Why Study For English Exams?
A highly unusual exam in MiB
A Goal
BEGINNER
Phoebe tries to teach Joey French in Friends
English Exams are a way to test yourself and find out how good your English is.
INTERMEDIATE
Watch Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves train his men to fight better!
They also give you a goal to work towards, which may make you study harder!
ADVANCED
Nothing like a bomb counting down to movitate you! Goldfinger!
Having targets, deadlines, pressure, can all be a kind of motivation. Many teachers and parents fear that, without this, many students wouldn't study. This is probably NOT actually true, however, as there are many other kinds of motivation (and time pressure is probably one of the worst!).
A Gateway
Watch Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves beat a foe to pass a river!
BEGINNER
You may also need to pass an exam to go to your next school, or to get a better job in the future!
INTERMEDIATE
These candidates are using some unusual problem-solving to pass their exam in Spies Like Us
Taking exams can also improve your problem-solving skills and help you think better under pressure and time limits!
ADVANCED
Watch Neo try to beat Morpheus in The Matrix
Some students like exams - they like to compete, they like the clear right / wrong format, and they like to be the best! Other students, however, may hate the pressure of exams.
Criticism of Exams
Is this how many students (and teachers) feel about exams?
ADVANCED
Doesn't get much more fair than Squid Game
Exams are believed to be a useful assessment tool because they are objective.
BEGINNER
Answer three questions to pass the Bridge of Death in Monty Python and the Holy Grail
In exams, everyone faces the same questions, the same challenge, and there is a clear right or wrong answer.
INTERMEDIATE
Mary is really good at Maths in Gifted
Exams try to avoid bias in the person doing the assessment (it doesn't matter if your teacher likes you or not, if you are right they have to give you the mark!).
ADVANCED
Why tests are not a well-designed tool, as they stand
However, in truth, there are a lot of problems with exams. Exams were designed to be an assessment tool, but they were not designed to be a curriculum. Unfortunately, because exams are used to descide students' futures, and they are therefore important, many schools will naturally focus on helping students pass exams. This can mean that the only thing students study in English classes is how to pass exams! This can be boring and counterproductive, as exams are not real life, and students who only learn to pass exams may miss out on many important skills - in fact, often, they cannot even speak English well! So, it is important that exams are not the only thing that is studied...
A lot of the problem lies with the way the exams are designed. Many exams use multiple choice questions because they are easy to mark and there is a clear right answer - but a lucky student can potentially guess the right answers, skewing the results. This can also make exams very limited in the skills they examine, as some exams (TOEIC for example) do not ask students to produce any English (there is no writing or speaking, they just need to read and listen and choose the correct answer). Exams that ask students to speak or write are better as these are useful skills.
Time limits can be a big problem in exams. It doesn't really make sense that you need to write an article in 20 minutes (when do you EVER need to do this in real life). Some students simply get nervous and underperform under the time pressure of exams. It is also very extreme and maybe unfair to base a student's entire assessment (possibly years of study) on a single 2 hour exam. If the student has a bad day or is unlucky, it might alter or even ruin their future! There are other forms of assessment such as course work or averaging grades over a year (GPA scores) which are fairer and less extreme.
In exams, we also don't have the internet, google and other tools that we would use to help us in real life, which is 'fair' but is also rather unrealistic (in real life, we use spelling and grammar checkers to correct our English - so why not in exams?).
Exams also generally offer students very little chance to be creative. Oxford University has named Creativity the number 1 skill for tomorrow, but since most exams don't assess creativity, creativity is not being taught much in schools - resulting in a serious deficit in this vital skill.
A Professor who did badly at his exams
Because exams are not well designed, some very clever students actually underperform in exams. Doing badly in an exam does not necessarily mean you are stupid or even a bad student. It might just mean you are not good at exams. I myself had this problem: I did very well in my middle school exams, but did quite badly in my senior high school exams; shockingly, I did badly in my ENGLISH exam (I got a B and not an A), despite the fact that I loved English and my teachers thought I was very good at it. In short, I screwed up on the exam day. However, this does not mean I was really bad at English. At University, I later got a top score in the University exam. So exams can be very inaccurate. This is why ONLY using exams as a way to assess students is NOT a good idea. And schools and universities are starting to realize this, and there are now more routes and ways to get into these universities. Exams still, however, play a large role...
A Perfect Exam?
How attitudes to exams are changing
ADVANCED
So what would a perfect exam look like? Well, it would probably abandon multiple choice questions entirely. Instead, students would show their English ability by producing English (speaking or writing). They would listen to English and then need to respond with a spoken answer. They might read something, and then need to write about it. Since they would be producing English, they would be exercising a useful set of skills, and there is a chance for creativity. Without multiple choice, answers cannot be guessed. Some exams (such as the Cambridge exams or TOEFL) do have some of these elements, but no exam has yet moved to an exam where all answers are produced in English, and multiple choice type questions and other forms continue to exist.
Exams should also allow dictionary software and grammar and spelling checkers, just like real life. Memorizing vocab and having perfect spelling and grammar is now less useful that we have these tools on our phones. If students do not need to focus so much on memorizing vocabulary and grammar rules, they can focus more on the content and quality of what they are writing or saying, which in the end is more useful. Making this change would also force schools to focus more on creativity and speaking and writing in their curriculums, so it would be a win-win.
Exams, and curriculums in general, also need to consider that different people have different motivations. Consider these gaming motivations from the Quantic Foundry.
These are the reasons people want to do things (not just play games!). It applies to life, love, jobs - everything. Current exams really only apppeal to Competition, Challenge, Strategy, Completion and Power Motivations - 5 out of the 12! No wonder many students don't like exams! A perfect exam might give students the opportunity to enjoy the other 7 motivations as well!
But, for now, until the exams get better, we can only use the accredited exams to prove our English ability. But it's not all bad news - we can treat these exams, and how to pass them, as a problem to be solved - a challenge! And that's what this course aims to do - help you learn the tricks and methods to pass these challenges with flying colors!