In the blog posts that I read over the last couple weeks my teacher spoke about the importance of English- the way it is taught and tested, and the way that students are grouped into classes. The first post I read spoke about the ways of communication, of how one word could have a completely different meaning based on the way it is used. The example she gave was “nothing”. We are guilty of this all the time, saying we are doing “nothing” when in reality we may be watching tv, cooking, or hanging out with our friends. She also spoke about the oral testing that is done for the language/vocab proficiency. The testing is done in a non-biased way by teachers outside of the classroom so that the amount that has been learned is properly scored.
The second post I read (which was a previous post) was about students being placed into language classes based on age, not ability. Teaching a second language is hard enough as is learning it, but to be placed into a class based on age was a problem for her. She felt, and I agreed, that just because a person may be older does not mean that the person knows enough to be placed into a higher level class. She pushed for a new system which is now used that classifies the students based on their ability to learn. Students are tested before moving on and if the instructors feel that the student is not proficient enough they repeat the level. For clarification just because the student repeats the course it does not mean that they have failed, it simply means that they needed more practice before moving on.
I agree completely with the new system that age should not determine a person’s ability to speak a new language. And on the other post I agreed with the way the testing was being done by a teacher outside of the classroom so that they can truly gage the students ability in general, not just based on what has been taught in that classroom.
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