Exam Week

Back in Zhanjiang, the school semester is probably just now wrapping up. Luckily, I got to leave a week early, but not before giving exams and grades to my students.

For my two spoken English classes, I gave oral exams. These were more or less straight forward to administer. I met with the students one-on-one and we read a dialogue together and then I asked them each a few questions. I checked for pronunciation, fluency (which I judged as ability to smoothly read the passage versus stumbling over the words) and a short question and answer session served to test their listening ability in addition to fluency (formulating thoughts in English). It was fairly easy and quick to judge what the students knew this way. Most of them did fine.

Before giving the exams, I wrote a list of 15-20 questions to rotate through with the students. Some of the questions I quickly abandoned due to a phenomena that I refer to as "Chinese hive thought." Any Star Trek fans, think of the Borg. For those of you not familiar with the reference, let me explain. What I classify as "Chinese hive thought" is the same reaction of multiple Chinese people to certain stimuli, generally a question. This is a joking classification; nobody has telepathic group thought abilities though sometimes it may seem eerily like they do.

For example, one question I asked, "Would you rather visit Beijing of Shanghai?" The answer universally emerged in my class as, "Beijing, because it is the capital of China." The question would be sort of like asking students in an American classroom if they would rather take a trip to New York or Washington D.C.? Certainly you would likely get a variety of answers and reasons why. Additionally, some choosing to visit D.C. may cite among their reasons it being the seat of our government, but usually wanting to visit specific sites (Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Smithsonian, etc.) would also be included. My answer from the 20 or so students randomly asked out of a class of 45, was essentially and important to note, independently, the same - "hive thought."

If one were to ask for thoughts on Chairman Mao (which I of course did not), you generally here the answer that he was "70% right and 30% wrong." The percentages seem to be consistent among different people. I've never heard a 65/45 or 50/50 ratio, it seems firmly established that his right/wrong lifetime batting average stands at 70/30. Another hive thought?

Of course, the more people you talk to, the wider variety of opinions you are likely to get. On a larger scale, "hive thought" answers break down. In the close-knit classroom, they more often tend to hold true. One reason for this might be that the Chinese class, unlike in our secondary and tertiary education system, is always together. Whereas our students in high school may have 6 different classes in the day, each with different groups of people, the Chinese class may have 6 different classes, but the students are always the same. After spending so much time together, perhaps its easier for similar opinions to emerge? Another thought may be that the Chinese education system seems to be very top-down. The teacher teaches and is right and the students learn and are generally wrong. There does not seem to be much questioning of the established norm, which could lead to groups having similar "right" answers. The "hive thought" only seems to work on certain questions and may be predictable or can come as a surprise.

That was a bit of a tangent, but as I said, I quickly abandoned certain questions after getting tired of hearing the same answer. Speaking to so many students can quickly become boring if you only hear the same story. I needed some variety to keep me interested! Switching up the questions and learning which ones worked better than others seemed to help.

My reading class proved to be a bit more of a challenge. I had to write an exam for them covering the chapters we had discussed in the textbook so far. Knowing that English is a second language for them, I told them somewhat specifically what areas of the book I was taking questions from so they would not what to study. We, of course, also had a reading comprehension passage. In addition to forewarning them on what to study, I also planned to grade the test on a curve to account for the fact that I may have poorly designed it for their level.

As it turns out, the students did not do well. My scores ranged from a minus three to a minus twenty-five (out of 40 questions) with most hovering closer to the low end of the scale. Looking at test scores and running some averages, I decided to subtract seven wrong questions from the students. This put my grading more in line with a nice bell curve with a peak somewhere in the high "C" range. I plan to spend some time going over the exam when the next semester begins. I still have a feeling that a number of the students did not adequately prepare for it.

After grading exams, I plugged the scores into my class spreadsheets and had grades prepared fairly quickly. It was the end of my first semester teaching and has been an interesting experience. There have been some classes that worked really well and definitely some other lesson plans that might be better forgotten. I hope that I was able to help many of the students practice and improve their English in the classroom, but I think perhaps the biggest learning tool has come from just being present. With Janet and myself on campus, many of the students have expressed that they have more reason to practice and try to learn English diligently. I hope that I can be effective in the classroom, but if for some reason I prove to be inspiring outside of the classroom, I'll take that as a good sign as well.

One thing is for certain, I'm sure my second semester students will be getting an English teacher with a little more experience under his belt.