Assessment Ideas for Comprehensible-Input
When you teach a student through Comprehensible-Input (CI), it can be a little difficult to measure student progress using traditional tests - At times it really can feel like asking a fish to climb a tree. While this may be a bit of an oversimplification (don’t count on me for anything else), my students pick up language through when we go through stories and do activities. As the NSW Curriculum K-10 Syllabus suggests in their teaching advice, listening to, reading and viewing texts really does represent most of their time in the class. So I guess the question is, if there is such a fundamentally different way of learning happening, does this then warrant a different approach to assessment? What is the equivalent of asking them to swim? if you get my drift.
Here are some of the assessments I have used in class to test my students. The decision to create this area of the website has been a long time coming and I felt like it might be a necessary step to help some teachers see what the entire process looks like when you teach through Comprehensible Input. This work is useable as is, but like most of my work, I’m always working on things and will try to add to this page. Feel free to modify or improve on this work; simplify them for younger students or bump them up to be more advanced. I’m also happy to host and credit you for any related resources.
Story Listening Task
The idea with this assessment is that students are introduced to a brand new story during the assessment. Students then are given a few ways in which they can reply, to demonstrate their understanding of the text. It has proven itself to be a good introductory task.
Story Retelling Task
In this task, students get to choose between any of the stories they have heard in class and have to retell it in a Story-Listening style. What’s more, they can decide to do it in English or their second language, sheltering those who aren’t quite ready for output yet, while still testing their understanding of their chosen story. With marks rewarding those who push themselves and innovate, this assessment has been well-received in the past.
Immersion Task
This assessment is a good change of pace for an otherwise quiet term. In this task, students are challenged to think about what Japanese media they like, then create a log and watch, read and listen to 3 times a week for 7 weeks. It is a pretty involved task that fosters a lot of discussion and sharing, but it also introduces students to authentic content.
Children’s Book Task
After students have received a lot of Comprehensible Input and been introduced to the Japanese writing system, they will want to test it out. If you schedule this task at the right time, students have the background experience and knowledge to be able to put together their own simple story in Japanese. Similar to the Dead Zone competition, this task gets students to use the Storyjumper program to build and potentially publish their very own book.