Language Grading

The Importance of Grading / Gauging

For those of us who have taught English as a second language in a country where there
might not be an official second language, the ability to effectively gauge, grade and
contextualize language is absolutely paramount, when we consider that in China each age
group may not have a set standard of second language ability. Getting a sense of how we
should speak in order to teach effectively and also have the students understand not just
what they are learning but also all the directive and incidental language which is used by
teachers each and every lesson, is not something that is necessarily an easy or natural
thing for us to do.

1. What to expect from your students?

The false sense of fluency. When a new

teacher arrives off the plane and then into the classroom perhaps fresh out of TEFL school
the first thing that hits them is how well the students can greet them and how good their
English is, but soon after a sense of disappointment when they realize that this is not the
case. Language is taught in little groups or (chunks) of vocabulary and grammar.

While a student will feel comfortable using the language they have learned and can apply it
quite fluent sounding, anything outside of their learned language group is completely not
understood. So while a student may be able to talk quite confidently about how they feel
that day (“I’m fine thank you, and you?”), as soon as you ask them “why” they may freeze
and stare quite blankly at you and whisper out of the side of their mouth to their friend “ting
bu dong” at the same time as their friend is smiling widely and nodding yes at you. At this
point you should understand that you have used language forms out of the student’s
knowledge base and they have no way to understand you.

When first learning another language, teachers teach and student’s learn very set language
forms and functions in very sequential grouping types: numbers, colours, family, things at
home, greetings, feelings etc etc, along with well established practical phrasal forms
“what’s your name?”, “my name’s___.” So the first thing a teacher should endeavor to do is
to discover what the students actually know and pitch and direct their language accordingly.
As a student’s language base grows, so will the complexity in which a teacher can
communicate with them. A teacher’s job is to facilitate a student’s growth and development,
something they should take seriously and at the same time have fun doing with a sense of
pride of their student’s achievements.
2. Student’s Listening Skills
Listening skills, scanning skills and the voice emphasis for teachers. Listening skills are
probably the most challenging of all of the language acquisition skills out of (reading,
writing, listening, speaking). This is partly because (particularly new students) of the
unfamiliar sounds of the new language. When listening to a new sentence, for example a
student will hear ”Blah Blah Blah red ball Blah Blah I like Blah Blah mum and dad Blah Blah
park”, now while listening to the sentence the student will be listening for what they can
actually understand, tune out what they don’t and then try to put meaning to sentence
though reasoning skills, this is called scanning. They are scanning for what they can
understand and then apply natural deductive reasoning to interpret meaning from.

The way a teacher can help this process in the language learning process is to use voice
emphasis which is the use of over emphasizing the parts of the sentence which the teacher
wants the student to understand. So with the sentence example above the student hears:
”Blah Blah Blah red ball Blah Blah I like Blah Blah mum and dad Blah Blah park” so the
teacher changes the volume and pitch of their voice to bring attention to what they want the
student to hear specifically, so the student should hear: _______/^^^^^^\
___/^^^^^^\_____/^^^^. (__is low emphasis) and (^^^is high emphasis). This method helps
guide the student’s listening skill and promotes increased overall understanding. While
some academics say this may not be a good representation of true native natural speaking,
others like myself use this for what it is, a tool to help teach, especially lower level students.

3. Use Classroom Language

Incidental and directive language.

Incidental language is language that we don’t necessarily teach as part of our curriculum
but we would use it in most of our classes, for example “Jack, could you turn the lights off
please but leave the dim light on?” something you wouldn’t teach but would use as practical
language. Incidental language is good for improving everyday talk and helps with a natural
sounding class, however this can backfire on a teacher who changes their incidental
language each lesson, the teacher must be very deliberate in their use of this kind of
language and it should be repeatable and repeated for it to be effective in the classroom.

Directive language is the practical language or (classroom language) that all teachers
need to use to run a class, for example “Stand up, close your books, open your books to
page 45 “, etc. This language is imperative to the smooth running of a class and helps
prevent teachers from doing absolutely everything for the students in the class. To do this a
teacher needs to make all of the directive language repeated and standardized so not to
confuse the students, so it is ill advised to use different directive language each week (get
up, stand up, up, could you all please get out of your seats and move into the upright
position) pick one and stick to it. When students have a good grasp of this, they would be
close to the stage where a local teaching assistant is superfluous and you should be
teaching without help.

While having a local teaching assistant is very helpful, it can also be a crutch for teachers
who use direct translation as a big part of their lessons. It slows down the immersion
process and the students listening skill progress and in some cases is like spoon feeding
the students to the point where they tune out the English part of the lesson.

As educators abroad we pride ourselves on the fact that we play an important role for our
students as well as reminding our friends and family that we have an interesting and
enjoyable job and live in an incredible part of the world where we get to do and see new
and wonderful things every day. But we do need to develop and update our professionalism
and teaching skills all the time to keep ahead of the game. The bigger our tool belt is the
easier our jobs are and the easier our job is the more intrinsic effort we put into it.