At the moment I am teaching an FCE course at Westcroft Square. The First Certificate of English is one of the Cambridge exams we help students to prepare for at London School of English. It tests speakers of English at an upper intermediate level and if they pass it, they are awarded a certificate which proves their level of English. They can then add this to their CV or use it to show potential employers or universities that they have a good level of English.
The exam tests the four skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. It is quite a tricky exam, so the students on our course do lots of preparation work on their vocabulary and grammar as well as important reading and listening skills. Also, we help our learners with important strategies to help them to deal with the difficult exam tasks they have to complete.
For example, last week in my class the students looked at skimming and scanning as ways of reading texts quickly for general understanding (skimming), and in order to find specific information in a reading text (scanning). We also looked more specifically at the different exam questions and how to deal with them. Multiple choice questions, for example, are often misunderstood by students. They often get distracted by the different answers they can choose from. I taught them that it was much more important to fully understand the questions first, ignore the given options, find the answer to the question in the text, and then pick the option that matches that answer.
For example, here is a typical multiple choice question which tests your understanding of the first paragraph in this blog post.
1. The Cambridge First Certificate of English is an appropriate exam for which type of person?
a. Learners of English at an advanced level
b. People who want some evidence of their English competence
c. Students who want to improve their interview skills to help them get a job
d. Students who study at the London School of English
First you should ignore the four options a-d
Then you should scan-read the first paragraph in order to find the answer to the question.
Then find the answer in the text.
Now read the four options carefully and choose the one that matches the answer you found.
Eliminate any options which are clearly not the correct answer.
Double check your answer carefully, and never leave a question unanswered!
The answer is, of course, b.
So far, I think the course is going well. I'm giving my students feedback when I can. For example, I think they have good written English, but they need to expand their vocabulary and take more initiative in the speaking part of the test. I think they are all capable of passing, and I expect them to.
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I look forward to reading in this blog an article on the misterious Oxford University exam that all LSE students have been taking this week (8/2/2010 - 12/2/2020). Where does that come from? Why are we supposed to take an exam that nobody knew about and nobody asked for? Who is really been evaluated here, the students or the institution? Isn't it strange that, at the same time as visa rules are being changed, a new exam just comes out of the blue? Who will have access to those results other than the student, LSE and Oxf. Univ.? How come that LSE joins an exam conceived in a totally different methodology than the one so far adopted by the school? Will LSE turn a blind eye to the obvious fact that an unecessary stress was thrown onto the students?
ReplyDeleteIntroducing progress tests is something that LSE has been considering for a long time. Most schools have a test at the end of each course that a student must take in order to go up to the next level. We have always taken the view that the teacher is the best judge of whether a student is ready to go up to the next class as they have taught them for the last few weeks and they are the trained professional, but explaining to students exactly why they are not ready to go up is sometimes difficult. We decided to introduce a test that assessed a student’s over all ability and help them and us to monitor their progress and their weak points that need to be worked on.
ReplyDeleteIt might feel to you as a student in the school for the last 6 weeks that this test has come out of the blue but the process of choosing a test started back in April 2009. Since then, we have been researching the best way we can give our students progress tests that will accurately show their progress without controlling what the class is taught. Our classes are communicatively based and the class content is strongly linked to the individual students needs. Our problem was how we test progress without changing class content. We didn’t want it to be that the class content focused on test questions and that the students had to learn certain words and grammar structures in order to move to a higher class as we do not believe that learning a lot of individual words and grammar structures accurately represents the learning process which is far more organic in reality.
The test we decided to use is the Oxford University Press Placement test. The test they have developed is, in my opinion, the best one on the market for our needs. The OUP test is suitable for all levels from Beginner to Advanced and most importantly – is adaptive. This means that the difficulty of the questions increase if the student gets them correct or decreases if the student gets them wrong. The level is adjusted across all the questions in the test and the level is given at the end of the test.
The questions on the test are taken from a bank of thousands which means that no 2 students sitting next to each other are likely to have the same question at the same time. It also means that students who stay in the school and do the test at the end of each course will be able to see their improvement in grammar knowledge, vocabulary range, listening skills as well as speaking.
To answer your questions directly, all of the students in the school were told about the test the week before and given the opportunity to ask any questions they may have. You also say that ‘no-body asked for’ the test and I have to say that I disagree. Over the last 5 years that I have been working in the London School of English, I have been constantly asked by students why we do not have progress tests and how they can do one – a lot of those students went on to take the IELTS test in order to have test proof of their level. You also ask ‘Who is really been evaluated here, the students or the institution?’ and the answer to that is the students. Other than the students, only the staff at The London school of English will have access to the individual student results. Over the course of time, we will use them for our own research into progress amongst our students to look into how we can constantly improve and upgrade our course structure but the information is not shared with Oxford University. Oxford University Press is a commercial publisher that has commissioned the creation of this test– not a research department of Oxford University.
Continued...
ReplyDeleteYour next question I found interesting ‘How come that LSE joins an exam conceived in a totally different methodology than the one so far adopted by the school?’ The methodology of the test is in fact the same methodology that our classes at Westcroft Square are based on – that is language ability in a holistic sense. What I mean by that is our aim here is to provide the kind of language training that will improve all areas of language knowledge – not just grammar structure and individual words. That is why many questions in the test are based in the context of a conversation or part of a text rather than discrete items.
Finally, you ask if we will turn a blind eye to the fact that ‘unnecessary stress’ was given to the students as a result of taking this test and my answer to that is absolutely not, it would be shamefully irresponsible to do so. I have been closely monitoring the reactions to the test by the test takers and I have to say that out of 113 students, I have so far had negative feedback from 2 students – including you. Perhaps that will change in months to come and it is certainly something I am aware of and will deal with as and when it happens. Generally, students were a bit anxious about talking the test but were more curious about the results than anything else. Of the 2 negative responses I received, the other student in question was worried that she wasn’t making progress in her English and was feeling totally de-motivated. She was worried that she had performed badly on the test but in reality, she received exactly the mark that her teacher predicted. I believe her stress originated from the fact that she did not understand that the test design means that she would not get every question correct as she would be able to in a class ‘vocabulary of the week’ test for example. You understand as well as I do that stressed students do not learn to their full potential and I intend to make sure that all the test takers understand the reasons behind the test and exactly how it works in order to minimize stress. Most importantly, I intend to make sure that the students can interpret the results as well as their teachers can and see where their weaknesses and strengths lie. That way, the students and their teachers can work together to plan the best learning path to success.
Shirley Norton, Assistant Courses Manager