Skip to main content

The Test and What It Tests

The students here spend (or are supposed to spend) the time that they are not in class studying for TOEFL (Test Of English as a Foreign Language).  I asked a student and one of the Chinese English teachers whether they wouldn't learn more English if they used that time to study it in a different way. They could read a novel or watch movies and TV shows in depth (record every line, look up all the words they don't know, watch them until they memorized them). The student didn't have anything much to say. The teacher simply said, flatly (but he always speaks flatly) that it is more useful for them to study TOEFL, because they will go abroad in half a year.  Someone could make a satire out of it: students are more concerned to improve their English score than to improve their English.

"There's a correlation -- a rising tide lifts all boats."  If only the instrument were perfectly precise! And couldn't it just as well go the other way? You could spend more time in the rigorous study of English, and despite the fact that you had not prepared for it formally, your TOEFL score would improve of its own accord. That's why I never put a lot of time into studying standardized scores myself -- I thought appearance and reality would accord perfectly, so that as long as I was earnest in the relevant studies, the test would reflect my earnestness. There's some cynicism in preparing for exams: you assume that the appearance is somewhat independent of the reality, and you are concerned just as much to appear skilled as actually to be so.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sample Essay On Shakespeare's Fifth Sonnet (For My Students)

The theme of Shakespeare’s 5 th Sonnet is saving time. In the poem, Shakespeare talks about how time makes beautiful things ugly. He compares growing old to the way that summer changes into winter. Though in the summer there are many beautiful flowers, in the winter all of these beautiful flowers are gone and there is “bareness every where” (8). The winter is so empty that we could almost forget there had ever been flowers at all – if we didn’t “distil” (13) the beauty of summer to make perfume. What Shakespeare means is that we need to find a way to remember being young (the summer) so that when we are older (in winter) we will still be able to remember being happy. We could do this by having children, who will look like us and make us remember who we were when we were young. I just explained the theme of Shakespeare’s poem and summarized the poem. Now I will talk about how he communicates his theme. First, Shakespeare uses metonymy to help us understand how beautiful we ar...
Post a Comment
Read more

To Witness That Such Things As Monuments Are Possible (Saying "Hello")

It's been such a long time since I've written anything.  That phrase ought never to be used in the first line of a composition -- as a matter both of ethics and of style.  But if I'm to begin again at all, I have to begin with the first thought that strikes me, and given what I am beginning, the first thought that strikes me is that. I am clearing my throat before I speak or testing out my voice.  It was much the same thing to say to myself again and again "Hello" when I was young -- just to assure myself that I could speak.  It is honesty, anyway, and it is a true record.  But wouldn't it be odd to come across the memorial of a man, each of whose entries began, "It has been such a long time since I have remembered...?"  This is meditation in the way that I know it -- repeatedly catching oneself.  This awareness comes and goes in waves -- in waves, perhaps, it builds into something deeper.  Or else it just subsides and reappears.  But that is...
Post a Comment
Read more

On Teaching

A bit frustrated recently applying for jobs back in the US.  I could be applying to more jobs and following up more vigorously, but the rejections wear you down after awhile. It's a crash course in Stoicism. Here are some of the questions I've had to field as I've applied for teaching jobs: Why do you want to teach in a Catholic school? How would you address a wide range of skills in the classroom? What do you think causes students to fall behind academically? What helps them succeed? How would you address the diverse set of student and family needs that you are likely to face? How have you demonstrated a commitment to urban education? How would you communicate a sense of urgency in your classroom? Describe a time when you demonstrated a "whatever it takes" mindset. They're reasonable enough questions in themselves, I'll admit. But I constantly have the feeling of having to jump through hoops. I know that people have in mind a certain ideal; I ...
Post a Comment
Read more