Test your students' knowledge!

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Test

As you may already know, I have been sharing my experiences in relation to education on my Steemit blog. All my posts are the products of my experiences that I have gained in my classes. If you haven't seen my previous posts, here is one example that I posted yesterday. You may want to check it out.

Make your speaking lessons more effective!

As an English teacher, one of the most important tasks that I have to face with is the examination of my students. When they continue their progress in learning English, I need to check them from time to time. If I misevaluate their progress, I might mislead them as well which is not good at all. Today, I would like to give you some tips about how to test and evaluate their progress.

As English teachers and lots of educators know, there are some basic skills which create the language. These skills are reading, writing, speaking and listening. If a student wants to be good at a language, that student should be able to perform all these skills together as they are linked to each other. If you are not good at listening, you can't be good at speaking or other skills either.

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Writing

One of the main ways of testing someone's knowledge in a particular subject is writing. When we think about English exams, writing exams are mainly based on writing , reading and grammar testing. In grammar testing, it is better to check their knowledge by giving clear questions about the grammar subjects that they have learned in their lessons. When you don't instruct them properly, they might not understand thing clearly.

The important thing in writing exams is the part in which students are asked to write something. Teachers must be very picky when they ask their students to write some paragraphs or an essay. The topic shouldn't be boring as hell and it shouldn't come out of nowhere. When you ask them to write something about a topic that they don't have any clue, it is impossible to see their writing skills.

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Combination of skills

There is also another way of testing their writing skills in a more efficient way. In some exams that I do in my own classes, I ask them to answer some questions by using the grammar rules that we have learned before. To make it clear, If you want your students to use should in a writing exams, you may ask them to give you some advice about your city. When they see this question, they should understand that the modal of should is the grammar that they need to use.

That way is my favorite one as I can see ıf my students can use the grammar or vocabulary in a test. Another important skill in English language is reading. It is a must part of an exam. I prefer to check their knowledge by preparing some questions that they need to answer with true or false options. As you may guess, the most important thing is how much they understand in a text. That's why, I always tell my students to understand the text instead of translating it completely.

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Speaking test!

Speaking test might be the part that students are really afraid of taking. As they are usually afraid of it, it Is important to have an experienced teacher who can calm students by encouraging them to take speaking tests easy. I usually have a short speech with my students in their mother language and make them feel relaxed before we have the test in English. It is important to make them feel less excited and motivate them for the test.

Speaking exams be one to one or even in groups. I usually prefer to have speaking exams in pairs. When one of the students feels hesitant to say something, the other student can say something and they both can feel more relaxed. It is also possible to make them dialogues when they work in pairs in a speaking exam. It can be quite boring and limited when you have speaking test with a student one to one. I don't mean that it is wrong, but it is better to have it in pairs.

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Listening

Listening parts might be also difficult for students. To make it easier for students, we can give them the right to listen to the same recording twice or three times. It is not easy to understand a record when you listen to it for the first time, so they need to hear a few times more. As we usually check their knowledge by applying true - false questions, it is crucial to tell your students to read the sentences before listening to recording.

Overall, teachers are the ones who are the closest friends of students. If we want them to have a successful learning progress. We must be very good at motivating and calming them before, during and after the test. Students might feel down while taking tests, but it never shows that they are not good students. I have some students who have done really badly at tests, but they are really good at lessons.

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Experience

It is important for teachers to improve themselves with the help of other teachers and experiences they get every day. This is the reason why I write about education and English teaching on Steemit. If you have some recommendations how to test our students in an exam, you are welcome to share them in comment section.

As a proud member of @Sndbox, I support @steemiteducation community since they work a lot to help people who put effort in creating valuable contents on Steemit platform. Thank you for reading and Steem on!

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