Effective and Equitable Assessment Methods of English Learners

Limited understanding of ELs as students and lack of knowledge concerning appropriate assessment by teachers may lead to erroneous referrals to special education (Artiles & Ortiz, 2002). All too often ELs are overrepresented in the
learning disability category of special education and underrepresented in gifted and talented programs (Ford, 2012; Rueda & Windmueller, 2006; Utley, Obiakor, & Bakken, 2011). What ELs need is more enriching instruction, not less; misidentifying them as having learning disabilities runs the risk of having these students spend more time in remedial instruction in resource room settings, rather then exposing them to the high quality instruction of their
grade-level curriculum alongside their peers in general education classroom. Thus, inadequate assessment has been one of the most pressing
issues for students who are culturally and linguistically diverse with learning needs unique from those of their peers (Ortiz & Yates, 2001;
Utley et al., 2011). Given the pervasive concerns around the use and interpretation of assessment for ELs, the primary aims of this paper are (a) to suggest practical manners to collect data about ELs’ current performance,
and (b) to support teachers in best meeting the needs of their ELs through culturally sensitive, data-driven instruction informed by ongoing,
individualized, performance-based assessment. In particular, this paper will showcase a use of portfolio assessment to collect multiple forms of data
in order to better grasp ELs unique instructional needs, thereby avoiding their over- or under-representation in special education and determining
whether they need further intensive instruction.

This study was primarily aimed at developing an English-speaking proficiency test and analytic rubrics designed to measure speaking proficiency of Malaysian undergraduates. On the basis of Littlewood's Methodological Framework and Long's Interaction Hypothesis, the researchers derived three speaking tasks from four sources: (a) syllabus of the English language courses at the relevant university, (b) Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig's operationalizing conversation speech acts, (c) IELTS part B speaking test, and (d) task B speaking section of Malaysian University English Test (MUET). A total of 96 undergraduates with four levels of the language proficiency (i.e., low performers, intermediate performers, upper-intermediate performers, and high performers) from a public university in Malaysia voluntarily participated in the study. While two TESOL experts were invited to validate the content of the tasks and the rubrics, two raters rated students' test scores. Construct validity was established through a known-group validity (construct validity) for a known-group comparison of the task performance at the three difficulty levels namely, elementary, intermediate and advanced. The test scores, having good internal consistency (a= .89) and inter-rater reliability (ICC= .84), yielded speaking proficiency descriptors. This result showed that the test is reliable and valid to diagnose speaking proficiency of Malaysian undergraduates in pursuit of improvement.

Description:
Inclusivity is a crucial factor in assessment design as fair assessment must reflect the needs of a diverse student body. Assessment practices should also be culturally inclusive and supportive to all students while considering the needs of learners with disabilities and specific learning difficulties. Educational institutions worldwide are adopting a range of principles, using a variety of assessment methods, and developing assessment literacy. All these issues must be considered when researching inclusive assessment practices and policies.

The Handbook of Research on Policies and Practices for Assessing Inclusive Teaching and Learning discusses the needs of learners of any context, background, and culture. This book strives to promote the importance of global inclusive assessment and teaching, giving an understanding to educators and faculty of the negative effect uniform assessment and teaching strategies have on a diverse body of students. Covering topics such as equitable design, ethnic preferential policies, and multilingual perspectives, this book provides an indispensable resource for researchers, practitioners, educators, teacher educators, policymakers, administrators, program planners, educational managers, educational leaders, professors, and academicians.

