Part I
I have, at the school's insistence,
begun to do oral English exams for all the students. Today I have
done one hundred and eighty five exams in two hundred and forty
minutes which includes the admin time of writing down th names and
grades.
My multiple choice question to you is
this.
Do you think this exercise
a) will yield a great deal of useful
information about the students' levels and progress
b)will yield some data that will
require careful and detailed analysis
c) will yield only a little meaningful
data but nevertheless data that can inform and guide future lessons
or
d) will yield absolutely no data at all
and is a pointless waste of the two lessons per class that it is
taking up, and is only being done so that school can say that it has
been done.
Yes. d) was my answer too.
Part II
Another hundred or so tested today in
the continuing exercise in futility. I did get one laugh though as I
relentlessly dumbed-down the questions for the weakest students.
Asking one student "What is your favourite animal?" he
managed to latch onto the word "favourite" and plucked a
word that he thought might fit from his limited vocabulary and
answered "water melon".
On the downside In have rarely felt so
frustrated at doing pointless tasks in my life as I have felt this
week and I'm only about a third of the way through it.
Sixty more tomorrow, then a week off
for a Christmas lesson then the other half of the students in the
week after Christmas and the classes I missed on Monday in the last
of my teaching weeks this term
Part III
And now the School has cancelled the
Monday and Tuesday classes in the week I was going to do exams
(couldn't do them this week as they were cancelled too!) which means
that those classes will have to do their exam next week and will not
have the fun and games Christmas lesson the other classes are having.
Part IV
Honesty isn't always good for the ego.
During one of the oral exams today I asked a girl, "What is your
favourite lesson?" and she answered "I like your lesson'"
As I had done with every other student that I asked this question I
followed up with "Why?" and was told "Because you
don't give us homework."
