Teacher Discussion Forums

Can anyone inform me or direct me to a source about the use of practice tests? I am particularly interested when a practice test is given before the final test but contains exactly the same format with a few changes in wording.

Is this OK teaching practice or just loading ths bases, so to speak?
My gut feeling is that it isn't good practice.

clydie wrote:Can anyone inform me or direct me to a source about the use of practice tests? I am particularly interested when a practice test is given before the final test but contains exactly the same format with a few changes in wording.

Is this OK teaching practice or just loading ths bases, so to speak?
My gut feeling is that it isn't good practice.

I think practice tests that use the same format are fine, but if only a few changes in wording, it is bad.

I think it is great to use practice tests in a situation where the test is everything. It gives the student a chance to learn the format and the tricks = how to time themselves, how to set up paragraphs that will get them the best marks and so on. We always used last years tests so we didn't have to recreate the wheel and then tried to guess what topics would be on the test this year because they usually followed hot topics like "cell phones" (when that was a hot topic).