Event

Okayama JALT May Meeting: (1) Writing and leveling graded materials; (2) Effects of rater training on peer assessment

Saturday, May 11th, 2019, 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

Speaker: (1) Rob Waring (NDSU); (2) David Townsend (Shujitsu University)

Writing and leveling graded materials
Rob Waring
I will explain how a series of graded readers comes into being from the initial concept stage though series formulation, author selection, story development, production, series manufacturing and release. I will give examples from my experience writing/developing six GR series. Some examples will also be given of how stories are selected and what problems authors and publishers face marketing books. Emphasis will be put on publishers' compliance policies to suit certain markets. The talk will discuss how to determine levels and lengths of books and how many are needed at each level as well as making sure each book and level stay within linguistic boundaries. Finally, advice will be given to anyone considering writing their own materials.

Effects of rater training on peer assessment
David Townsend
I will detail the results of a follow-up study examining 2nd-year university students' peer assessments of classmates' oral presentations. The original study calculated inter-rater reliability of the peer assessments and found them only fairly reliable. While different theories were considered to improve inter-rater reliability, one variable that had a potential impact was time spent on rater training. For the follow-up study three years of data were collected in which the amount of rater training time was doubled. While there was some improvement to inter-rater reliability of peer assessments, it was not as much as expected. Results of the study will be provided as well as some theories as to why more significant improvements were not made.

Organization: Okayama Chapter of the Japan Association for Language Teaching (Okayama JALT)

Cost: JALT Members: free
Non-members: 1,000 yen

Venue: Notre Dame Seishin University

Location: Okayama City, Okayama Prefecture, Japan

Contact Okayama JALT

Scott Gardner