I am a teacher of English at a high school  in Turkey. Like all of you, I want to prepare full and long exam papers including grammar, vocabulary and the skills.( I have examined the exam papers of yours  and downloaded some.)   However, there are some obstacles on my way. 

 

-In  my country classes last for 40 minutes. It is not long enough to give an over-all exam in such a short time. I have 2 periods for the same grades ( let �s say 10/B). I can combine the periods but this time breaks will cause problem. While my students are having the exam, others will be in the corridors and because of their noise, my students will lose their attention in the exam. Even if I ignored this, another problem will arouse: �t is cumpolsory to give the same exam (they are called common exams) paper at the same time which will lead to monitoring trouble. Let �s think I am giving an exam in 10/B. I can handle with everything, but other 10th grades will be monitored by other teachers who have no idea about English. Interactive/Smart boards ar like space ships for some of them :) 

 

- Last year, I tried giving separate exams. For days, I had to focus on the speaking test. As the government forces us to give common exams, I had to ask the same set of questions to my students. I tried to ask open-ended questions to make each student give different answers but as days went by, I noticed the students at the end of the list got all the tips and the hints and they were going to become more successful than the former ones. I felt uneasy about this, because it was unfair. So I had to break the rules about the exams and I asked different questions to them. After I was done with the speaking exam, I had difficulty keeping up with the curriculum. 

 

- Our government wants us to give skill-based exams but limits us within 40 minutes with  strange rules. I am very close to the goal, but when I am ready to score one, the refree decides I am oof-side :) 

 

Against all the odds, I don �t want to give up. What would you do if you were in my shoes? Thanks in advance for your support.

 I really want to evaluate my students through exams like yours. I appreciate your tests. They are like five-starred all-inclusive hotels when compared to my poor exams. 

 

P.S: There are some private schools or project state schools in my country where teachers can give tests like yours, but my school is not one of them. 

Hi Gülgün,

 

It partly depends on what the purpose of the test is, and what difference it makes to the students.

 

You can run a test within 40 minutes that gives a fairly valid and reliable picture of a student �s language ability, but it �s not enough time to test the full range of skills directly.

 

So you should maybe look at something like a cloze test (20 minutes) and a short multiple choice listening test (15 minutes). These are easy to administer and score and (depending on the material) fairly reliable.

 

It �s very important to choose test material which actually works. If you can use professional (published) tests, that would be much better. Even professional examiners sometimes produce poor test materials and it �s not fair to your students to use tests that may not actually be testing what you think they are testing.

 

Could you get another teacher or teachers to monitor the parts of the exam where your input is NOT needed, and call your students out in groups (doing group interviews of 3 students, for example) for the spoken language test (so they then return to the monitored classes for the rest of the exam)?

 

Remember with good spoken language tests, you �re scoring their responses, not what they know about the topic or questions, so the fact that you use different materials with different students is not so important - but you may have to convince them (and your management!) of that.

 

There may also be some other Turkish teachers here on the forum who can offer advice and material to you.

 

Tap

 

                          Thank you Tap,

 

       Multiple-cloze tests are really nice and I try to use in my exams. Multiple choice listening tests are also useful but as you have mentioned in your question finding "monitoring" teacher/s is a problem. In my first exams I put a listening part. I may sound out-of-date but I preferred to dictate the listening part myself, because I couldn �t count on my colleagues � literacy about using the interactive/smart boards effectively and beside this I was afraid of the power cut. We have power cuts almost ever day and I didn �t want such a thing to ruin my idea. Anyway, one of the teachers was sick that day and I had to ask someone else to monitor the class just for 15 minutes, until I am done with the dictation-based listening part  in the other 3 classes. I rushed from one class to another. However, I am determined to prepare an exam. I know there are great teachers from my country on ESL, and their advice is precious to me, but I am a member of lots of teachers � groups on facebook and I also follow the related pages. The ones working at private schools or premium state schools can give nice exams. Because, they work more freely than we do. BTW; you meant separating the exam into parts, didn �t you? For example, tomorrw I gve a grammar test. Let �s say next Monday, students sit for reading-vocabulary part etc. Right? I can think of applying this. But first, I must make a good plan and there on my way stands the government. I hope their rubbish rules won �t block me. 

 

                         

 

                        

 

                                    Hello Minka,

 

               Thanks a lot for your support