Today was low level "adjustment test" day. After an arbitrary deadline at the school is reached, they retest everyone and place them in new levels according to their scores. Then we all get new schedules with new classes. The hope is that these classes are filled with students of roughly the same level which makes teaching as easy as possible. Even in the lowest levels of classes full of students where they have either just started to study English, or have only learned the basics, the students that do better start pulling away from those that don’t study as much or don’t have an ideal family situation. That is why these tests are good.
Since I am the speaking/pronunciation focused instructor at the school, it was my responsibility to come up with speaking tests for each level of class. I gave speaking tests to the lowest levels of students today. It consisted of five questions. Anyone able to answer all of them correctly with sentences got a perfect score. Anyone that had to guess or needed a little help got a lower score. Those students that didn’t have a clue I helped, taught, and gave them the lowest score.
Even going as fast as I possibly could, I couldn’t have conversations with twenty five students when the two classes were combined in a single hour. Simple questions, quick answers was what we needed. This isn’t a good testing situation. I hadn’t taught some of the students before, so they might have also been nervous. Anyway, there seemed to be a few questions I asked that were "stumpers". Here are some of the common wrong answers:
1. "How old are you?"
Answer: "I’m fine."
This is a programmed sort of response. I caught the kid when they were trying to guess what I was going to say instead of what I actually said.
2. "What’s your favorite fruit."
Answer: "Pizza" or "Kimchi stew!"
I made sure to pronounce "fruit" distinctly from "food", so they either didn’t listen or didn’t know.
3. "What are you wearing today?"
Answer: Blank stares or perhaps a color.
No one has taught the word "shorts" the these students. Really weird. When I would give examples of clothes in Korean, half the boys told me they were wearing dresses today. I guess none of the books at this school have a clothing unit, which was standard at all my other schools.
4. "How’s the weather?"
Answer: Uh…? Hot?
I gave them a hint by waving my hand next to my face. Then most of them got it after that.
5. "Who is your best friend?"
Answer: Either someone in the class, or nothing.
This is complicated, because friend in Korean means, "Someone of the same age". The younger kids in the class sometimes don’t have anyone the same age to technically call a "friend", but I didn’t limit it to the classroom.
6.What day is it today?"
Answer: A lucky guess.
I started bringing in the calendar and setting it on the desk to see if they would use it. If they knew the date but not the day the could check.
I think my test scaled nicely for the levels. The higher level students did much better than the lower, which means that whoever put them in classes last time did a good enough job. There were a few perfect scores, and a few surprises too.
I do the same thing for my classes tomorrow, but instead of making questions, they have to read something and summarize a page of writing into something I can understand. This seems like a tough challenge, but is what defines this level from the "low" kids. After that, I will quiz the upper level students on something they read so they have to find specific details. This is what separates the next tier of levels. It’s cool to see a well thought out testing procedure work as advertised after having so many bad experiences with meaningless level tests in the past.
