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[Ben H Nevis Jnr.]

Two problems here. Testing and grading. I'll try to weave the points through each other and see what results.....

I'm currently taking a third year university students for a "writing skills" class and I'm wondering how best to approach their examinations. I've been using an American book called Mosaic 3, whch concentrates more on paragraph unity, essay organisation, editing, planning etc, rather than the grammar/vocab.

I could just give them a list of topics, ask them to write an essay or two, spend the next week scratching my head trying to decipher the Chinglish and allocate a somewhat arbitary grade (based on writing ability, not grammar or vocab). However, last Friday I gave them a dry run of a multiple choice writing exam, in which they had to piece together fixed chunks of language, selectively edit "bad paragraphs", choose suitable topic sentences etc. Though it required more preparation, it was relatively easy to mark (3 hours for 30 papers), can be given back to them to self-correct under open book conditions, and will be easy to give feedback on.

The students begged to differ though. They told me it was the hardest exam they had ever sat (which gave me a faint glow of pride, I must confess) and that their idea of multiple choice was to have one and only one correct answer. Some of them did completely misunderstand the odd question, despite having it explained, but enough of the students got enough of the questions right to reassure me that I am doing the right thing. However, if doing the "right thing" means losing all the rapport I've built up over the last two months, is it worth it ?

I know the students are all used to scoring in the 90%'s, but this doesn't really seem helpful in diagnosing problems and giving a realistic assessment of their ability. I'd like to wean them onto harder exams similar to those in my own degree, where the passmark is nearer 50 % and a plus 80 % mark indicates excellence rather than competence (and which I can scale as necessary to suit the institutional needs). In this dry run, they scored roughly as follows....

80 and above : 2
70-79 : 10
60-69 : 9
50-59 : 7
40-50 : 2

...which suggests that my exam was pitched about right.
Just try telling that to the spanner wielding mutineers below deck....

Does anyone have any experience in trying recondition students into accepting lower overall scores ?
Does anyone have any experience in trying to design writing tests of this type ?
Failing this, can anyone recommend a useful webiste that does ?

Cheers, BHNJnr

[tarzaninchina]

I'm teaching a third-year English Writing course.

I've been basically doing my own thing and given all the experiences I've drawn on, I'm glowing in my own brilliance.

I've geared the course in two parts, one for each term. The first part I've gone over the writing process, descriptions (of all kinds), and vocab. Then there's lots of marking.

The second term will be mostly formatted assignments (e.g. letters).

My exams are coming up too and I'm the one who needs to both prepare and mark the exams. I've taken two approaches to this. First, after each lesson, develop a potential question (which can be edited closer to exam time). Second, use the coursework as practice for the exam.

I know what I'm doing because I've implemented my own stellar course (which I'll most likely post next summer).

As for grades, well, different styles of writing require different marking structures. Take, for example, a profile. Very standard responses, so the marking scheme is wildly different from others. Everything else, students will get the gist of your marking scheme because they'll know what "the grade you give them" means and they're good at figuring it out too.

I don't know what you've taught and I don't know how little marking you'll want to do, but there are ways. You're a teacher now, so don't look online for a cut-and-paste test like a bad student who buys an essay online. BTW, unless it's grammar or literature, multiple choice essays are not all that great for writing courses.

Test according to the goals of the course plus anything you're taught in addition to that. Just remember to keep a lesson diary or something similar in case students come up alongside the dean and accuse you of not teaching something on the exam. Big problem, easily minimized.

[badtyndale]

I don't think it's entirely possible (or even desirable) to divorce grammar and vocabulary from any of the main English language learning areas. However, it is possible to award grades based upon the various aspects of a written text that would be considered as a whole at a UK university, for example. These aspects may include: organisation and structure; general presentation and appropriateness of style; task achievement and criticism. Taken together with grammar and vocabulary you could devise a marking scheme (perhaps similar to IELTS) in each area and then average out a final mark.

