ESL Teacher

At the school I teach in currently, students study full-time in the same class with the same teacher for the whole week. It’s a requirement of the school (and in some cases, a government requirement for the visas the students study under) that we give them a test every Friday.

Every time I get new students and I mention the test, they groan and some of them pretend that the word “test” is not in their vocabulary yet. But over time, they come round to my way of thinking. The good thing is that their test result in my class is not actually used to calculate any grade or anything, so this works out here, but my philosophy still holds true for any test: I tell them tests are like medicine and they have to swallow gracefully!

Tests are not just evil ways to make students stressed, but I always say that tests are there to help students learn. If they practice their new grammar or revise the new words they’ve learnt that week, that helps them perform better in the test. If they don’t get 100% in the test then that’s fine too, because that means they learn something as we correct it. Otherwise it’s too easy for them and they’re not learning anything new!

On top of that, I always try to make the tests seem a little more interesting, and often include personalized questions using the students’ names. I love handing out the tests, watching them start serious work then hearing a few giggles as students get up to these questions. And then I tell them, see, tests aren’t as bad as you think.

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