Teachers spend much of their time on assessment, yet many higher education teachers have received minimal guidance on assessment design and marking. This means assessment can often be a source of stress and frustration. Offering a concise overview of assessment theory and practice, this guide provides teachers with the help they need. In education, theory and practice are often poorly linked. In this guide, Teresa McConlogue presents theoretical ideas and research findings and links them to practice. She considers recent theoretical work on feedback and suggests ways of developing evaluative judgment. Throughout the book, teachers are encouraged to examine their practice critically, and there are ideas for small-scale educational investigations, involving teachers, their colleagues, and students, such as using the Assessment Review Questionnaire to adapt assessments. This guide explores the concept of academic standards and proposes methods of co-constructing shared standards within a teaching team and with students through calibration activities.
 

More than a mode of gathering information about the past, oral history has become an international movement. Historians, folklorists, and other educational and religious groups now recognize the importance of preserving the recollections of people about the past. The recorded memories of famous and common folk alike provide a vital complement to textbook history, bringing the past to life through the stories of those who lived it.

Oral History is designed to introduce teachers, students, and interested individuals to the techniques, problems, and pleasures of collecting oral history. The authors, themselves experienced educators, examine the uses of oral history in the classroom, looking at a wide range of projects that have been attempted and focusing on those that have succeeded best.

Besides suggesting many possible projects, they discuss the necessary hardware and its use: recording equipment and procedures, interview outlines and preliminary research, photography and note-taking in the field, transcription and storage of information, legal forms, and more. For the teacher, the authors offer helpful advice on training students to be sensitive interviewers in both formal and informal situations.

How can oral histories collected in the classroom be put to use? The authors discuss their uses within the curriculum; in projects such as oral history archives, publications such as the popular Foxfire books, and other media productions; and in researching current community problems. Useful appendixes survey a variety of reference tools for the oral historian and describe in detail how a Foxfire-concept magazine may be developed.

This guide clearly and succinctly presents the basic tenets of teaching foreign languages specifically for Arabic teachers. Consolidating findings from second language acquisition (SLA) research and applied linguistics, it covers designing curricula, theory and methods, goals, testing, and research, and intersperses practical information with background literature in order to help teachers improve their teaching of Arabic as a foreign language (TAFL).

Karin C. Ryding, a well-regarded scholar of Arabic linguistics and former president of the American Association of Teachers of Arabic, frames the discussion with SLA literature and suggests practical and effective ways of helping students learn. Ryding discusses issues at the core of Arabic teaching effectiveness and the achievement of communicative competence, such as the teaching of pronunciation, speaking, reading, listening, and writing; teaching mixed-level classes; creative classroom organization; corrective feedback; and use of activities and exercises, with plenty of examples from Arabic and tips for teachers. She also covers materials development and proficiency testing, providing study questions and recommended readings for each chapter.

This guide, which can be used as a textbook, is the first of its kind aimed specifically at TAFL, and should be of interest to Arabic instructors-in-training, academics, graduate students, linguists, department chairs, language coordinators, and teacher trainers. It also serves as a resource for teachers of other less commonly taught languages (LCTLs), who struggle with similar issues.