Listening comprehension in ordinary life does not consist of true-false statements or multiple choice alternatives. So the whole process of testing is a bit artificial. But these two exam types come in handy because the answers are so easy to check and mark. Checking can even be done by a special machine.
Open-ended questions are closer to real-life situations. If the teachers are provided with a set of sample answers, marking becomes much faster and reliable.
Tips for listening comprehension in exams
Listening comprehension exams can be very stressful. However, we can make the situation much more comfortable if we teach our students some strategies or give tips how to deal with the situation.
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Every lesson means rehearsing for the real-life ‘test’ far in the future. Eliminate FEAR in talking!
How to get started in testing
It is wise to practice speaking a lot in pairs and groups before you even think about testing.
Practise pronunciation and reading aloud in every lesson so that the students feel confident about their pronunciation.
Never correct the pupils/students when they are speaking in pairs or groups unless they ask you to. If you do, they will stop talking due to fear of making mistakes and, even worse, may feel humiliated.
Give general feedback and comments to the whole class after the practice sessions. Use assessment for learning to find the strengths and weaknesses of the class.
Make progress with students with small, enjoyable, even humorous and relaxing steps. Rely on results emerging after a few months.
Make the students come in front of the class: in pairs or groups – each one saying something for 5 seconds at least, later on 10 – 30 seconds, a minute, five minutes – just to use English and allow them to have a note with key words or ideas. Make it always a positive experience!
Remember that coming in front of the whole class may be scary and it needs to be a positive experience from the very beginning.
Practice listening skills too since the pupils are supposed to respond to what the others say. Teach appropriate phrases of response, too.
VITAL: Eliminate fear from practice and test situations – first evaluate the pupils/students in lessons and in other situations. Then give them individual feedback to encourage them to improve in speaking. Speaking skills should be part of the evaluation and noted in giving grades.
Agree on the criteria to be used in assessment. In elementary classes it has to be very simple but in senior high/sixth form you can you the official final exam criteria. Each country has its own criteria but the European Framework is widely accepted. It has skill levels from A1, A2 B1, B2, C1 to the highest native level C2. Many employers use this scaling.
Start with self and peer evaluation in class and encourage the students to use their phones for recording at home too. Allow them to listen to themselves while evaluating themselves. The same if they are assessing other students. Evaluating oneself and others is highly motivating.
Personal teacher–pupil feedback sessions before or after a test are most valuable: ask for the student’s self-evaluation first and then give positive feedback. Encourage, look at the criteria and have gentle reference to challenges. Learning to speak a foreign language is a long process and everybody wants to improve their skills in speaking.
The time for official oral tests/evaluation comes later on. When that time comes, use good and bad examples to give the students an idea of what is required of them. The evaluation criteria has to be explained and opened up at the same time.
The real test in speaking takes place abroad. In Venice, Italy, for example.
Testing individuals
Depending on the age of the pupils (6 – 15), they
can send me a 30-second or a minute-long phone-recorded speech or
I can have a two-to-five minute face to face discussion with them (I ask them one of the 5 – 10 questions given in advance and they can practise their answers at home and finally I ask them a ‘surprise’ question on a topic we had earlier in class)
for senior high students I use modified final exams
Testing groups
Groups can easily be evaluated while they are discussing in class. It makes sense to tell the groups in advance that they will be evaluated in order to encourage them to practise at home to get the best possible result. However, the students need to be given some advice.
Do not try to dominate the discussion. Show your excellence in drawing the quiet ones into the discussion by asking them questions or comments.
Use phrases that indicate you agree, disagree with the speaker. Or maybe you did not get the point or want to have justifications for an argument. So: ‘I disagree with you because …’. I fully agree with you but …’ ‘I’m sorry I missed your point.’ ‘Sorry, I did not get that’ ‘I’m not sure what you mean. Can you give us an example.’ etc.
Fight for your space and indicate you want to say your opinion.
Be ready to take the group feedback constructively and the feedback your teacher gives to you personally.
Modelling a group oral for an advanced class
In this activity we model the assessment of different types of speaking activities.
The class is divided into groups of four. Preparation time (10 min).
Each group is given a task of their own.
Each group member will receive a number (1-4).
One group at a time will discuss fro 10 min (total time 40 min all groups)
The others will observe and assess the performance of the given number using the given criteria. Write the number of the student you observe on the handout.
Feedback is given in groups (1s, 2s, 3s, 4s).
In brief, each group carries out a different speaking activity.The other groups observe and assess the activities.
