Midterm Exams!

Here is a funny cartoon I found at this website: http://girlsbydesign.com/blog/2009/08/17/study-hacks/

Mid-terms are over, and I’m sure my students are sitting anxiously at home waiting for the results. I’m in the middle of marking them all right now, but I thought I’d procrastinate a bit and write in my blog.

Mid-term week is a busy week in the EAP program. It started off with the writing and grammar midterm. This year, I gave the students almost three hours to complete their writing and grammar midterm. It started off with 60 multiple choice grammar questions and the different grammar points that we studied in class, and then we had the writing section. I really wanted to see if the students were comfortable with the writing process, so I included the brainstorming, outlining, and rough draft in the exam before the students started writing a good copy. I hope that they understand that when they are writing paragraph, there are a number of steps they have to take before they get around to writing the final copy.

After the writing and grammar midterm, there was the reading midterm, which was also about three hours long. The hardest part on this midterm seemed to be the vocabulary. Actually, it was very interesting because usually I expect a few students to do really well, and a few students to do really badly, with the majority of the students doing average or okay. However, this midterm it seemed like their were definitely two groups of students. Students who did amazingly well (almost 100% on the vocabulary) or amazingly badly (almost 0% on the vocabulary)! I bet I know which students were the ones who studied their vocabulary really hard!

I also did oral exams with the students for these midterms. I really enjoy the opportunity to speak with the students one-on-one in these types of situations. I do always get the change to talk to each student in class, so it is a nice opportunity for me. Also, it was again obvious who studied! The students who studied had lots to say, but the students who didn’t open their books looked a bit shocked with I asked them some of the questions!

To end it all off, there was the listening midterm. This midterm wasn’t as long as the others, and I think some of the students really enjoyed it. Again, you could tell who studied!

Now, it’s time to finish marking the midterms, and start thinking about the final exams in December!