Midterms, Schmidterms...

Today and tomorrow my students are taking their midterms. Midterms consist of speaking, listening, reading, and writing.

For the speaking test, we meet with each student individually for about five minutes. We ask them to read sentences from a page, look at a series of pictures and make up a story about them, and discuss broad topics like their favorite sport or holiday and ask them to explain why. All of the questions vary depending on their level of English.

For the listening test, the students listen to a CD and mark down answers in their workbooks about questions that are asked of them, or blanks that are to be filled in, based on what the speaker said.

For the reading test, the students read through a series of passages and answer questions about them. It's very similar to a typical standardized test.

For the writing portion, the students are given a list of topics, and they are asked to write as much information as they can about that topic. Also, there are a few questions they are to answer as well, using all their knowledge of the English language.

This is pretty tough stuff! I was shocked today when I found out what all went into the midterm. My first class of the day is two 6-year-olds, Matt and Willy. They couldn't even get the concept of reading one packet and bubbling in answers in another packet. Luckily there were only two students, so I was able to sit right there with them and point to where each answer should be marked.

It was really interesting to me to see the difference in the students when midterms rolled around. As any normal school would have, there are your troublemakers, your lazy students, your overachievers, and your sleepers. Well, come midterm time, EVERYBODY was on top of their game!! There were no behavior problems today whatsoever. They were all really focused and attentive. This is definitely a good thing, but I felt really bad. The students are already pretty stressed out when it comes to school. By the time they see us, they have already put in a full day at an academy, and they come to our hagwon (private school) for extra English tutoring and practice.

I was told to be pretty strict when it came to the speaking test. Darren wanted to find out exactly how well they're speaking and what they need to work on. Because of their Korean accent and the huge difference in the two alphabets, the students struggle a lot. For example: they don't have an "L" in their alphabet, so they say "R" instead. Also, most words in Korean end with an "uh" sound, and they carry that over to their English. Instead of saying, "My favorite sport is soccer," they say, "My favorit-uh sport-uh is-uh soccer." That's what we have to be strict about, constantly correcting their English and asking them to repeat words over and over. All the students did really well today, overall, so I would definitely consider it a success :)