Yesterday, we had our first chapter test of this semester, and I thought it was disappointingly easy. The reason I'm taking the class is because I need structure and deadlines to do my best work. Sitting at home with all the time in the world does not result in much...or provide any sense of accomplishment. Besides, (she says rationalizing away her lack of self-discipline), language is a social endeavor.
When I trained to be a teacher, test-making was one of my favorite activities. I was taught that a test should measure the concrete objectives of the course. We would identify these objectives, create a test to measure them, and then create the activities to teach our objectives. Good tests focused on the significant points. Good test questions did not trick the students. The majority of the students should do well on the test (80% or better). If not, then either the teacher had failed to teach the objectives, or the test had failed to test them.
When I taught in Japan, I learned, as Kurt as pointed out, the point of tests in Japan seems to be to weed out people. No one, it seems, is expected to get 100 per cent. If they do, the test is too easy. To pass our high school entrance examination, you had to get at least 35 per cent. Most of my fellow Japanese teachers felt that any grade between 35 and 75 was good. In American schools. 60-100 per cent is passing and 80-100 per cent is good.
I was lectured for giving my students high marks, for making my tests too easy. My goal was to have the students do well, to learn the material I had set (to learn English). I tested them on what I was teaching them. If they learned the material, they did well. No trick questions!
So why am I complaining that the test I took yesterday was too easy? Because it didn't test the material we learned very comprehensively. It didn't test all the vocabulary we had learned. It didn't force us to write the 25 new kanji we learned. It tested some particles, but no conjugation (and we learned two new tenses this chapter). After I took the test, I had no clear sense of what I had learned and what still needs more study. My J-type personality definitely needs more structure than this.
Posted by M Sinclair Stevens
February 13, 2003
Comments
I'm with you, M -- I need testing to provide structure and incentive and some sort of goal in which to pursue my language learning. My current Japanese class has no testing whatsoever, and frankly the homework they give is a joke too. I think, in an effort to be too progressive, or at least, no so Japanese, they've swung too far to the other side. For example, every chapter we study 6 or so kanji (for starters, not nearly enough)....but we are never quizzed on these, and I never bother to study them, with everything else going on. When I studied Japanese in San Francisco, I had a kanji quiz every week, and had to know both how to read and write the given kanji for that week. You can bet your bottom patootie I knew those kanji inside and out, in anticipation of that quiz.
Comment by: Kurt. Posted February 13, 2003 10:29 PM.
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On the other hand, maybe I want a test to be hard so that there is a sense of accomplishment in overcoming its challenges.