Book Image

Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching

Book Image

Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching

Overview of this book

That word Moodle keeps cropping up all over the place ñ it's in the newspapers, on other teachers' tongues, in more and more articles. Do you want to find out more about it yourself and learn how to create all sorts of fun and useful online language activities with it? Your search ends right here. This book demystifies Moodle and provides you with answers to your queries. It helps you create engaging online language learning activities using the Moodle platform. It has suggestions and fully working examples for adapting classroom activities to the Virtual Learning Environment. This book breaks down the core components of a typical language syllabus ñ speaking, pronunciation, listening, reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, and assessment ñ and shows you how to use Moodle 1.9 to create complete, usable activities that practise them. Each chapter starts with activities that are easier to set up and progresses to more complex ones. Nevertheless, it's a recipe book so each activity is independent. We start off with a brief introduction to Moodle so that you're ready to deal with those specific syllabus topics, and conclude with building extended activities that combine all syllabus elements, making your course attractive and effective. Building activities based on the models in this book, you will develop the confidence to set up your own Moodle site with impressive results.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Moodle 1.9 for Second Language Teaching
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
Preface
Index

Chapter 9. Assessment

If you mention the word "assessment" to a lot of teachers, they'll run a mile. It sounds boring, stressful, and formal, and it's not what a lot of teachers want to do. But, assessment, in one form or another, is what most teachers do a lot of the time. Much of it tends to be less formal and comes in the form of comments, feedback, and encouragement, but it still measures the ability of our students, which is what assessment is all about.

Why use Moodle for assessment?

Many teachers still produce tests on their word processor. That's easy to do, easy to organize, and easy to administer. So why change? Moodle offers a range of assessment tools known as CAT (Computer Assisted Testing) tools, and there are many good reasons they can make assessment easier and more satisfying in the long term.

Assessment can be enjoyable

Moodle offers ways of providing both informal and formal assessment. Several of the utilities for making informal assessments can even be quite fun. While students...