Choose your topic. The order of presentations is random.
Group 1 Problem solving: You work for the Ministry of Tourism planning a holiday resort. You need to decide which facilities to have there. You can choose the place for the resort yourselves.
Group 2 Debate on the effect of tourism in your country. The argument: Tourism is good for our economy. Two of you are for the idea and two against (no matter what you really think about the matter).
Group 3 One of you is the tourist guide with his/her tourist group in a place of your choice. The guide describes the place and the tourists are making questions and comments. They also compare the place and habits to their own country/region.
Group 4 A magazine reporter is interviewing participants of the ‘Tour of Central Europe’ and their experiences in different countries. Each one of you has to say their opinion about the countries in question.
Group 5 A group of teachers are deciding where to go on a class trip with a class that all of them teach. They are also discussing what things need to be taken account of in the planning.
The criteria for group discussions are similar to the criteria we had for writing but now we have also interaction and pronunciation to be assessed.
Let’s be honest. Nobody likes exams. Teachers do not like to write or mark them and students don’t like to study for them. The whole exam situation is full of stress and you feel miserable if you get a bad grade. But …
OK, I admit it. I am being a bit provocative. Evaluation and assessment of students has always been there and will never disappear. So we had better accept it and see how communicative language teaching has drastically changed our views in this area of teaching.
Six things about assessment are vital for CLT teachers:
To understand the difference between Assessment of Learning (AoL) = official exams and test and Assessment for Learning (AfL) = all measures that enhance learning (See the next article ‘Assessment of and for learning’)
To know how to use the tools for Assessment for Learning in class. (See AfL Tools 1 – 4 and AfL Tools 5 – 6 in the next two articles for more information)
Due to practical reasons summative testing (AoL) will never disappear but we can make these situations less stressful.
We need to find and use easy and quick ways to test all language skills reliably. In many countries some language skills are not tested at all. ‘Not tested’ often means ‘not taught’ either.
In CLT we spend some time in analysing and applying the official national criteria for each language skill area. The students need to understand what is required from them and it is best learnt if they assess themselves and the work of others and get feedback on how when they succeed in doing it.
Studying for exams is a skill of its own and how it is done depends on the students’ style of learning. In the 1990s CLT teachers started using practice exams to reduce exam stress among their students. Over the last 15 years we have also paid attention to exam strategies:what the students ought to do in exam situations if they face a problem and how the teachers can make the returning of the exams a learning situation.
N.B. Exam strategies are dealt with in separate articles under the skill headings. Direct links are provided here for you.
The other articles in this unit, under heading ‘Assessment’ are:
Assessment
Assessment of and for learning
How to apply AfL in class, Tools 1-4
AfL, observation with criteria, self-assessment, Tools 5-6
AfL, giving constructive feedback, traps and samples
Development discussions, feedback forms
Positive feedback – comments and phrases
The main point in AfL is that the student realize they can and should affect their own learning and results. And that the teachers are there to assist them.
An example of an AfL style discussion at school
Me: “Which grade do you want in scale 4 – 10?”
” Student: “Which grade? What do you mean? 10, of course.”
Me: “But your grade is 7 at present. Is 10 a realistic goal?”
St: “Well, maybe not. But I’d like to have 9 out of ten. I have not tried very hard but I think I can do it.”
Me: “Ok, if that is what you want, I can help you. What are your strongest skill areas? Listening, writing or what?”
St: “Listening, definitely, and vocabulary. But I always get lousy points for my essays and grammar tests.”
Me: “Ok, let’s think about them first. What do you think you should do to improve in them?”
St: “I have no idea. Last week you talked about learning styles and strategies but I had a headache and I did not get it really. Do you have the handout with you? Maybe I should try out something in it.”
It is important the answers come from the students themselves. This way they become committed to solving the issues themselves.
If the purpose of school is to develop the students’ personalities as a whole, not just fill them with knowledge, traditional assessment (AoL) is not very effective. That is why AfL and CLT methods are needed even if they may never show in school reports.
It may be interesting and vital to note at this point that … we teachers need to change the way we think about student evaluation and assessment: CLT principles recommend reducing drastically the time we talk to the whole class and use most of the lesson in observing and guiding indivuduals, pairs or groups.
The ideas above should remind us that our job is mainly to facilitate learning, not to focus on exam results.
