Job Discussion Forums

[Roger]

[vikdk]

[Everest]

Consider yourselves lucky.

I've just done my January oral english tests and upon asking for grading guidelines was told to give everyone an A or a B.

[clarrie]

A manager of a 'language program' once said to me that all but two of his students received very high results on their spoken assessments and the couple that didn't do well were going to be assessed again and they were working hard to achieve favourable results. He said the school was very happy with his work and dedication and the results. I put it to him that the results seemed a little ... 'artificial' and grading seemed to be completely up to him; in other words, he could make them whatever he wanted them to be.

Certainly his results were at odds with our program's results where about 30 students failed either because of non-attendance in the first place or a reluctance to be assessed.

The point of this? If you're assessing for local conditions, pass 'em all. Who cares? If you are responsible to higher/legitimate authorities and have established assessment criteria, fail them with 'evidence'!

[Roger]

The point you made, clarrie, namely to pass students no matter their performance has been made to me time and again. I hold that if we are to be taken seriously we should impose our own standards and not succumb to local pressure that is applied only so that the powers-that-be can maintain their face.
It would be more honest to dispense with these mock exams, and in fact from a pedagogical point of view, doing away with exams would benefit everyone.
We are given total, or near-total, freedom in how we organise our classes, and that's fine up to a certain point; I would prefer to know objectives and be given well-defined goals so that I can conform, and make my students conform and achieve those goals.

But we are not given any goal at all, which further shows that our presence is a token kowtow to the foreign language being taught.

I once taught English Literature; I felt at that time I had a clearly-defined objective before me since I was given a relatively useful textbook and my students were all English majors (at a normal college).
I soon found out some of my more dedicated students did very well and developed analytical skills; the vast majority of their classmates were slackers, though, and when I tightened the screws they complained, and the principal came down on me for being "too strict" with them.

I was then told that these future English teachers didn't needf to understand a novel or read between the lines of a poem; they only needed to know the best, second best and third-best authors of every recent century by name.

The exam is now over, and to my own surprise I had 4 students in over 400 that scored 100 points out of 100 - zero mistakes. There were about ten that scored well below 60, and the vast majority managed to get 70 to 90 points.
But I also found a handful of opportunists who, having been to exam 1, took the liberty of skipping exam No. 2, fully knowing that this would lead to some consequences or other.
I called up their names and had a discussion with them; one said she had been to a job interview; one guy said "I forgot"... and a few others had no ready explanation.
I had to give themn a last chance...because if I don't do that they can always complain how "unfair" this FT is!

[Don McChesney]

Oral English. I believe this is to test their conversational skills, not what they can recite from a learned text like a song or poem. Sentence construction, grammar, vocab, flow and pronunciation. I teach them what I feel they need, then test them on what I have taught, using random questions or 'tell me about ... '
The good ones do well, the bad ones fail, some miserably.
Will I retest them? Yes. I test to the same standard as last time. Usually they do a little better because they know they have to try harder.
If they fail, they fail. Full stop. I know the admin probably 'adjusts' my results, but I won't compromise my position.
I want to know what is their language competence, not what is on a piece of paper.