For example, sometimes learning outcomes are too vague to be useful:
(-) Improve their speaking
As a learning outcome, this is far too vague and could function at any level of almost any ELT course, and so is not useful for teaching or assessment. And while a teacher could compare recordings of students at the beginning and end of a course to show that some improvement has taken place, it doesn’t support any meaningful measurement of student achievement.
A more useful learning outcome might be:
(+) Can make him/herself understood to a sympathetic interlocutor in very short, simple utterances in highly familiar contexts.
This learning outcome specifies the type of utterances and the type of context in which they occur. To make oneself understood also indicates that fluent, confident speech is not required, as does the inclusion of “sympathetic interlocutor”. Student achievement can thus be measured in an assessment task that has been designed to evoke the sort of speech specified, in the sort of context specified.
Experienced teachers will recognise the level of language being targeted by this learning outcome. Key words such as “simple” and “highly familiar” can be used in other learning outcomes at this level. A set of specific and measurable learning outcomes with this sort of consistency support teaching and assessment and can provide useful feedback to students on their achievement.
Complete the following to continue to the next lesson:
- Answer the quiz based on the above content
