaching since there is a proper answer for a question. Students would have a more concrete concept or understanding of the use of language and could establish the foundation to create more text. The high accuracy in marking could point out the students weakness and further support them in improving. Students can understand the reasons why their writing is considered incorrect. Apart from this, as grammatical mistakes are corrected on the same standard, all students could have a fair chance of getting a low or high score. Method A is also the method most teachers would follow since it can save a lot of time during the marking process.

Method B:
Possesses a relatively lower quality of reliability. It does not reflect a school's teaching method and it lacks the process of error correction. This would possibly lead to the students misunderstanding the purpose of a lesson or assignment. The students may also develop the misconception of their mistakes being the correct ones. This may lead to the failure of lessons and teaching because this marking method may not be able to urge and support students in their academic performance.

Q2)
Method A:
Pointing out and identifying all the grammatical mistakes the student has made. Method A possess a high level of validity. This method of marking might discourage the creativity and open minded thinking style of students. Simply asking them to follow the regulations and patterns have a high chance of limiting their abilities to produce a comprehensive and thorough piece of article if ignoring the mistakes. However, it is able to help students notice their disadvantages in order to fix them. As method A is the more popular and by far the most widely used marking standard, the pros and cons are yet to be debated and the situation may vary from case to case.

Method B:
Although encouraging the student to think creatively and freely, method B does not achieve a high level of validity. This could encourage students to think outside the box and provide more solutions to the same topic. It could also help the students develop the ability to identify and solve problems even if it may be the first time they have encountered them. However, lacking accuracy in grammatical correction does not meet the requirements or concept of teaching. Method B did not demonstrate a detailed marking of the paper. Therefore, it has failed to achieve the expected outcome of a properly marked paper.

(Conclusions of discussion)
Validity may be the more fundamental marking style a teacher should possess. However, there might be a gray zone between it and reliability. As reliability is the way to make a method usable and consistent while the other is to achieve a high standard of accuracy. It is important for a teacher to find the balance in between and encourage students to meet both requirements.

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Q1: In the two marking examples using Method A and Method B respectively, does the marking

achieve a high level of reliability? Please state your reasons.

Method A

Compared to method B, method A achieves a high level of reliability in terms of the accuracy of the marking. The teacher will evaluate students’ writing ability in accordance with their correct use of grammar and spelling rather than using a subjective marking strategies adopted in method B focusing simply on students’ overall performance in the organisation of their writing and the content which may lead to an inconsistency in judging the students’ writing abilities and causing unstable results when it comes to other teachers’ marking.

Method B

Since method B focuses on the content as well as the organisation of the essay, the marking is subjective. In other words, unlike method A in which the use of grammar is either correct or incorrect, there is no guideline in method B which enables a high reliability among teachers since different teachers may have various opinions on whether the essay is organised or not.

Q2: In the two marking examples using Method A and Method B respectively, does the marking

achieve a high level of validity? Please state your reasons.

Method A

Marking method A achieves a high level of validity. To start with, this marking clearly indicates the grammatical errors which the students have made and provides clear guidance for students to do corrections. Therefore, students are less likely to make the same mistake again during their written tests next time and develop senses of awareness of grammatical usage. Besides, this marking is aligned to the intended learning outcomes of the written test. One of the intended learning outcomes of the written test (assessment) is to measure / evaluate students’ abilities whether or not they can compose a letter without many grammatical errors.

Besides, this marking uses scores to reflect students’ performance. This assessment marking method may lead to negative consequences. Students receiving low scores may feel discouraged and have low motivation to continue to learn English.

Method B

Due to the fact that not all factors in constructing an essay are being emphasised in method B, therefore in our opinion, the validity of method B is only being achieved to a certain extent. Although in method B, the ability of students in terms of elaborating a sentence can be assessed through the structure of the essay, the overall elements in constructing a well-written essay for example, coherence and the grammatical aspect is not included. Hence, only a medium level of validity can be achieved. In terms of the consequences, students may have learnt the importance of providing concrete and specific examples to illustrate their ideas more clearly after the teacher has commented on the his/her writing task.

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Q1: In terms of reliability, our group thinks that Method A was a much higher level in comparison to Method B. As it has a focus on accuracy with detailed marking criteria and a set way of grading, such standardized way would be considered reliable. By having such set standards and rubric for grading, it serves to diminish any possible bias or differences in perspective depending on the graders. On the other hand, Method B, though it could give a more expressive input on the content of the letter, seemed like it could have a more subjectivity of the grader. Also, not having any kind of scoring system or rubric could make the whole marking unfair because there isn't a set standard.

Q2:

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ACTIVITY 2

Q1:
We believe that method A achieve a higher level of reliability. When considering a method’s reliability, the issues concerned are its consistency, stability and comparability. Method A has achieved these three key areas in a way that it uses grammatical indicators, for marking, such as the right usage of tenses, pronouns, spelling, etc. These indicators are kept constant    in order to assess the varying abilities of the students. In this way, the method is more objective and fair to all students.
While Method B provides more positive comments than negative, however,  it focuses more on the content which may vary according to different students’ work, hence, a more subjective way of marking, which does not address the reliability of the method.