Even if I think we teachers are assisting our students more than assessing them in lessons, I decided to stick to the term ‘Assessment for Learning’ because it is so established. The original term could have beeen ‘Assistance for Learning’ …
The point in the articles under ‘Assessment’ is to show
that applying AfL principles does not mean extra work for the teacher but are a natural part of any CLT lesson
that traditional exams cannot be totally avoided but the focus should be turned to the learning process in an encouraging atmosphere
that it is not really the grades achieved that matter in life but what is truly learnt: we are looking for the ability to apply language skills and knowledge
that continuous follow-up of learning with appropriate feedback is often more important than final grades in learning; not by stalking and harrassing the students but by boosting their self-esteem genuinely
that the most important tool for Assessment for Learning is getting to know each individual by observing them and talking to them: knowing which string to pull with each person
that observations lead to teachers having individual discussions with their students and thus the relationships become much more emphatic
that it is not only the teacher who can assess the students since it can be done by their peers and by themselves as long as they know the criteria and what to observe in each other’s activities
that we need totake off the pressure from testing; a thing that can be done by offering individual help, teaching how to learn more effectively, practising for the exams and getting feedback from them as well as doing evaluation by other means than summative exams
that the students have to realize all our AfL efforts aim at them learning more and that we are on their side and truly try to help them
that many of the important things we learn at school are not actually tested at all but are skills needed in life later on: e.g. social skills such as group/pair work and emotional intelligence, skill to learn new things independently, critical thinking and presentation skills (= 21st century skills)
that using AfL and continuous assessment does not mean one exam after another but it means letting the student know where he/she stands at the moment and supporting their growth and self-esteem
So why do we have to assess or evaluate pupils and students?
For four reasons + the latest CLT one, number 5: to enhance learning
1 Firstly, we are human and we often do not try our best if we are not forced to do something useful. In an ideal situation the motivation to learn is internal, not set by an outsider psychological reason
2 Secondly, parents are accustomed to exam results and grades being good indicators on how well their kids are doing at school. parents’ role
3 Thirdly, school administrators and authorities are tied by law to follow up the progress of the students. requirements set by law
4 Fourthly, the admission of students to other schools and higher education is often based partially or totally on the grades given at school and/or the final examination. admissions to further education
5 Fifthly, the CLT reason: The students, teachers and all people involved need to know how the students are making progress from the very beginning of a course and how the students’ learning process can be improved.
A photo of Finnish students taking a senior high ‘matriculation’ exam, which corresponds to the English A-level exams taken at the at of 18 or 19. More and more exams are done on a computer with no access to the internet or any other sources. The questions often force the students to apply their knowledge rather than test merely knowledge as such.
There is no hope of improving reading skills until the reasons for NOT UNDERSTANDING the text are identified by the students themselves and they commit themselves to overcome the problems.
It is essential for teachers to realize that the process of decoding someone else’s messages is not the same with everybody. We are all different and depending on our background and style of learning we process information differently. Our problems in reading may also vary drastically.
Just like listening, reading skill is hard to teach because we have no control of the process in the reader’s mind. Still, we can affect the process indirectly by giving advice and guidance. The general CLT principle which is in favour of a great amount of input resulting in good results needs to be supported by teaching strategies on how to prepare for reading comprehension exams and how we can learn from our mistakes in taking exams.
If you are teaching senior high students, I suggest you go through the whole process once with your students and then get feedback from them if it turned out to be worth the time spent on it.
Strategies are dealt with the students before an exam
You, the teacher, study how the returning of the exam is to be arranged
Arrange a student-centred lesson to return the exam
Show the students the ‘heureka’ type of comments to be used
Strategies / tips for students in a reading comprehension exam
Let’s have a look at some strategies that are useful when students take a reading comprehension exam. Some of them are actually the same as in listening exams. Still, learning to apply the strategies does not take place over night. It also requires some practice.
Throwing the students one text or exam after another and assuming that massive input will automatically improve reading skill does not necessarily lead to success with everybody. It is better to teach the students how they should approach an ordinary or an exam text.
Relax your body. Take a couple of deep breaths! It will calm your nerves. Being nervous won’t help you.
Read the whole text through at first but do not stop even if you do not understand the text perfectly. This way you will have a better idea about the topic and structure of the text.
If the logic of the text is good, you can easily spot the main ideas and sentences. The rest of the text is justifications of the arguments or examples.
Start working on the questions only if you read the whole text first. Many ideas open up if you know the exact topic and the perspective of the writer.
Once you understand the topic and the questions, you can guess many things they talk about. If you use common sense and your background knowledge on the topic you may find it helpful.
Read the questions carefully and focus only on them.
