L3 English Assessment

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The summative assessment tasks for this course are split into 6 different sections, which together cover the areas you have been working on during their course:

• Reading
• Writing
• Speaking and listening
• Knowledge about language

Each of the tasks builds on the last, so you need to do them all. Read through the whole assessment before you begin, so you can ‘see where you are going’.
If you have any concerns/ questions, do ask your tutor(s) and prepare to discuss your ideas about the assessment with your peers in the summative assessment workshop.

Find three written texts about a topic that interests or is important to you (from any context: work, family, social life, hobbies, important issues, etc). The texts can be (for example): magazine articles, information leaflets, e-books, website pages or any other genre but they all need to be connected to your topic of choice.

Write an introduction that explains how the texts are connected. Now, summarise the key ideas in the texts (no more that 750 words). You may wish to include information about:

• Authors (if this is not known, say why you think the writer is anonymous – e.g. it is a group, it is a government paper, etc.).

• Purpose (what the author intended and who you think the intended audience is.)

• How the writer presents his / her / their points (think, for example, about layout / design, style as well as linguistic devices and the use of, for example, emotive language / facts, numbers, diagrams, etc).

• Whether you can detect any bias in the text.

Find a short video clip that includes someone speaking about your topic. You will need to reference the source of the clip clearly.
In writing or verbally (as an audio or video recording), describe the Speech Act you watched. Consider the following:

• Audience and purpose
• Structure of the speech / discussion
• Language used (e.g. formality)
• Non-verbal communication (e.g. body language, gestures, expressions) and para-linguistic features (e.g. pace and tone of voice)
• Textual references

Imagine you are planning a speech / presentation (for an audience of your choosing), or making a pod-/ vod-cast (audio or video recording) about your topic. (Just imagine this.)
Make a graphic organiser to represent all the points you would make / ideas you would share (research more widely if you need to). You can find information about graphic organisers on the following example sites:
http://www.fno.org/oct97/picture.html
http://www.everythingesl.net/inservices/graphic_organizers.php
http://www.eduplace.com/graphicorganizer/

Design a way to summarise and share information on your topic. You will share this summary with your tutor(s)/ peers remotely, so it is important that you balance clarity and design with enough information to inform people about your topic. Also think about your purpose (to inform? to persuade? to explain? etc), your audience (course peers) and the language / structure/ design of your summary ‘text’.
You can present your findings as a:

• poster / collage

• pod- / vod-cast (that can be shared electronically)

• slides (with a voice-over if you wish as there will not be an opportunity to give a presentation in person, i.e. to talk through the PPT slides)

• booklet

• or in any other way that will help people learn about the topic / persuade them of your point of view, etc.

We (your tutors/ peers) are here to help with any support you may need.

Design a way to collect feedback from people about your topic. Consider how you will find out if each person:

• learned anything new about the topic
• has something to share about the topic with you.

Collect this information from your peers, then collate, analyse and present their feedback, along with your own reflections, on the topic you have researched.

• Have you changed any ideas / added to your knowledge?
• Did you find other topics of interest along the way?
• Were some sources of information more useful than others?

You can write / say this in any way you wish (e.g. in bullet points, using images, as an audio / video recording – that can be shared electronically, or as a written text).
Unit 4, AC 2.1 – 3

Combine the outcomes of all your work. Your ‘assessment portfolio’ (electric or paper-based, which can include written / spoken / visual texts) should include*:

1. an index (you can use a range of methods if you aren’t making a booklet portfolio; rather you are collecting a set of e-documents, for example, your index could be a wiki or a hyperlinked web-page);
2. an introduction to your topic;
3. information about what other writers say on the topic and their different viewpoints / perspectives (this is your collection of summaries from Part 1);
4. an example of someone discussing / talking about the topic (the analysis of a speech act from Part 2);
5. key points about the topic (your graphic organiser from Part 3);
6. a summary of the topic (your presentation or a picture of it from Part 4); and
7. the feedback from your peers and your reflections on the topic (from Part 5).

*You should create titles for each of the sections that will help people understand the focus clearly.