Skip to main content

Testing, testing 1, 2, 3


Photo by Tim Napier on Unsplash

A couple of Saturdays ago I sat down to take my first official German test. It was a hot day and one of the examiners was using a little wooden fan to keep cool. It was that or open a window and that wasn’t going to happen since first up was the listening test, which demands absolute silence. I knew the drill: write my name on the answer sheet, don’t open the question book, don’t speak. I sat there waiting patiently, staring by turns at the clock high on the wall in front of me and the standard-issue pencil supplied to each candidate by the test centre.

One of the odd things about me is that I’ve always liked tests. Other people feel sick and get sweaty palms. Not me. I don’t know what it is about exams that makes me feel both relaxed and energized. Maybe it’s the quiet and feeling of solitude that I get from being in my own little bubble, sitting at my own individual desk with no interruptions to my thoughts. Me time. Maybe it’s because I’m naturally competitive and thrive on opportunities to show what I know. (Since the first option is more pleasant, I'll go with that ...)

However, in my role as teacher I have a very different view on tests, an opinion shared by many teachers: I hate them! Not because I have to mark them (though this is true) or because it is boring to conduct tests (also true), but because tests often become more important than the learning that takes place. Often students get so focused on preparing for the test that they forget to learn. I was reminded of this as I studied for my own exam. Instead of spending time really trying to understand how to use German language structures and practising them, I was quickly ‘covering’ items that I thought would be useful for the test.

Tests are a good measuring stick, a guide, but they are not conclusive evidence of your language abilities. How many times have you crammed for a test and achieved a good result but forgot all the information you ‘learnt’ within a few weeks? Or how about when you studied for weeks and months, and you still remember the information to this day, but on the day of the test you got so nervous that you blanked? Was your result really a good indicator of what you knew?

Now that my test is over I’m returning to my books to spend more time on the language I previously overlooked. But I’ll still be tested every day. For me there’s no better test than a real conversation!

Article aid

a fan  an object you hold with one hand and move back and forth to create a breeze
know the drill  know the procedure of an event
odd  strange, but not as negative
palm  the inside of your hand (we don’t pronounce the ‘l’)
be in my own little bubble  a feeling of being unaware of reality
thrive on something  be encouraged by or develop because of something
take place  happen, occur
covering  here it means to do something in a superficial way so that you can say it’s done
cram for (a test)  start studying just a short time before the test e.g. the night before
to this day  today, now (after many years)
blanked  completely forgot everything you knew

overlooked  ignored

Collocations

Some words just like to hang out together and they hang out together a lot. That’s what ‘a collocation’ is. In this text there are a few examples of words that normally hang together. Here’s a few:



Comments

Post a Comment

Know what I mean? Have your say.

Popular posts from this blog

How do you cook it?

It was some kind of radish. I knew one type of radish prior to that day. The radish I knew was a small, round or cylindrical, red vegetable cultivated by newbie gardeners everywhere because it's so easy to grow (apparently). This was not that kind of radish. This one was huge. Giant! I had no idea what I was going to do with it.  So, naturally, I bought it. But I was sure to get some how-to-use instructions first. No need to cook it at all it turns out (despite its ginormous size). Great with salads, I was told. And it was, but it lasted for weeks and there's only so many salads a person can eat. I do this often, I must point out. The buying unfamiliar veggies bit, though the salads bit, too, if I'm honest. It's one of the great things of moving country - finding 'weird' fruit and vegetables you haven't seen before. Weird really isn't the right word. There's nothing strange about them; I had simply never crossed paths with them during my (obviously s
Post a Comment
Read more

A case for cartoons

"Willst du die suchen gehen, Leo?" I called out to the kitchen walls. Two seconds later a disembodied voice from the tablet echoed my question. "I'm getting good at this," I thought with a smug smile. While I was up to my elbows in greasy suds , my 15-month-old sat enjoying his cartoon at the kitchen table. Having seen, or at least heard, each episode three times, I wasn't surprised I could anticipate the next line. This screen time is completely justifiable , by the way. I play the German version, so, thanks to Covid-19, it is currently one of the only sources of German my son is exposed to regularly. Also it, you know, provides some much needed quiet time.  But there's more to cartoons than meets the eye . They've turned out to be a helpful little study aid for me . In fact, I believe cartoons aimed at very small children can be great learning tools for adult learners. Here's why: the sentences are short and uncomplicated, the meaning is gener
Post a Comment
Read more

Damned if you do

I rang the bell and waited. Nothing. I was reminded of a similar situation about 2 years back when I'd arrived at an office and rung a small black bell which was connected to the company logo with a giant arrow. I rang it twice and eventually a woman appeared and told me there was no need to ring the bell, I should have just walked straight in ('someone should do something about that giant arrow then,' I remembered thinking at the time).  So here I was again. Waiting in front of another small black doorbell. 'Once bitten, twice shy', I thought to myself and I pushed the door open. Another door stood in front of me and a man was exiting. He held the door and I thanked him and walked in. It was a small office, barely enough room to swing a cat with two chairs in front of me and two more to my right beside a hatstand. On a table to the left stood the ubiquitous bottle of disinfectant. Covid. A woman appeared in front of me and I knew she worked there that way that you
Post a Comment
Read more