Seeking new criteria for grading students equitably

Assessing students for diagnostic purposes is an essential part of teaching English which allows instructors to monitor student progress and adjust teaching strategies. Assigning grades, on the other hand, brings little language acquisition benefit to the student and can have an impact that goes beyond the classroom. Future educational or employment opportunities for students can vary depending on what grade they are awarded, and the only apparent benefit in terms of acquisition would be in the form of a motivator which, given the inherent weakness of extrinsic motivators, is not likely to be significant. In fact, some forms of grading might actually have a demotivational effect on some students. Nonetheless, the practice of evaluating and ranking students is deeply entrenched in education systems around the world, and that is not likely to change any time soon. As such, we should make every effort to try to use grading practices and standards that minimise any unintentional harm associated with them. In this article, we discuss three candidates for criteria that could potentially be used to assess students: proficiency, mastery of learning objectives, or in-class behaviour.

Proficiency

Since the main objective of second language classes is to increase proficiency, it might seem obvious that assessment should be based on student proficiency. Thus, tests that measure proficiency, similar to the IELTS, TOEIC, or TOEFL, would seem to be solid candidates upon which a grading system could be based. However, in many countries where English is taught as a foreign language, English proficiency is often tied to the student’s socioeconomic background. Wealthy families can afford private tutors, trips abroad or sending their children to cramming schools; students from poorer backgrounds do not have many opportunities to improve their English outside of school, and they often attend schools in impoverished districts where the quality of instruction is not high and resources are few.

As such, teachers have students with widely varying proficiency levels enrolling in their classes. Given that language acquisition is a time-consuming process, it is unrealistic to expect even the hardest working student to catch up with peers that have a significantly superior command of the language within a semester or an academic year. Therefore, using proficiency as the criterion for grading unfairly privileges students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, while discouraging students from lower income families, who are doomed to poorer results before they set foot in the classroom. This could have a demotivational effect on lower level students, while giving higher level students the impression they can simply coast.

Some might argue that it would be possible to minimise this inequality by administering a pre- and post-test to students and awarding grades based on degree of improvement; however, such a system could be easily gamed by cunning students who could deliberately under-perform on the pre-test in order to demonstrate the most significant gains.

Mastery of learning objectives

The second option for assigning grades is one which is ubiquitous around the world. This is to base grades on the achievement of learning objectives. If this is the practice, then the objectives must be clearly measurable (Carlson, 2003). To create easily measurable objectives, teachers and administrators often divide the language into a series of micro-skills which can be taught, committed to memory, and then tested. These skills usually take the form of specific vocabulary words which are to be memorised by rote, or particular grammatical points which can be explained and understood.

Unfortunately, vocabulary words memorised out of context are easily forgotten and often used awkwardly or incorrectly. Meanwhile, grammatical rules, according to Krashen’s Set Order Hypothesis (1982), are acquired by the subconscious mind in a set order which has not yet been fully determined. Rules which are taught out of sequence will not enter a student’s active language production. As such, these benchmarks are not only arbitrary, they do little in the way of promoting language acquisition.

The only justification, then, for a syllabus structured in such a way is that it facilitates the assigning of grades. This contributes to a phenomenon known as ‘washback’, where instruction is heavily influenced by what will be on the test. Using this system of grading forces teachers to adopt skill-building teaching strategies that fly in the face of the last 40 years of research in the field. It treats languages as bodies of knowledge to be learned by studying, rather than skills to be acquired by practice, and it does little to foster a willingness (or even an ability) to communicate. Furthermore, basing assessment on knowledge of these micro-skills still privileges students from higher socioeconomic backgrounds, as having additional instruction is likely to contribute to an understanding of those structures which are commonly thought to be teachable, like subject/verb agreement or comparative adjectives.

In-class behaviour

If grading students based on proficiency and achievement of learning objectives are both so heavily flawed for practical and ethical reasons, what options remain? This author proposes we identify behaviors that are associated with second language acquisition, outline those behaviours to our students, and then award grades based on how closely they conform to them. Simply put, grades in classes should be awarded based on effort and participation. By now, research is quite clear on what behaviours contribute to acquisition, and these are the behaviours that should be rewarded with good grades. Students who read more and pay attention in class will improve more rapidly. According to Long’s Interaction Hypothesis (1996), students who engage in conversations will acquire the language. By putting the emphasis on the process rather than the outcome, we do not favor students based on prior experiences, nor must we break down the language into easily testable components.

There are some who might argue that such an approach ignores the silent period, which would result in increasing anxiety and thereby be at odds with Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis (1982). Thus, there should be a minimal emphasis on oral participation until students are ready. Furthermore, teachers should take care not to grade students based on error production. Mistakes should not be corrected, and instructor feedback should be positive and focus on content rather than form. Alternative means of demonstrating participation should be available to students who are anxious about speaking out in class.

Participation-based grading fulfills all the purposes of assigning grades. It keeps parents informed meaningfully about their child’s current performance at school, not their child’s pre-existing proficiency. To the extent that grades are a motivator, it encourages students to adapt their behaviour to suit best practice, without running the risk of discouraging low-ability students or allowing high-ability students to coast. It also minimises the amount of instruction time that is lost to testing, and it prevents syllabi from being designed around ease of grading at the expense of best teaching practices.

Clearly, not all teachers work in environments where they have the freedom to set their own grading criteria, and there is a time and a place for assessing proficiency or achievement of learning goals. As such, this article does not suggest that all grades should be awarded purely on participation in all contexts; rather it suggests that, whenever possible, more emphasis should be placed on grading the process because if the process is good, the desired outcome will follow naturally. It is also intended to spark a conversation about how we can use grading practices that maximise achievement and minimise ethical and practical drawbacks. Teachers are encouraged to share their thoughts on these recommendations based on their own experiences.

References

Carlson L (2003) Beyond assessment to best grading practice: Practical guidelines. In J E Wall & G R Walz (Eds), Measuring Up: Assessment Issues for Teachers, Counselors, and Administrators (p.p. 507-515). Greensboro, NC: CAPS Press.

Krashen, S D (1982) Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Long, M (1996) The role of the linguistic environment in second language acquisition. In W Ritchie & T Bhatia (Eds), Handbook of Second Language Acquisition (p.p. 413-468). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.