The pitfalls of exam preparation

What’s your main goal in teaching English? You’ll probably say something along the lines of „enabling students to communicate well in English” and perhaps also „developing students to be better people”. But have you ever had a group of students preparing for an examination? Then you know that your success or failure will be measured by not by how well they can express themselves in real life, and not even by how well they fit into society. Where there is an important exam at the end of the process, you can only succeed if your students pass the exam. It’s that simple.

What many of your students (and their parents) will expect you to do is to get them through the exam – which for them may also well mean the end of learning. Which, of course, should not be the end of the process. Learning is for life.

But what does this mean in terms of classroom practice?

EXAM PREPARATION TO-DO LIST

1. You will have to cover the exam syllabus (the topics, the grammar and vocabulary, the skills and sub-skills), and make sure you don’t miss out anything.

2. You will have to familiarise your students with all the exam task types, and provide them with strategies to complete each type of task with maximum efficiency.

3. You will have to familiarise your students with the assessment criteria – so they know how to maximise their point scores, and how to avoid losing valuable points.

4. You will have to provide students with practice and rehearsal opportunities, so when they get to the real exam, it’s not their first time completing it.

The above is just a rough shortlist of priorities.

To continue with the same train of thought, what does this mean in terms of what you’re NOT going to do in the classroom?

EXAM PREPARATION NOT-GOING-TO-DO LIST

1. You are not going to cover language points that aren’t required in the exam. Students probably won’t mind. But don’t forget that often we only teach language points because we know they’re going to be tested. Throughout my career as a learner, there has always been a massive emphasis on irregular verbs. They are certainly useful, but the reason we spent so much time memorising long lists of them was merely that they were going to feature in our exams. Think about this – is there any language you’d skip or spend less time on if it wasn’t in the exam?

2. You are going to prioritise the task types that do occur in the exam over those that don’t – which means you’re probably going to reduce task type variety. You feel responsible for your students’ success, so you make sure their exposure to exam expectations is maximised. When it comes down to a choice between, say, an open personalised speaking task and another multiple-choice gap fill, perhaps you’re going to go for the gap fill... again.

3. In order to prepare your students well and to make sure you’re not leaving even your weakest student behind, you’re going to spend a lot of time focusing on what’s needed for the exam. When pressed for time, you are not going to do too many activities which have no connection to the exam. This includes games, drama, discussion of controversial / intriguing (depending on your viewpoint) subjects, jokes and humour in general... can you continue this list? Exams are neutral, non-controversial, and let’s face it, pretty bland. Which is fine because tests are measurement tools, and it’s important to reduce unwanted extra factors, like emotional responses. But bear in mind that „pretty bland” is exactly the opposite of what language classes should be! How are you going to motivate students if you’re spending so much time doing stuff that isn’t motivating?

FINDING A BALANCE

The difficult solution is to prepare students in a way that teaches them all the real-life communication skills rather than focuses on mechanical test task preparation. For example, instead of aiming to practise a format like four-option multiple choice cloze, your aim could be on the communicative goal of the text you use, but using the mcq format to highlight some of the cohesive devices of that type of text. Or instead of comparing and contrasting two arbitrarily chosen coursebook photos, your aim could be sharing personal experiences of special occasions – through comparing and contrasting family photos of, say, weddings or graduation ceremonies. The trick would be to always aim to do both: exams as well as real life.

What I’m saying is that our general aims in language teaching and the aims of exam preparation are linked, but sometimes their priorities clash, and it will be up to you to strike the right balance and to blend learning for real life and exam preparation.

This article was originally published on the OUP ELT Global Blog on 7 April 2013 as a preview of my workshop at the 2013 IATEFL conference in Liverpool, and appears here in an updated form.