Q2:
If the two methods are compared, we think that both methods have a fair level of validity, to a certain extent. An Assessment’s validity is concerned with the issues of: (1) measuring the relevant skills or knowledge of the students, as well as whether it leads to appropriate (2)inferences and (3)consequences. For the first issue, the validity can only be measured depending on the focus of assessment. For method A, the focus is on the accuracy of writing or the grammar aspect of writing. It would only address the validity if the prime focus of performing an assessment is evaluating the students’ grammar. For method B, the focus is on the content and genre-based or text-based appropriacy. Like method A, it can only be valid IF the focus of assessing the students’ writing is their creativity and content of writing.

When considering the second issue,  we also feel that both methods share a fair amount of validity. For method A, it addresses the second issue of validity, as the students are informed about which aspects carry the score weighting, specifically the language and content aspects of writing. While for method B, the comments (instead of score) indicate that the content (or the ideas that have been written) are what contributes to the students’ achievement.

For the third issue, we believe that again both methods have a fair share of validity. This is because method A, provides the students with the feedback on which aspects of grammatical resources (e.g. tense, pronoun) should be given serious consideration by the student. For method B, through the commentary feedback, the students see which areas they did well and which areas they need improvement in.

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Q1:
Method A:
Method A can achieve a high level of reliability. According to the sample, method A focuses on the grammatical issues, which refers to language accuracy. In this sample, the teacher sets standards and specific scores to evaluate student's work. From this aspect, it achieves the consistent that students with the similar learning are more likely to attain similar grades. Secondly, the teacher gives feedback on their mistakes. In this way, students are aware of the correct expression from teacher's comments and have access to improvement. In this case, students can achieve more progress and get more stable reflections from teacher's evaluation.

Method B:
Compared with method A, method B seems to be less reliable. According to sample B, the grade standards are focus on students' writing contents. However, how to evaluate students' logic, organization, and expression ability are more depended on teacher's subjective experience. Since there is no specific standards to judge their works, the results and feedback students receive from teachers can be varied, which may cause the unstable results. Meanwhile, it is not easy for students to approach the improvement from teacher's guideline because it's quite dynamic for the results.

Q2:
Method A:
Method A can achieve a part of validity. First and foremost, the teacher in method A points out all of grammatical mistakes and inappropriate usage in student's letter and then comments the correct usage to motivate students revise by themselves. From this way, students can not only know what kind of knowledge they don't master well, but also correct them and consolidate the knowledge. In this case, method A can achieve the consequence. On the other hand, method A is lack of inference because the teacher didn't give any evaluation about the letter's style, content, and organization. So students can hardly know the goodness and weakness of their work.

Method B:
Method B doesn't achieve the whole validity, either. Even though the teacher provides the comment for the whole letter and points the excellent parts of the letter, the comment hardly mentioned how to get improvement further and didn't point out the serious grammatical mistakes of this letter. From this aspect, it's only achieve the inference of validity, which enables students to know how well and how much they learn. On the other hand, students cannot get any feedback for their problems and know how to make a progress. In this case, students don't have motivation to develop their skills and improve their study attitudes.

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10E Group 3 Kelly, Idrill, Daffy, Alfred

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10E Group 3 Kelly, Idrill, Daffy, Alfred

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Q1:

Method A: Overall speaking, method A can achieve a high level of reliability. In terms of consistency, so long as the student has improved his/her grammatical accuracy can he/she avoid making errors that downgrade the marks. So, the result can be regarded as consistent. Speaking of stability, students of similar levels will likely attain similar grades if the marking is mainly based on grammatical accuracy. After all, students with high ability are generally more conscious of the probability of making errors, thereby spotting out any mistakes and correcting them accordingly in a timely fashion. Lastly, the assessment results are comparable in that grammatical accuracy is an objective yardstick less likely to cause disagreement among markers.

Method B: In stark contrast, method B is not so reliable. The results are dependent upon the content, in part the depth thereof. Students of similar levels may vary in their ability or awareness in enriching the content. It may be the case that high achievers are only aware of grammatical mistakes, which is out of the scope of consideration for method B. The results may not be comparable because different markers may vary in their perception of concreteness. Some are lenient enough to allow at least 1 more sentence for explanation of a particular idea while some are too strict to allow that. Above all, impression marking is very  brief that different markers missing on certain keypoints will likely to give out different gradings.

Q2:
Method A: The results of the assessment are less likely to generate appropriate inferences and consequences. For the former, a poor performance regarding the aspect of grammar and usage may not thoroughly reflect how much a student has acquired throughout the learning process. Writing is more than an accurate deployment of language resources. For the latter, students are discouraged to reflect on how they can improve their cognitive skills in organizing and expanding the ideas. Markers are burdened with the need to generate a mark/grade, and there is no room or them to leave detailed comments on how students can think from other perspectives in an attempt to modify the content. When it comes to the alignment of learning outcomes, method A is likely to achieve part of them. Aspects that are to be taken into account when grading a writing task are language, organization and content. Disappointingly, markers focus only on the first aspect.

Method B: The same can be said of method B. Impression marking focuses heavily on the flow of ideas, perhaps with some attention paid to the richness of certain ideas. Again, content is only one of the three judging criteria for gauging the quality of a piece of writing. Worse still, markers adopting this marking style do not bother to remind students of their grammatical mistakes, which can prove fatal to language learners. Lacking enough knowledge on grammatical usage, one can hardly convey the meanings of their writing to the target audience. To conclude, method B fails to assess and raise the awareness of language learners’ grammatical accuracy.