At least once a year I have to perform speaking tests for each class. I set up a desk and two chairs across from each other in the hall with pictures of our topics. This time around its food. Students come out one by one to identify the pictures and answer some questions related to liking and not liking food, or reading a list of food. It's a pretty dull set of days. There are lots of things I hate about this week of bogus testing. First of all, these ESL classes are run like universities in the sense that you will have less than ten evaluations over the course of the year. Personally, I find this to be really stupid in an elementary school, because of the whole good day, bad day business, and you can't scope a student's ability based on only ten assessments, if that.
Speaking tests are one of these and the students are given an A,B, or C. An A obviously is perfect. B is a pretty big gap varying from major mistakes to minor ones. A C is an North American F. Obviously I don't agree with this at all because barely passing and just missing perfection is the same mark. I gets really finicky too. Some kids who are head and shoulders above their class will throw an advanced phrase they've learned at the academy which the state would fail because the program bases itself on cookie-cutter answers. I don't really follow these guidelines because there's more than one way to get your point across in a conversation. In the end I don't even know where this information gets processed, part of me doesn't want to know anyways.
The materials I get for these tests are crap too. Once again, I'm just given the resources, the marking sheet, then fed a script. No input required. However, I did get to change a picture on a test! One of the food's to identify is chicken; the picture is a platter of fried chicken that goes outside of the frame printed in black and white. I got a variety of answers when kids were asked to tell me what they see: flowers, ice cream, curry, candy, cookies, and "I don't know." Obviously this was a write-off answer. So long as they said an English word I let it go. The next day I told my CT and she printed off a nice roast chicken with a clip-art watermark plain as day in the middle of the picture.Having these is a major pet peeve so I went back to the mystery food because its far more entertaining.
That's when I realized this viably redundant assessment is turning me into a bitter asshole. There's no stimulation or excitement. Also the windows are open for air circulation; as a result, the hallway is a wind tunnel if the wind picks up. Don't worry I tape down my pictures, but the gusts just send an icy shiver up my spine and having cashed in all my paid sick days from being stuck in the hospital I can't afford to get sick this winter.
Upsides still exist: having the reigns of the hall and three pieces of furniture, learning kids names slowly, and chatting with my favorites. It's a dreary job but as a civil servant in Korea I'm bound to get stuck with hokey paperwork that I'm not 100% for. It's just like working at the DMV: move the lines, tick the boxes, complain, punch-out, and forget about it. I became a teacher to make a difference in the future of the world, and for these classes life is super mundane. I've finished off the Grade 3s at the tail-end of this past week, and I have 6 more Grade 4 classes to go. Workload stat: 162 more letters too write in the appropriate box. At least they're no multiple choice questions.
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