ABOUT THE DISCUSSION

I am not very sure about the amount of research that exists concerning how to give effective and meaningful feedback to students.

As all of us know, feedback is a very important part of the assessment process. Our assessment does not finish when we grade or when we say 'well done' or 'you need to improve'; but, it is a process that also covers giving significant feedback to students so that they know what areas need to be improved and how they can do it.

That is why I believe that more research should be done on the way we give feedback to students, to our students in Colombian public schools. As it was highlighted in the reading and as it has been stated by different authors, in each stage of our development we learn in different ways, in the same way we need to be assessed in different ways, and also, I think that we should be given feedback in different ways.

In order to assess our students, we need to take into account different learning styles, likes and dislikes, multiple intelligences, background and conditions at home, etc. In the same way, I think that we need to pay special attention to those same aspects when we are going to give feedback. As we also know there are different difficult situations that our students have to live and go through such as economical, social and psychological ones; and those are issues that affect them. So I really think that we should investigate more how to give the feedback taking into account those conditions.

I believe that we cannot give feedback to one student that suffers violence at home in the same way that we give it to a student that is loved. We cannot give feedback to a student that has emotional problems in the same way as we do with a student that is more emotionally balanced. And of course, we have to think also of the different ages when we are going to give feedback. It is different to give feedback to a 10 year-old kid than to an adult.

I think this is a worth-investigating topic in our public schools in Colombia. In that way, if we know more about this topic, we can improve our quality of education and provide our students with more enriching learning experiences.

Standard-based assessment

For us, as teachers, the implementation of assessment procedures based on standards can be very beneficial. However, it can also bring disadvantages for the students’ learning process.

On the one hand, they are very useful for us since their level of practicality is very high. They can assess lots of people at the same time, they save time when grading, and not many people are needed at the time of administering them.

On the other hand, what I think that is a big disadvantage is the fact that when the assessment procedure is used, the teacher focuses the instruction on the development of the aspects that are included in the standard test and he may forget some other things that he has to cover. I think it is like when at work we have to design the exams. When we design them, we know what topics are going to be evaluated so we redirect our teaching practices or our explanations so that the students perform better. And I also think that that is a disadvantage because we are not giving the same attention to all the aspects learned but we are giving preferences to some of them.

Another disadvantage they have is that they do not take into account the multiple intelligences. They evaluate everybody in the same way, with the same tools and kind of items and do not take into account that each student can have different abilities when answering tests. Many times we as students have the knowledge but do not know how to answer…that is a big and common issue that needs attention in language learning and teaching.

I believ

e that the best way in which standard tests could work out would be if in addition to using them we could also give credit and importance to what happens in the classroom during the instruction and students’ performance.