Learning in the 21st century

The topic of 21st century skills has become a buzzword in English Language Teaching recently, and although more and more people are talking about it, there is a bit of uncertainty about whether they are anything new - anything specific to the 21st century. 
Well, they are and they aren't. Learning is learning: acquiring new skills, building on and expanding knowledge, gathering experiences and so on. This has always been true, and it is still true in the 21st century. People in the past certainly used all four Cs: the four essential learning skills that are the cornerstones of 21st century learning: Communication, Collaboration, Critical thinking and Creativity. (You see? Nothing new.)
What has changed in recent decades, and certainly in my own lifetime, is the pace of change: by the time we acquire knowledge, it may well be obsolete. By the time we learn skills, we already need to update them (a bit like the shiny new software package you buy and install, which then insists on updating itself immediately before it's even willing to run, as it's already 'critically out of date'). 
So, what is to be done? What we need to become good at, and what we, teachers, need to train our students to become good at is the skill of learning itself. The skill to adapt. And that's what we talk about when we talk about 21st century learning skills. In a very tight nutshell, obviously. It's more complicated than this, but should you wish to learn more, I suggest you look up my previous related post on the subject with more details. Or download the materials I used in my recent workshop at the IATEFL Hungary Creative Café event (on 1 July, Budapest at the Libra Bookshop) with some practical suggestions for classroom activities to develop each of the four skills. (Although it goes without saying that a language class aimed at developing communication skills is already well-equipped to develop one of the Cs: Communication...)
There's still another 84 years of this century left, so I'm sure we'll have some further opportunities to explore the issue of 21st century learning - I'll keep you posted.

Speaking and writing in exam training: blended solutions

I presented this paper on behalf of OUP at the IATEFL conference in Liverpool in April 2013. For those of you who couldn't be there, here's a summary of what we discussed in the session.

Success factors in exam training

When teachers are faced with the task of preparing a group of students for a given exam, there is one known constant: the students, without exception, must attain the level required by the exam. Although this objective – exam success – is clear, there are several factors that necessitate teachers’ attention in the classroom.

First of these is the current level or starting level of the individuals comprising the group. Teachers need measurement tools, both valid and reliable, to efficiently measure students’ level of English in order to establish the starting point for the exam training syllabus. Online and computer-assisted as well as printed placement tests cater for this need.

Another key factor in exam success is familiarity. As one delegate aptly put it in the session: ’there ought to be no surprises in the exam’. Learners need to be familiar both with the test itself (its structure, the types of tasks involved, the amount of time available for each paper and part and so on) and its assessment criteria (to put simply, how candidates can obtain or lose scores as well as the relative weighting of the various papers and parts). The simplest solution is to select course materials designed around the particular exam that learners are preparing for – or to supplement a core course material with such dedicated exam training materials.

Finally, teachers must also provide a balanced coverage of all the language (grammar, vocabulary, functions) and all the skills tested in the exam, both receptive and productive skills. To ensure exam success, the focus should not be on what is easier to quantify and to teach, or what is practical to fit into a lesson timeframe, but on what each learner will be expected to do in the exam.

Potential problem areas for training for productive skills

Writing and speaking both present a number of practical difficulties that teachers must find solutions for. By their nature, productive skills are less predictable (there is often no such thing as ’the’ correct answer) and more challenging to break down into classroom activities.

Writing issues

The writing process proper takes an inordinate amount of time – often more than how much time is feasible in the contact hours available. Writing activities therefore often take place outside the classroom – that is, outside the environment controlled by the teacher. Only the lead-in work, and occasionally some form of follow-up is usually done in class. Task-setting may be done in or outside class, but subsequent monitoring is difficult, impractical, often even impossible. Teachers only find out that some learners got on the wrong track after students have completed their assignments. This then leads to further complications like more unplanned remedial work or a repeat of the writing task, preferably with modified parameters to avoid duplicating the task for those learners who got it right first time around.

Furthermore, if marking is to be thorough, by necessity it will be extremely time-consuming. Conversely, if it is to be done quickly and promptly, it will be superficial.

Speaking issues

All speaking work, on the other hand, is normally done in class – precisely so that teachers can control it. This means learners either have to perform simultaneously, where again the issue of proper monitoring arises, or they perform individually (or in open pairs or groups), which reduces all other learners’ chances to speak. Teachers face the dilemma of providing either maximum opportunity–minimum control/feedback or maximum control/feedback–minimum opportunity.

Blended solutions

Blended learning: the amalgamation of face-to-face and course material-driven approaches with online approaches can provide a solution for the above issues.

The following diagram shows a possible model for covering writing training.

The difficulties caused by the practical necessity of completing writing assignments out of the classroom can be remedied through the use of a Learning Management System (LMS) which allows teachers to set up and monitor tasks remotely. Many online services also offer an automatic (or at least a guided semi-automatic) marking facility for more closed types of writing.

Speaking can also be aided through the use of online learning services (online workbooks, practice tests, etc.), which often offer a speak-and-record facility. Teachers can find similar free-to-use web services online. Embracing social media channels, like online video chat can also enhance exam preparation and extend contact time.

Blended learning may not provide solutions for every exam training issue, but is well worth considering.