Hello. Here we are again.

                                                   A new course, new pupils, new materials with very little  new, and the same old tasks, programming, methodologies, developing skills, grading, individual curriculum adaptations, testing,…. Testing. What a word! Tremendous. I suppose that many of you as me, myself can’t help that pejorative, ugly connotation implicit in this item. Test, examination, exam, control,… Do we really need such things? What for? After a couple of months of daily classes most of us know, more or less accurately, the stage, the level in which everyone of our students is, we could give a grade with little or no error. We know how they work and their competence. So, is testing just an administrative requirement?, if it were not, would we explicitly and periodically test students? I think most of us would. Why?, what are the reasons for testing?, what are the advantages, the benefits?    

     First of all, I think  most students need an external confirmation of their improvements, a test properly set to their level, competence and in some cases interests, can be  motivating, a challenge. Though there is the risk of making it a handicap for those student whose ability is not so good as we may wish. Therefore  a test must always be a combination of easy to do activities, that allow students with a lower level to confirm their more or less wide competence and avoid frustration,  and higher level activities that allow more advance students to show their  language skills.

    Talking about skills conveys us to another important point. Traditionally tests are classified according to the technique used to fulfil them, gapfilling, substitution, multiple choice,… But I think that ‘goal’ is the important thing, what our aim, our intention is when we set an exam. Any technique will do, they are only means to reach a purpose, the practice of a determinate skill or area of knowledge. At last, that is what a test is, an exercise with no net.

           Here are some possibilities:

BASE                       PAST                               PAST PART.                             SPANISH

begin                    ...................                      ......................                          .........................

....................           blew                                ......................                          .........................

...................            ...................                      ......................                           romper

...................            ...................                      bought                                   .........................

...................             chose                             ......................                           .........................

...................            ...................                      ......................                            venir

dig                         ...................                      ......................                            .........................

do                          ....................                     ......................                            .........................

..................              drove                              ......................                            .........................

...................             ...................                      ......................                             comer

..................              ...................                       fallen                                       .........................

..................              ...................                       fought                                     .........................

find                         ...................                      ......................                             .........................

..................               ...................                      ......................                            olvidar

..................               went                               .......................                            ..........................

...................              ....................                      grown                                      ..........................

have                       ....................                     .......................                            ..........................

...................              heard                              .......................                            ..........................

...................              ....................                     ........................                            saber

learn                       .....................                     .......................                             .........................   

1.- Write the missing forms (interrog., negat. or afirm.)

a) She´s got long, curly black hair.

·       .............................................................?

·       ..............................................................

b) ..............................................................

·       Is there any fish for dinner?

·       ..............................................................

c) ..............................................................

·       .............................................................?

·       She doesn´t wear jeans to school.

   3.-Describe this picture.                                                        

    1.- Write a recipe using anything you need from the lists below.

Condiments             Vegetables                      Legumes/pulses                   Meats                

salt                              potatoes                           lentils                           ham

pepper                       tomatoes                          kidney beans             pork chops

parsley                       green/sweet peppers     chickpeas                   beef sirloin

bay                             onion                                 beans                          lamb

garlic                          lettuce                              Other products         Fish

thyme                         cucumber                        milk                              sole

rosemary                     eggplant                          cheese                        gilding

mint                            endive                               butter                          mussels

paprika                      beet                                   cream                         squids

oil                                corn                                   paste                           prawns      

flour                             carrots                               eggs                            lobster

     1.- What are they doing?

                                    a) ..............................................................................................

                                     b) .............................................................................................

                                     c) ...............................................................................................

                                                                                                                                       (3 marks)

     To test oral comprehension and expression we can use tapes or videos that go from authentic to graded materials, depending on the technology we have at our disposal . There is a quite wide variety of activities:

• Prepare questions for other students.
• Draw a picture of a scene and ask other student to guess it.
• Imagine the ending.
• Make an oral summary
• Tell the story of a character.
• Memory games: Have you seen a ………. in the video?

·         Which is the order of some scenes?

Or you could try some of these ideas:                 

• Hand out plain white sheets of A4, tell them to fill it haphazardly with any words they've 'learned' this term. Don't group the words, write them like graffitti. When they're running out of inspiration, they swap papers (take them in and redistribute). Now their task is to categorise the other student's words by circling them with different colours (all those Pilot pens); they decide on the categories, but they must have at least three. You can either look over shoulders or collect the papers in afterwards for a look. This tests active knowledge, reinforces by creating associations, tests passive knowledge (recognition) and teaches because each kid probably knows a different set of words.

• Take them out into the yard, a square, a park, the beach (handcuffed...) they sit down with paper and pens and write down the names of everything they can see that they can say in English (don't help them or teach new stuff), from feet, man, sun.....to convertible e-type Jag, overhead power cables, non-biodegradable litter, manhole cover............. If they work in small groups you can give an incentive like 'the group with the best (not longest) list doesn't have to do the homework' (as if they do it normally....). Outdoors is always more motivating than indoors.....except for those who aren't motivated by anything. Back in the classroom, you can use the list for a written piece of work and test their grammar.

• Photocopy an authentic text (from the Michelin guide to Andalucía, from the Time magazine, from the BBC news web page..............) and get them to underline all the words they know, and circle all the words they can guess at. This is good for teaching them a bit of autonomy, for making them feel they might know something, for showing them that some English is actually quite similar to Spanish AND for checking what they've learned. Choose a text related to what you've been doing, but make sure it's got some latinate stuff in it. Don't use the Guardian etc....the articles are too long, and use a lot of journalese.

• When you set an exam (eg at Christmas) make sure the exercises mimic exercises they've done in class; if you do loads of gapfills, don't give them sentence transformations in the exam - they won't know how to do them. It sounds really obvious, but you’d be surprised how many teachers just photocopy exercises from the coursebook test booklet or workbook, and only think about the grammar structures and vocab, not about the format. The kids haven't got a clue. 

• A song gapfill completed before listening with the pronouns or the verb tenses or whatever is a user-friendly grammar test.
• Or photocopy one of those Terry 'n' Sue type photo-stories, tippex off the heads and replace them with Southpark characters (or if that's too dangerous, Beavis & Butthead/ Homer & Marge), and tippex out the words in the speech bubbles. Get the kids to write a dialogue, laughing at T & S. And call it an exam...

I think that testing should help students, should reinforce, extend and encourage not just provide the school administration with a set of numbers, or teach or trap or humiliate and demotivate. In informal tests, I let them 'cheat' after a few minutes, by sneaking glances at the book. Then you just ask who had to cheat...they know if they know their stuff or not, and you can see. If they look at it during the test, they might remember it next time.