For UK undergraduates the pass mark is 40% and this is a difficult concept to try to get across. I don't pretend to know how to reconcile this one other than to suggest some further mathematical manipulation that brings the results in line with the general scheme of things in the host institution. Nevertheless, I feel it only prudent to point out that such differences do exist, especially if the students may be planning overseas study.

If you're having to decipher Chinglish that doesn't bode well. I wouldn't expect UK professors to even try.

[latefordinner]

Thanks, BHN jr, for starting an interesting thread!
When I first read,

[tarzaninchina]

Last year, at the college I'm at now, the previous foreign teachers had to fail about 50% of their students! The admin lowered that to about 20%. Then they asked the teachers to do a make-up. The teachers did, but two days before the make-up, the admin taught them (select students who had bribed them) the answers!

Likewise in my previous private school I taught at where teachers would submit the grades, but not sign the marking sheets. The school would alter the grades as they saw fit, which meant higher grades to boost the school's rep, unless they really wanted a kid gone.

There's a heavy load of problems about getting the admin to recognize the grades you give, but I will try my darndest to do that successfully this year.

Have any of you received a bribe or gift a little too close to a test or exam?

[Old Dog]

It really is good to read your accounts of the thought and trouble so many of you go to to teach really well and to effect some improvement in the English levels of your students. And maybe the better thing is that you seem to be doing these things because you believe they are important, not because they might score you brownie points with greater powers than you, be they the students, the Chinese teachers or the Admin.

There is not a jaded bone in my body despite the years here but I do take certain Chinese realities into account in my work. Maybe you can change them in ways I have never tried to - or, maybe, the Chinese teachers will perform some sort of charade of accommodating your suggestions. God only knows.

I teach here only in Middle Schools because that's where my experience has been and that's, I guess, where my forte lies. So I can't comment at all on what is happening in Universities - except that I do know that my thousands of former students all expect to pass in everything throughout their university careers and to pass with great effort if at a good university and to pass with no effort at a low-grade university.

As for middle schools, I've gone to enormous lengths to provide complete sets of results for each student in the classes I teach - that's 1290 with this year's enrolment. But no one really wants them. They used to make a small show of asking and I'd give them a simple result. Then, in this school, I spread my wings and gave an overall result based on rather more systematic assessment throughout the term. But, having done that, no one wanted the results when I had finished. I sat on them, waiting for someone to ask for them but the call never came.

Nevertheless, I continue to make a brave show of assessment knowing that whatever assessment I do is for my own information and not for any final report to parents. But the brave show has an effect universally. If there's a mark attached to whatever is being done, then greater effort is put in. I assess now for my own information and for "psychological effect". I have a yellow-covered folder which I place on my desk with a modest flourish at the beginning of each lesson!

My first experience of Chinese assessment was my most enlightening. I attended the Patriotic Singing Contest - where else but in Hubei! Each class - this was a Teachers' College - was obliged to present a patriotic song. Some of the efforts were appalling - deliberate, I might add, since this was the student "pay back" to the College for the compulsion - but, appalling though the efforts were, I saw the judges entering scores of 9.23, 9.41, 9.67. Then I realized that for face, every score was preceded by 9. How much better 9.23 sounds than 23/100!

So if you want a pass mark of 50%, then maybe you can express this as 9.5 - and everyone will know what it means, everyone will have face (however undeserved).

To digress - As for the "pay back", you can see this in almost every Chinese meeting you attend. They are generally compulsory. But there's a payback. No one listens. Everyone talks - and the speaker drones on ( or emotes widly when in pariotic mode) regardless. A friend once explained it this way, "They can make us attend to show their power. But they can't make us listen so we talk to show ours."

[Roger]

Exams and tests in China are token exercises to bring students in line with their teachers' intentions, but it actually works the other way around. Students loathe and fear them but they have the upper hand in the matter.

My first school gave us no guidelines on how to test our students, so I asked a senior teacher.
He answered that what mattered the most was how the CLASS as one body fared rather than how individual students did during those exams and tests. To me, this was a revealing answer.
When being prodded, he went on to say any grading method was acceptable; if students failed they would geo