Coverage:
The many academic areas covered in this publication include, but are not limited to:

Alternative Evaluation
Assessment
Case Studies
Educational Systems
Equitable Design
Ethnic Preferential Policies
Higher Education
Host Language Teaching
Inclusion
Learning Strategies
Multilingual Perspectives
Teaching Refugees
Writing Knowledge

Abstrak Since language is a system of spoken sounds or conventional symbols for communicating thought, we use language to express our thoughts, feelings, ideas, etc to make a communication. We communicate to other people by using language. Therefore, the way we speak is influenced by the culture belonged to social group where we interact. Language reflects the context in which it is used. People use language differently in formal and casual context. Besides, people adapt their talk to suit their audience and talk differently to children, friends, customers and colleagues. The linguistics' form will also be affected by the purpose of people's talk. They use variety of ways to express the 'same' message. Thus, this small project was done by interviewing two friends who had ever stayed abroad before, male and female (appendix) to see whether both of them use different politeness strategy in speaking English. They are coming from different origin, thus, the writer also wanted to see whether their L1 and their culture influence ways of their speaking. It is stated on Politeness theory that gender plays more prominently in the field of politeness but politeness theory has ignored the fact that based on gender, women and men will also perform politeness differently and it was proved in this small project. The writer interviewed two interviewees, male and female, by asking them to answer three questions prepared by the writer. The conversation was recorded and the writer analyzed the ways of their speech by listening to the recording. The writer found that both of them did not use any certain politeness strategies. The female friend talked more confident, were better in grammar and did not use more fillers or hedges. Vice versa, the male friend talked nicely, made many mistakes in grammar and use many fillers or hedges.

ABSTRAK


Dedi Suhandi : Kontribusi pola penguatan terhadap hasil belajar keterampilan chest past dalam permainan bola basket pada siswa kelas VIII SMPN 1 Sumedang. Tahun ajaran 2013-2014

Berdasarkan realita yang diperoleh penulis dari lapangan, (1). Sebagian siswa sangat aktip dalam mengejar prestasi setinggi tingginya dan sebagian besar juga siswa sering mencari sensasi dengan aksi yang sering kali mengundang kontropersi. Dan setelah ditelusuri, akar dari hal tersebut hanyalah bentuk aplikasi siswa tertentu untuk mendapatkan pengakuan dari lingkungan sekitarnya, khususnya di sekolah. (2). Dalam prestasi tim bola basket SMPN 1 Sumedang mengalami kemunduran dari segi penguasaan teknik dasar yang salah satunya adalah keterampilan chest pass. Dengan adanya dua fenomena diatas, penulis tertarik untuk memecahkan masalah tersebut dengan menerapkan pola penguatan dalam pembelajaran penjas. Pola penguatan yang digunakan adalah ke enam komponen pola penguatan yaitu: 1.Penguatan verbal, 2.Penguatan gestural, 3.Penguatan kegiatan, 4.Penguatan mendekati, 5.Penguatan sentuhan, dan 6.penguatan tanda. Dengan kajian pola penguatan serta fenomena-fenomena diatas penulis mencoba meneliti dengan judul penelitian “kontribusi pola penguatan terhadap hasil belajar keterampilan chest past dalam permainan bola basket pada siswa kelas VIII SMPN 1 Sumedang”.
Latar belakang diatas mendasari penulis untuk merumuskan masalah sebagai berikut: (1). Apakah pola penguatan berkontribusi terhadap hasil belajar chest pass dalam permainan bola basket pada siswa kelas VIII SMPN 1 Sumedang ? (2). Seberapa besar kontribusi pola penguatan terhadap hasil belajar chest pass dalam permainan bola basket pada siswa kelas VIII SMPN 1 Sumedang ?
Dalam penelitian ini, penulis menggunakan metode eksperimen dengan jumlah populasi sebanyak 312 siswa dan sebanyak 39 sampel yang diteliti dengan metode pengambilan sampel yaitu random sampling. Intrument atau alat yang digunakan untuk pengumpulan data dari sampel adalah tes chest pass ke dinding (wall pass).
Berdasarkan pengolahan data dari hasil tes chest pass ke dinding (wall pass), penulis dapat menyimpulkan bahwa: Penerapan pola penguatan memberikan kontribusi berarti (signifikan) terhadap hasil belajar melakukan chest past dalam permainan bola basket pada siswa kelas VIII SMPN 1 Sumedang. Besarnya kontribusi tersebut ditunjukan oleh peningkatan kemampuan psikomotor (chest past) sampel setelah diberi perlakuan berupa pola penguatan sebesar 2,95. Sedangkan hasil yang signifikan diperoleh dari hasil uji signifikansi pada taraf nyata 0,05 dengan derajat kebebasan 38 yaitu Thitung 8,9393 > Ttabel 1,684.

