Assessment 4: Roleplaying (2 Weeks)

 Assalamualaikum all..

This post will be a summary of 2-week's worth of class since all we have been doing during this time was preparing for the role play assessment, and then acting it out in front of the class. For this assessment, students are asked to be in pairs and each pair is given a scenario that they have to play out. The main objective of this assessment is to see students applying basic communication skills while conversing, such as greeting one another, saying sorry/ thank you, and also asking WH questions.

Sadly, this assessment had to be repeated, because students failed to do their roleplay properly the first time around. For roleplays, students are supposed to be memorizing the script and then act it out. To make the task easier for students, I allowed them to submit a video of their actions, rather than make them roleplay live during class. By doing this, I thought that students will be able to edit their video better, and could read the scripts off camera, before actually recording it. 3 weeks were given and regretfully, not a single group did well. 

Here's the result of my SWOT analysis for the past 2 weeks;

STRENGTH: During the preparation, students were able to identify the appropriate expressions for conversing with one another in a formal context. They also understood how to use WH questions in various situations, formal, and informal contexts. This makes it easier for me to proceed with explaining how the assessment is going to be carried out.

WEAKNESS: The main issue with their first roleplay (via video) was that they were not ACTING, but were READING scripts instead. The thing is, I can clearly see them holding their scripts in the videos, and even for those who were able to hide their scripts, their facial expressions and voice projections were very robotic, signifying that they were reading instead of just talking normally during the roleplay. This was very disappointing because they clearly made the video last minute, and almost all groups submitted it way after the deadline. As I've mentioned in my previous post, students' discipline is seriously getting out of hand because they are going as far as not following the deadline of assessments. When I asked other teachers' points of view, it was surprising to discover that they actually did not set a deadline. Instead, students were only expected to settle the assessment before the semester ends. So clearly, there's something wrong here.

OPPORTUNITIES: Upon knowing that other classes did not set a deadline, it was an opportunity for my student to be given a second chance since I decided that instead of accepting their videos (which are quite disappointing to watch), they are now allowed to role play live during class. Hearing this, students were very thankful because based on the marks that I had initially given them, their average was actually 60%. So, this is a way for them to improve themselves and get better results.

THREAT: The timetable for my classes are quite worrisome when it is directly after workshop classes. Being that during workshops, students have to use their physical strenth to handle machinery, as soon as they enter my theory class, most of them would be worn out, especially for the evening classes. Students' tiredness affects their focus during my class, which in exchange causes me to have to repeat instructions multiple times to get students to understand what I expect from them.

In summary, this week has it's own ups and downs, and hopefully, it will get better with time.

Till then, good bye readers!