Table 1 The reasons for teachers and pupils liking grammar assessment tasks

Table 1 The reasons for teachers and pupils liking grammar assessment tasks

 

Task type

Teachers’ view

Pupils’ view

Gap filling (initial form given or choice of forms offered)

a

Easy to make up and check, develops automatisms

easy to fulfill

Multiple choice test (choosing a morphological form, syntactic structure, or word order)

Easy to check, develops automatisms

Transformation (person, number, tense, voice, mood, degrees of comparison, statement ß à question)

Easy to make up, develops both automatisms and cognitive skills

Clause combining (accompanied or not

easy to make

up

and

easy to fulfill

accompanied by transformation)

check,

develops

Making up

sentences from

the given

speaking/writing

easy to make up and

strategies

words (accompanied or not accompanied by grammatical transformation)

check,

develops

speaking/writing

strategies

Error identification

easy to check, useful

for

future

language

teachers

Error correction

Easy to check, useful For future language teachers

Choosing or independent sentence interpretation, based on the grammatical form/structure (while listening or reading)

Develops linguo- pragmatic competence, listening/reading comprehension strategies

Text – based (and probably the situation is described) gap filling

easy to make up and

is

communicative,

check,

is

almost

sometimes

even

communicate

entertaining

Grammatical games (dominoes, etc. )

Motivating

motivating

Authentic (essay, letter, dialogue, monologue on a topic – grammatical comprehensibility assessed)

is communicative

is communicative

 

 

Table 2. The reasons for teachers and pupils not liking grammar assessment tasks

 

Task type

Teachers’ view

Pupils’ view

Gap filling

mechanical,

a

chance

dull, uncommunicative, often not enough context

to

guess

the

correct

answer by chance

Multiple choice test

more

than

choices

dull,

may

be

difficult

to

uncommunicative,

make up,

mechanical,

often

not

enough

a high

probability

to

context,

sometimes

guess

the

correct

confusing

answer by chance

Transformation

mechanical,

no

dull, uncommunicative

comprehension

may

be involved

Clause combining

Mechanical

dull,

uncommunicative

Making up sentences from the given

dull, uncommunicative, often difficult (if the sentence is long)

words

Error identification

mechanical,

a high

dull, uncommunicative, difficult, often confusing

probability

to

guess

the

correct

answer

by

chance,

may

cause

error fossilization

Error correction

may

cause

error

too difficult, often the

fossilization

meaning

of

the

sentence,

due

to the

error, is obscure

Choosing or

independent sentence

Difficult to make up, The choosing is mechanical, there is a high probability to guess the correct answer by chance; independent interpretation is difficult to assess

difficult,

demands

interpretation, based on the grammatical

high

level

of analytic

form/structure

(while listening or

skills

reading)

Text – based (and probably the situation

it is difficult to find authentic texts containing many target forms

is described) gap filling

Grammatical games

Pupils may not Concentrate attention on grammar

Authentic (essay, letter, dialogue, monologue on a topic – grammatical comprehensibility assessed)

difficult to assess

May not concentrate on grammar and make errors not made under other conditions

 

Teachers tend to use professionally created assessments because thinking up certain assignments is difficult for them due to a lack of self-confidence or simply laziness and lack of imagination. However, they overlook the possibility of a mismatch between the exam and the pupils' knowledge.

While teachers see some benefits in tasks 1–7 (drills), most pupils dislike them. Even though they think some of them are simple and are happy to get good grades, they find them tedious. While error self- and mutual correction are extremely beneficial, I believe that someone else's error correction, where you are unable to elicit what the speaker/writer intended to say, is not only ineffective (except for future teachers who will be required to do so), but also potentially harmful, because if the student is unable to locate the error, error fossilization may occur. Tasks 9 and 10 are mainly endorsed, while task 11 is regarded favorably due to its communicative nature, despite creating some issues.

Suggestions

As a result, we can see that organizing the evaluation of grammar skills in such a way that both teachers and pupils are satisfied and that the testing outcomes accurately represent pupils' ability to communicate effectively in the target language (grammatically) is difficult.

So, I'd like to give some advice:

1) Keep tasks 1–7 as a competition between pairs or small groups, or as a game, to prevent boredom.

2) Use gap-filling and multiple-choice text as much as possible, and select interesting texts depending on the contents.

3) Have 4-5 choices, where appropriate, to avoid guessing by chance impacting the grade too much.

4) Provide concrete examples of how a grammatical error can cause change of utterance into an ambiguous one.

5) A rich bank of evaluation tasks created by experts that are applicable to the given book should be included in the teacher's book.

6) Increase the number of text- and situation-based evaluation activities.

7) Include activities that include more than just writing, such as speaking, listening, and reading. Include tasks that are both active (speaking and writing) and receptive/perceptive (listening and reading).

8) The ratio of drills to authentic and semi-authentic tasks should favor authentic tasks. Remember that just assessing on a drill-type basis does not allow you to solve real-world problems.

9) It is important to emphasize not only grades and correctly completed tasks, but also the creation of strategies for completing difficult tasks. Strategis for avoiding and eliciting meaning should be discussed and practiced.

10) It is essential to practice the grammatical aspect of self-editing strategies. Allow good pupils to explain how they do it.

11) Model the task when it's challenging (fulfill it your-self, or ask a bright student fulfill it first). Work out a good rubric for authentic tasks, let pupils participate in making it up. Provide discrimination in assessment between mistakes not causing (“local”) and causing misunderstanding (“global”).

Focus on student progress rather than shortcomings when evaluating pupils, and teach pupils to turn their mistakes into valuable lessons and measures toward potential success rather than negative memories.

Teaching and assessing grammar skills is not only an uncomfortable requirement; it can also be made into a valuable and even enjoyable activity if real-life assignments, student issues, and instructor expectations are all taken into account and balanced.

The findings show that lecturers do have a collection of beliefs about evaluating grammar in order to employ pupils' abilities to use English. In terms of the grammatical construct, it is used to assess comprehension of a broad variety of grammatical forms as declarative knowledge and definitions as procedural knowledge. Furthermore, since grammatical ability is assessed using declarative and procedural knowledge, it is safe to assume that evaluating grammar using declarative and procedural knowledge offers a wide sampling of the domain of grammatical ability and can help pupils improve their English skills.

 

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