International Journal of Education (IJE) is a Quarterly peer-reviewed and refereed open access journal that publishes articles which contribute new results in all areas of Education. The journal is devoted to the publication of high quality papers on theoretical and practical aspects of Educational research.

The goal of this journal is to bring together researchers and practitioners from academia and industry to focus on Educational advancements, and establishing new collaborations in these areas. Original research papers, state-of-the-art reviews are invited for publication in all areas of Education.

Carolina Rivera (a teacher of English Language as a Foreign Language to middle school and high school students in Mexico City, Mexico. She has been a Fulbright teacher in both New York and Florida and has also worked as a teacher trainer for COMEXUS.) She wrote this research work in 2006, and published it in English Teaching Forum journal the same year (Vol 44, No 2, 2006, starting from page 34). Article aims to help present and future teachers to struggle with so-called communicative activities which, as the author claims it, are almost always the highlight topic in teachers’ training and conferences, and yet, almost always forgotten in the classroom. Author states that teachers are aware that communicative activities are of a great importance, but it seems that teachers are having difficulties with them in practice, especially in the high school with teenage students who prove to be deconcentrated and hard to maintain a conversation with. Rivera choose to write this short article and share it with all the teachers across the World, because, it seems so, she managed to over cross this taboo. The main aim of communicative activities is of course the practice of English Language oral skills that are usually the less practiced in schools, and the only way to manage this is to present students with interesting and motivating topics (as Rivera claims herself).

Aspects of curriculum formation, supportive framework development and a scheme of delivery are introduced, using a web-semantically driven approach accompanied by a model of human perception, information delivery and assessment supportive schemes. Shown how semantic web research can help with monitoring of knowledge base, defining structural knowledge dependencies, detecting the change of knowledge state and estimating functional or structural deviations. The impact of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and web-media on human perception and knowledge formation is analyzed to avoid use that might impair human development through brain/sensory/ perception models. The visual, textual and audio channels of information delivery are analyzed together. Shown how web- semantic approach can be supported by modification of assessment process with better tuning to knowledge formation and student ability making assessment frameworks based on automated support for reliable and qualit...

The monograph is dedicated to the Bulgarian communities in Hungary - the Banat Bulgarians (until 1920), the Bulgarian market-gardeners (until 1960), the Bulgarian students (until 1944) and intellectuals (until 2000). It presents their demographic characteristics and some socio-anthropological aspects of their development in the 19th and 20th centuries: stuctures of sex, age, religion, marriage, labor activity and occupation, literacy and education, as well as their identity, integration and assimilation in the light of quantitative indicators of bilinguism, ethnically heterogeneous families, citizenship etc. Bulgarian population's seasonal labor, child and educational migrations between Hungary and Bulgaria are examined to make a contribution to the history of population movements between the Balkans and Central Europe.

Abstract: A large and growing number of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in the US and around the world have the potential to develop bilingualism and biliteracy if supported in their immediate environment. At the forefront in focusing exclusively on biliteracy development in early childhood across a variety of languages, this book provides both findings from empirical research with young bilinguals in home and school contexts and practical applications of these findings. Each chapter is structured in a similar ...

