Tuesday, June 28, 2005
School Tests
I've got a lot of topics for future blogs, just not all of them can be drawn out into full blog length. Maybe I'll do a whole series of rapid fire mini-blogs in the coming days. For now though...
We had the first term tests at school last week. Whenever these tests go down, I usually have some hand in it, from making the test questions, to correcting and so on. Today we gave the tests back. There's something weird I noticed about what Japanese teachers think is a good score compared to what we as Canadians (I use the term generally, however this is what I perceive to be true back home) think.
A few students get in the teens and 20's, for example 10 out of 50. If you're keeping score at home, that's 20%. On the comments they get at the bottom of their page, my teacher wrote stuff like "I can see you are doing well", "your effort is finally paying off" and so on. On the one hand I can see not damaging someone's fragile confidence, especially when it comes to learning a language like English (I'm not sure what goes on in the other subjects when a test is returned), but creating a false sense of confidence also seems not good for the kids. I don't think these kids should get complimented after pulling a 10 out of 50; instead they should be offered constructive criticism and hints on how to improve the next time around.
On a related note, we calculate the average score for each class. When these classes are pulling an average of 32 or so, they get complimented. Why is that? That's only 64%. The academic level when I was in Junior High on a test like this was like 40...it seemed that everyone could pull or pulled at least 80%.
We had the first term tests at school last week. Whenever these tests go down, I usually have some hand in it, from making the test questions, to correcting and so on. Today we gave the tests back. There's something weird I noticed about what Japanese teachers think is a good score compared to what we as Canadians (I use the term generally, however this is what I perceive to be true back home) think.
A few students get in the teens and 20's, for example 10 out of 50. If you're keeping score at home, that's 20%. On the comments they get at the bottom of their page, my teacher wrote stuff like "I can see you are doing well", "your effort is finally paying off" and so on. On the one hand I can see not damaging someone's fragile confidence, especially when it comes to learning a language like English (I'm not sure what goes on in the other subjects when a test is returned), but creating a false sense of confidence also seems not good for the kids. I don't think these kids should get complimented after pulling a 10 out of 50; instead they should be offered constructive criticism and hints on how to improve the next time around.
On a related note, we calculate the average score for each class. When these classes are pulling an average of 32 or so, they get complimented. Why is that? That's only 64%. The academic level when I was in Junior High on a test like this was like 40...it seemed that everyone could pull or pulled at least 80%.
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Hey Kylie, I know what you mean. I used to teach English to junior high students at cram school so I also know how japanese teachers think. Basically, most japanese kids don't like to study English because it's too difficult. But they HAVE TO study. So teachers sometimes need to encourage students by saying like "you can do it!" I still remember this unforgetable student. He always had 20 to 30 points out of 100. I kept telling him "you can do it. study more! you are getting better and better" and it worked. He studied and studied. and after 1 month, he got 66 out of 100. Do you know how hard it is? He kept studying and 3 months later, he scored more. he later came to me and said "Thank you for all the encouragement. Now I like English!!" Believe me. It works!!
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