Most of the information in the text is not needed. It may be irrelevant.
Don’t panic if you see new words. Try to guess what they mean. Very often you need not know the meaning of new words at all.
Be aware and watch out for extreme words like ‘never’ ‘only’ ‘always’ ‘anyone’. They are often too strong.
Link ideas that have the same meaning. For example: If the idea in the text is expressed “He used to go fishing on Saturdays and Sundays.” the same idea is in the answer booklet as “He was in the habit of catching salmon and trout at weekends.”
So the most common technique is just to express the same idea in other words.
If your exam consists of multiple choice tasks, use elimination technique. For example:Choice A was not talked about at all, Choice Bis wrong because they said ’everybody’ which is not true, Choice D is wrong because ‘chance’ means different from ‘change’… SO the right answer has to be Choice C. You have now eliminated the wrong answers and you will answer C (even if you may not know exactly why).
Strategic tips for the teacher about returning an exam
Have an exam for the students and when you return it devote a whole lesson to go through the exam in detail, every question and every alternative. I explain the process in detail in the next article.
Demonstrate with the first two questions how the analysis is done and then let the students discuss the other questions in groups. Have star students leading the discussion without lecturing the right answers. See my next article.
Don’t interfere with the group discussions but take notes on the problems the groups do not seem to solve well. Answer the students questions at the end of the lesson and point out your own observations.
Now the students should have a vague idea what the reasons for the mistakes are. In other words, they may have identified some of the problem areas.
Now that the students are motivated to hear more it is time to have another lesson where you go through my strategy tips for an exam. Show the tips one by one on the screen and let the students ask questions on them. Give the list as a handout after the discussion with my copyright. Let them have it even in exams.
If you think your class will not be able to discuss these matters in English, let them use the mother tongue to make sure the messages get through.
Make each student write in English what they have learnt over these two lessons and what they are planning to do to overcome the difficulties.
Show them my ‘heureka’ comments on the screen as models of the kind of comments you are looking for. See below!
Collect the comments and give feedback on them in the 3rd reading comprehension enhancement lesson.
Now you have done your job: you gave your students the tools for improvement. Nevertheless, they are the ones who have to start working. Probably making use of the other strategies that I have been talking about.
The students have to come up with ‘heureka’ realizations like …
Ah, I think I worry too much about words I have never seen and stop reading because of them and get frustrated. SO, next time I will try to guess the meanings or maybe the word is not important at all or knowing if the word has a positive or negative meaning on the basis of the context is enough.
Ah, ‘carry out’ and ‘realize’ can sometimes mean the same OR ‘no adequate funds’ is the same as ‘not enough money’ or ‘lack of sufficient resources’. SO, my problem is vocabulary and learning many ways to say the same thing.
Ah, I stumble over the same structures over and over again. Shortened sentences, never heard. Wow! ‘Having left for downtown’ is a shortened sentence meaning the same as ‘When I had started to drive towards the city center’ SO, I have to study grammar more because I always stop at this kind of structures and do not get the meaning.
Ah, my mistake is that I start reading by translating the text word by word.SO, I have to stop translation tactics because it is too slow. Working through mother tongue will not do. I have to learn to think in English.
Ah, I have been too much in a hurry. I usually start by reading Question 1 and then look at the text without knowing what the whole text is about.SO,from now on I will read the whole text through first without stopping even if I do not understand everything at first. This way I will get an overall picture of the topic and the main ideas.
Ah, I never realized that some sentences are more important in a paragraph than others.SO, spotting of the main sentences in a paragraph seems to work for me. I will worry about the details much less this way.
Oh, no. All these years I have been trying hard but nothing seems to work. I thought I was just stupid. Now that you told about dyslexia and its symtoms I think I may suffer from it. SO, Thanks. I will contact the special teacher and see if he can help me.
Having a talent rarely takes anyone to the top. Reaching excellence in anything requires very hard work, 10 000 hours of work, they say. Maybe that is the total number of hours needed to master a foreign language ‘perfectly’.I am still counting ...
Up to 10 percent of students suffer from some form of dyslexia, reading and writing difficulty. Luckily these days students have the courage to admit they have these problems and special teachers are trained to help them.
The text in the next article is an example of how a mature 16-year-old might be able to process a reading comprehension text. I believe that if the students are able to apply the strategies and tips given in my previous articles in this ‘test’ they will become better readers. And writers too since good writers will anticipate the reactions of their readers.
You will find the sample exam in the next article and correct answers with a ‘mature’ reader’s comments in the final article of this Reading Unit.