§ Education without proper assessment and gap-filling process is futile. § § Sharing your knowledge without understanding your audience is not effective. § § Concept sharing without dynamic, engaging and multiple representations is not everlasting. § Education today has changed its shape – it has oriented itself with multi facet aspect and technology. Explanation involves multi-dimensions: Text, pictures, video, field, animation, technology, and repetition. Pupils are from different culture & background and educators have to understand them and their understanding level before speaking on the first few bits of curriculum. Concept teaching and deliberation should have exploration suitable to everyone. And then there has to be a proper a quick assessment followed by remedial system in place. All this revolves around two critical people: Educator and student. Both are under tremendous pressure to achieve excellence. Use a UNIQUE bundle of technology offsetting the pain area and supplementing education. Won't it be interesting to enquire which quadrilateral shape would cover the maximum area when perimeter is constant, taking a check on prerequisite knowledge, dynamic exploration and then quick assessment one by one, and to close it with remedial note, if any. Wouldn't it be nice to correlate a*sin(b*x+c) graph with sound wave and differentiate frequency/magnitude (prerequisite knowledge!) and many more. We may start off with a quick quiz (using technology) to understand prerequisite knowledge on quadrilateral and perimeter and then dynamic representation to explore/research and to conclude with the result. Then a quick re check on students be done using technology to understand the comprehension and quick fix, if required an where. With the use of technology, let us analyze the following: 1. What is the magnitude of the effects of technology on schooling outcomes concerning mathematics education? 2. How does the magnitude of the effects of technology fluctuate in response to various study features (e.g., gender, age, race) and design features (e.g., randomization, sample size, instruments)? My conclusions touch on the need for a well integration on technology, for effective strategies to stimulate deep learning, for goal-directed assessments, for addressing the needs of a would-be mathematically literate The evolution of students' understanding after having gone through this kind of procedure is unmatchable. Hands-on experiment time – 10 mint

Aspects of curriculum formation, supportive framework development and a scheme of delivery are introduced, using a web-semantically driven approach accompanied by a model of human perception, information delivery and assessment supportive schemes. Shown how semantic web research can help with monitoring of knowledge base, defining structural knowledge dependencies, detecting the change of knowledge state and estimating functional or structural deviations. The impact of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and web-media on human perception and knowledge formation is analyzed to avoid use that might impair human development through brain/sensory/ perception models. The visual, textual and audio channels of information delivery are analyzed together. Shown how web- semantic approach can be supported by modification of assessment process with better tuning to knowledge formation and student ability making assessment frameworks based on automated support for reliable and quality of knowledge delivery. Structure of further research is suggested.

A large and growing number of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in the US and around the world have the potential to develop bilingualism and biliteracy if supported in their immediate environment. At the forefront in focusing exclusively on biliteracy development in early childhood across a variety of languages, this book provides both findings from empirical research with young bilinguals in home and school contexts and practical applications of these findings. Each chapter is structured in a similar format to offer parallel descriptions of the research, including a brief review of related empirical studies, an overview of the methods for data collection and analysis, a description of the main findings, and specific pedagogical implications to support educators’ efforts to construct meaningful, challenging, and dynamic literacy and language learning communities where one or more languages are used for communicating and learning. Pushing the field forward, this book is a valuable resource for helping literacy educators understand and respond to critical issues related to the development of young children’s literate competencies in two languages in home and school contexts.

A large and growing number of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in the US and around the world have the potential to develop bilingualism and biliteracy if supported in their immediate environment. At the forefront in focusing exclusively on biliteracy development in early childhood across a variety of languages, this book provides both findings from empirical research with young bilinguals in home and school contexts and practical applications of these findings.

Each chapter is structured in a similar format to offer parallel descriptions of the research, including a brief review of related empirical studies, an overview of the methods for data collection and analysis, a description of the main findings, and specific pedagogical implications to support educators’ efforts to construct meaningful, challenging, and dynamic literacy and language learning communities where one or more languages are used for communicating and learning.

Pushing the field forward, this book is a valuable resource for helping literacy educators understand and respond to critical issues related to the development of young children’s literate competencies in two languages in home and school contexts.