Jun 24

Just Teaching: Tests are standard, Learning is not

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Kevin Stein (Ishikawa-ken, 2000-03) has been an English teacher in Japan for 18 years.  He has taught at the university, high school, junior high school, and elementary school levels. He has trained public junior high school teachers, served as a mentor through International Teacher Development Institute, and occasionally blogs at The Other Things Matter.

Kevin is currently seeking new work opportunities at the university level as well as outside of education. Please feel free to contact him directly at kevindsteinELT@gmail.com. His CV is available online at: https://theotherthingsmatter.wordpress.com/curriculum-vitae/.

This year, I am training the teachers in my school system on how to use the standardized test prep curriculum developed for the International Course at my high school in Osaka, Japan. 

While I am not a huge fan of standardized tests as the primary measure of students language ability or for evaluating the effectiveness of a language program, I do think that they have a role to play within English language learning. Perhaps most importantly, students are often highly motivated to take and pass (or attain a high score) on standardized tests. So these tests can be an excellent vehicle for helping develop students’ autonomous study skills or for rapid vocabulary acquisition.

In the program at my school, standardized test prep classes focus on: how to make effective vocabulary lists and word/phrase cards with Quizlet; micro-listening activities to develop decoding abilities around connected speech; and metacognitive skills to help students develop a higher awareness of how they read and correct any habits which inhibit comprehension. A thoughtful test prep program—in conjunction with an extensive reading program and a fluency focused speaking class—has led to an average 3rd year students’ final TOEIC score average of 640 points and has helped over 40% of our 3rd year students to pass the EIKEN pre-1 test.  

While I do believe there are real benefits to including a formal system—whether in the form of specific classes or mandatory language lab time—for helping students prepare for standardized tests, I also think that it is important to remember that just because you have a system, doesn’t mean that students will be able to make use of it effectively.  Pressure around standardized testing goals can also result in high levels of student anxiety, anxiety which can inhibit students ability to concentrate on test materials…or occasionally even process basic instructions.

The other day in class, all of the students were taking the listening portion of as EIKEN test individually on their own tablets in the computer lab. I had written on the board that students needed to take the test from beginning to end. They were not to stop the audio or rewind it. I walked around and made sure that students had found the correct files on the server and were moving along with their tests. One student, lets call him Mr. M, seemed to be progressing slightly slower than the other students. After about 20 minutes, when all of the other students had finished the second section, Mr. M had just finished answering the last question on the first section. I sat down next to him and tilted my head in that way that signifies I’m curious about something (and which lately so infuriates my daughter…and perhaps has always infuriated my students as well without me ever noticing).  Mr. M raised his eyebrows and his mouth formed this small circle of surprise. Perhaps you know the look, the one that usually follows an accusation like, “God!  How, in one afternoon, could you have possibly eaten that whole chocolate cake which I was planning to serve for desert on Saturday night?”

Mr. M’s look of guilt mixed with surprise led to this conversation:

Me: Mr. M, did you pause the recording while you were taking the test?

Mr. M: (looking like he just jingled a prison cell door and found it unlocked) No, I didn’t pause it.  I never paused it.

Me: Did you rewind the questions and listen to them more than once?

Mr. M.: I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

Me: Hmmmm….

So here I was looking at Mr. M and thinking, “How could he have simply ignored everything I had instructed him to do at the beginning of class?  What is wrong with him?  What is wrong with all these students that they justcan’tfollowdirectionsanddotheonelittlethingIaskthemtodosoIcangetabaselineand…”  And in the middle of my crazy-James-Joyce-has-infected-my-though-process mental ramble, I stopped thinking and just looked at Mr. M.  He was now kind of slumped over and looking at his shoes. That guilty ‘o’ shape of his mouth had been replaced by a ready-to-be-reprimanded frown.  And then I felt this kind of sudden weightlessness.  As if I was floating just a few centimetres above my chair.

Me: So the test was pretty hard?

Mr. M: I didn’t know almost any of the answers.

Me: Yeah, I know how that feels.  I hate it when I can’t understand things in Japanese.

Mr. M: I didn’t feel like I was learning anything, so I rewound the questions until I could understand them.

Me: That’s great. I’m so glad you’re keen to learn.

Mr. M: …(Looking up at me)

Me: You know, if we can get your score on a listening test without you rewinding your answers, we can find out which answers are the most difficult and then we can make a really good study plan.

Mr. M: (nods)

Me: How about this, this afternoon you can take another test.  This time do you think, even when you can’t understand a question, you can keep moving along with the test until the end?

Mr. M: (smiling) Yes.  I can do that.

There is nothing especially surprising to be found in my interaction with Mr. M. He experienced high levels of anxiety, something we often see in students when it comes to high stake tests like TOEIC or TOEFL or even EIKEN. He dealt with that anxiety not through avoidance techniques like falling asleep or claiming he had to go to the bathroom five minutes into the lesson, but by trying hard to understand what was being said in the listening text.

Later in the afternoon, he was able to take a complete listening test without repeating each question multiple times. Still, I think that Mr. M., and students like him have something important to teach us.  Program goals and test scores are never more important than helping students with whatever they are struggling with right now, right in front of us, at this very moment. Because, in the end, standardized test prep curriculums, like standardized tests themselves, can never be the primary focus of language teaching and learning. The focus of any classroom has to be the students themselves and how they are, or are not, learning at any particular moment.

And perhaps this is the only thing that we can say is truly standard about ELT.

For the past 10 years Kevin has focused on developing an International Course for a private high school which serves students with large gaps in their junior high school education. While his students often enter high school having completed less than two years of junior high school studies, they routinely graduate with a high level of English competency, attain high standardized test score, and often attend top Japanese universities or study abroad.