One of the keys to the students’ success and improvement in reading comprehension exams is to devote a couple of lessons to the strategies when you get a new group.
Throwing the students one exam after another and assuming that massive input will automatically improve the reading skills for an exam, does not necessarily hold true.
In the previous articles I hopefully gave a lot of food for thought about preparing the students for exams.
All language skills are intertwined. Thus many of the tips given on listening comprehension, writing tasks and learning vocabulary apply in taking reading comprehension exams too.
The text below is a sample exam for those who are about 15 years of age. The idea is to let them take the exam either before or after the strategies lessons. The exam hasA) True/False-questions, B) multiple choice questions and C) a task combining reading with writing and justifying opinions.
The next article after this one is an example on how a mature 16-year-old might be able to process this exam.I will also give the ‘correct answers’ there with some recommendations on how to organize the return of the ‘test’.
I believe that if the students are allowed to use and apply the strategies handout in doing this exam they will internalize the ideas more profoundly. I am talking about the handout and articles in the previous article. And the student may become better writers too since they will learn to anticipate the reactions of their readers better.
Still, learning to apply the strategies does not take place over night. It also requires a lot of practice.
Up to 113 million children worldwide do not have access to school books. What a waste it is that old school text books are binned or pulped. Books written in Arabic will, of course, be of no use in most of Africa but English is an official language in Tanzania, for example. Moreover, all secondary education is done in English there and children are taught following the old British O- and A-Level curricula. Due to the way syllabi in Tanzania mirror the old English system, second-hand course books are perfect to help bridge the gap between rich and poor nations.
In Tanzania educational resources are scarce but children have the will to learn. An organisation based in Liverpool is working hard to see that school text books and other equipment are collected and re-distributed. The Tanzanian Book Appeal would be nothing without the help and support of schools, many of which have been involved in fund raising activities as well as donating old books. John, one of the students involved in the project, says that before the fund raising he didn’t really know or even care about Tanzania. Now he understands that Tanzania is the fourth poorest country in the world, and that there may be up to 40 pupils sharing one text book.
Once the books have been donated they are collected in a truck and taken to a holding warehouse – which was donated by a local business – sorted through and stored. They will be packed up and shipped off to Tanzania in a big container. The students who have worked on the project will then fly out to meet the books over there. The government in Tanzania have loaned government vehicles to sort out the distribution. The group of English students and teachers will then tour the schools in the Kagera region near Lake Victoria.
A Decide whether the statement is true (T) or false (F). Correct the false statements.
In Tanzania there are 113 million children without school books.
In Tanzania all education starting from the first school years is done in English .
The curricula in Tanzania follow the old English model to a great extent.
In Tanzania there is not a lot of money to organize teaching.
An organization in Liverpool gathers secondhand school books and forwards them to Tanzania.
The aid organization does not need the help of school children in its work.
In Tanzania there may be as many as 40 pupils in one classroom.
B Answer the multiple choice questions. Choose a) b) or c)
8. What happens to the school books once they leave the donating schools?
a) They remain in an old lorry until a storage warehouse is found.
b) They are sent to Tanzania in small units with goods from local businesses.
c) The books that have been given away are taken into storage and sorted in Britain.
9. What happens to the books when they reach Tanzania?
a) A group of students from England will go and distribute the books in Tanzania.
b) The schools have to pay for the transportation of the books.
c) The British students travel on the trucks to the schools.
C 1 Why are British secondhand school books ideal for Tanzanian schools? (Give 3 reasons and answer in your own words in a full sentence or two.)
2 What do you think about the procedures of getting the books to schools after they have arrived in Tanzania? (Mention 3 opinions and why you think so.)
The ‘correct’ answers with detailed analysis are to be found in the next article.
Africa at its best. Karin Blixen’s home near Nairobi. Blixen wrote famous books about her life in Africa.
Before you look at my next article about returning this sample exam, please ponder on the questions below.
How would you organize immediate student-oriented feedback after a reading comprehension test?Background info: The test was 30 min long, 6 multiple choice questions and 4 open-ended ones. A mixed-ability class, 16-year-olds and onwards.
What would you say to the students about the purpose of the exam-returning session?
How do you organize the feedback session right after the test?
Grouping the students? Making it a student-centred learning situation?
How to provide a model how to approach the questions?
How to deal with multiple choices?
How to answer open-ended questions?
When do you give the correct answers and to whom?
Various options to deal with low-achievers, i.e. How do you deal with differentiation?
