[kisito]

Examination is certainly not a true test of knowledge. However, as imperfect as exams are, they are still a highly valued way of getting feedback on student performance and in some cases teachers. In China where I teach, I was doing a workshop to give teachers more ideas for adding fun in teaching the school course content. Basically how to build interest by using the right activities. All along I noticed that the teachers were only interested in how to make students pass exams. Why? simply because that is how they keep their job. If the class average is very high, you are a star and even get a bonus salary. Also, after our workshops, some teachers reported progress in the way students relate to their lessons. They found that students got more interested and were more willing to speak in class. Again their greatest concern was how to translate that knowledge into a high exam score. There are many reasons why a student can fail or pass an exam, which has nothing to do with whether they have the knowledge or not. Denis, I have come across several students who learn and use English great but fail exams and those who cannot make a simple sentence scoring 100% in tests. Some students get nervous and fail tests. There could be any number of affective filters interfering with a student's ability to give back what they know. I will never forget one day in university where I had so well prepared for my test and for some reason completely blanked out in the exam hall. I wasn't nervous or anything. The funny thing is that after coming out of the test hall, I could remember everything I couldn't while writing my test - of course I failed, yet weeks before, I had exhausted the course content.
You may be wondering where I am heading to with this. Well, examination skills are very different from knowledge skills.I tried once, preparing a student for the IELTS exam who scored high. That was my best experiment with exams. My student came to me about two weeks to her IELTS exams and asked me to prepare her for the test. She was week in several areas, so I basically taught her from an exam perspective. I taught her question answering skills in the 4 areas of language. Then we looked at the structure of the exams and did several sample tests taken from previous exams.We modeled a real test situation and I tried dealing with her nervousness. Well in the course of doing that I guess she picked up a few new words and language skills, but not enough to give her the band 7 score that she ended up with in most areas of the test. Some of the questions asked were among the sample questions my gut feeling had let me use in preparing her for the test. I was convinced as she told me later , that she hadn't passed because she had a perfect knowledge of the test content, but because she had polished her exam skills and it just worked.
In the same line of thought, the principal of a public school in China insisted that the English department not give me an exam class to teach. Somehow there is a notion here that foreign teachers are only good at teaching spoken English. Well, the head of the English department defied the principal and went ahead to give me an examination class. Well I knew how bad it would be for the school and the HOD if the class average wasn't high. So first I taught my students normally throughout the semester and toward the exam period, taught them exam skills. My class scored the highest average ever in the school. 10 students out of a class of 50, scored 100% in the test. No one failed and I got the normal bonus salary reward. But I think that score was only achieved through a combination of both.
Finally I would like to end by saying that you can teach students exam skills and with a bit of knowledge, they do fantastic; while brilliant students can fail a test without the right exams skills. My experience has taught me that examination can never be an accurate instrument for measuring knowledge. However, I understand why some institutions rely on it so much. Sometimes, it is the only convenient measuring instrument. If people are trained to beat polygraphs, it is also possible they can be trained to conquer exams. Also, examiners can try to make tests more effective, by changing the way tests are administered. I love the structure of the GESE oral English tests for example.