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gaijinalways
Joined: 29 Nov 2005
Posts: 2279
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 Posted: Sun Mar 23, 2008 10:33 am Post subject: |
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| This seems to be a common problem. One solution is try to find places that pass students that do the work and deserve the grade that they get. I had a few students that were given a make up exam (though they took the exam and failed not because of a final exam score, but rather sleeping through many classes), which I designed and graded. Did I want to fail them again? Yes, but it's pointless. In this case the university wants them to pass this mandatory class, so I did what was asked of me. |
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blackmagicABC
Joined: 03 Mar 2008
Posts: 68
Location: Taipei
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| Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 6:12 am Post subject: |
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I agree mostly with what 11:59 posted.
The ability to produce correct English in speaking lacks behind the ability to understand it in reading or listening texts. If the student can correctly answer a question like:
"Yesterday was Wednesday and it was Peter's birthday. He went to the circus. He usually goes to the park on Wednesday and plays baseball with his friends"
What did Peter do on Wednesday?"
then they probably understand what "went" implies and means.
The other part of the syllabus is that the students need to grow their vocabulary. If a student fails the grammar part of the test but passes the vocabulary part then at least they have learned something.
Whether they should be moved up or not is really not that easy. Are they going to hinder the learning of other students by moving up, then don't. Are they so far behind that they can not catch up? Again don't.
I have my own school and in the past 2 years (since we opened) I have held back 5 students. We have 60 students. For me the quality of what we do is more important than the money we make. I have never had a problem with a student quitting because we held them back. They get a discount on the classes they have to attend again and if they threaten to quit I say "go ahead". They never do or at least until now they haven't yet. |
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Justin Trullinger
Joined: 28 Jan 2005
Posts: 3110
Location: Seoul, South Korea and Myanmar for a bit
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| Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 7:41 pm Post subject: |
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Orders of aquisition are fascinating, you language nerds.  I haven't got my Masters quite yet, but if you read a lot...
I think the converse of this:
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| Language acquisition has little to do with the syllabus. Don't expect production to follow the syllabus. |
should be that the sylabus can follow the likely order of aquisition. (Orders of aquisition are quite constant, and reasonably well researched- a good course designer or textbook writer should be aware of them, and try not to present language in orders that violate them.)
But the real point of this thread is, if they go up when they shouldn't. And a good teacher won't make this determination solely based on some pre-determined idea of what they should know at a certain level, but usually in comparison with other students.
If you have a class where half the students say "yesterday I go shopping," and the other half uses "went," and where the same half omits the third person "s" while the other half uses it, you've got somebody there who shouldn't be, imo.
If there is an overwhelming difference between students who are "passing" the same level, it can't just be a question of aquisition not following the sylabus. Aquisition must be following the same path it always does, and some students are (often much) further down that path than others.
And that sucks- totally irresponsible of the school, but maybe not much the teacher can do.
Best,
Justin
PS- but if any of you ever want to have a cool "e-discussion" about the aquisition of non-meaning bearing structures in the English language...nerds are us! |
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judyandherhorse
Joined: 13 Dec 2006
Posts: 36
Location: Australia
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| Posted: Fri Apr 11, 2008 2:17 pm Post subject: |
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I taught at a school that did this VERY often ( won't mention any names, but it was a big-name school...)
If there were too many students in a class, and not enough in another, we would be "asked" to put students up or down..according to the needs of the director.
Dodgy, in my opinion.
Needless to say, I didn't stay with them for very long... |
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