Testing Day

Date: November 10 2014

Mood: Happy and Tired

Weather: Overcast

Listening to: Magic by Coldplay

Reading: Curtsies & Conspiracies by Gail Carriger

Decided tonight that, after a long day of testing at school, we needed to reward ourselves with some fairly inexpensive eats from our favorite local Chinese restaurant for dinner. (What, you ask, you mean they're not ALL Chinese over there? LOL Well, of course they are, but they also have some that serve a different style cuisine such as Western or even Korean.) Mother-in-law was heading home in that direction anyhow, so we opted to bum a ride over so we only had to hop the bus home. Dinner was delicious as always, and I'm really glad we went out and did have to hassle with cooking tonight. Monkeygirl #1 had her usual beef fried noodles (niúròu chǎomiàn牛肉炒面). Monkeygirl #2 had one of her favorites, egg and beef with rice (jīdàn niúròu fàn 鸡蛋牛肉飯). Hubby ordered his standard egg, beef, and tomato with rice ( jīdàn niúròu xī hóng shì fàn 西红柿飯). Meanwhile I, myself, ordered my usual which is eggplant with rice (qié zi fàn 茄子飯). Mmm can you taste it? It was so good. And mine almost always comes with surprising little chunks of ridiculously salty swordfish mixed into it. That part I could honestly do without, but the idea of ordering it without seems wrong to me somehow. Haha)

I briefly mentioned the testing earlier, but what I didn't mention was just quite how time consumer it was. Today was day one oftwo for period exams in our international English classes.  (Referred to has international classes because these are supposed to be the students that have a goal to study English to the point of becoming proficient enough to take an international placement test. If they pass this test called the IELTS exam it will help them get overseas to New Zealand to study further.) Because I teach the Oral English class today I got to give 43 students all individual 3 part oral tests. Now that took some time! Testing for this one class alone took me 1st-most of 4th period and then 5th-part of 6th period. ~yawn~ 

This class was my first year students, so while none of them aced it, I was happy to hear some really promising responses and progress. Not everyone is as skilled at the rest though, so others left me wanting more and feeling rather bad. This was especially the case with my one student who, present for the ORAL ENGLISH exam, had the audacity to ask if he could give one of his multi-sentence answers in CHINESE! lol You're kidding right?! Nope, he wasn't. He didn't quite know how to translate what was in his head in Chinese to come out his mouth in English. Unfortunately for him, not only would this have been an epic fail in my testing had I allowed him to answer in Chinese, but I wouldn't have been able to make heads or tails of what he said anyways. (My Mandarin is very limited. I am trying to pick up more, but it's just not an easy language and I'm not a fast learner like my hubby.)

Like any teacher, I just want my students to succeed, one day graduate, and eventually realize their dreams. I likely won't be around them for long enough to see all those dreams come to fruition, but I would so love to see each and every one of them garner enough knowledge and confidence to knock that first one [the IELTS exam] out of the park. Sadly I think many will not get there. Whether it's because they aren't interested themselves and are here in this class solely because their parents want it for them or because they simply lack the confidence and gumption to apply themselves. It's a sad reality that probably over half of them won't actually do anything with their new found language skills, yet I hope that I can impart even a little bit of useful knowledge to each of them. Tomorrow is day two of the testing, and I will have 29 second year students completing their 3 part oral tests. Here's wishing them all luck!