The Place of Exams in British Life

Read and discuss the following text.

Read the following comments made by students and decide whether each is for or against taking exams.

According to the speaker, exams work against clever students because exams

Listen to a talk and answer the questions.

You will hear five people talking about exams. For speakers 1-5, choose which of the subjects (A-F) the people are talking about. There is one extra subject which you do not need to use.

A. Lack of confidence	Speaker 1___
B. Working too hard	Speaker 2___
C. Pressure to do well from a parent	Speaker 3___
D. A new kind of exam	Speaker 4___
E. A new way of marking	Speaker 5___
F. A surprising result

A. do not encourage depth of learning

B. favour those who are engrossed in their studies

C. cannot assess any knowledge

2. How does the speaker defend examinations?

A. by saying they are unjust

B. by likening them to reality

C. by claiming they build character

1. “Exams make everyone try to get the best marks they can.”

2. “I wasn’t feeling well on the day of the exam, so I didn’t do well.”

3. “The boy sitting next to me hadn’t studied at all, but he copied my answers and passed the exam.”

4. “I don’t think I’d bother studying if we didn’t have exams.”

5. “I write very slowly, so I hardly ever have enough time to finish an exam.”

6. “I use my exam grades to find out whether or not I’m improving in a subject.”

7. “I think exams are the quickest way of testing students.”

8. “I studied for weeks before my last exam, but on the day itself I was so nervous that I couldn’t remember a thing!”

Every year fresh cohorts of young people pour out of the trenches to do battle with school and university examinations. The emotional casualty rate is grievously high. It is no exaggeration to say that the great majority of us emerge from this ordeal feeling like failures, with lowered self-esteem. And just as the generals in the First World War failed to question the purpose of the carnage, so it is with modern-day educationists. They will not ask themselves the fundamental, question: what is the point of exams?

Of course, all children need to emerge from school knowing how to read and write, and it is a definite advantage nowadays for children to know a second language. But this does not justify the fierceness of competitive exams we see throughout British schools at ever younger ages.

Schoolchildren are cudgelled into studying by the threat that exams are critical to their occupational future. In reality, the evidence clearly shows that teachers and parents who scare children with the idea that exams are essential for success are perpetuating a myth.

There are now only a few, mostly technical, occupations in Britain in which good school or university exam results are an important determinant, even of initial acceptance. Many large retail companies now rely on their own assessment systems and regard exam results as an unhelpful guide.

If it is a fable that good exam results help most survivors of the educational system to get a job immediately on leaving, the idea that exams predict long-term educational success is a downright lie. While that old saying 'First in School, Last in life' may not be true, doing well at school certainly does not determine success later on. When I surveyed captains of industry, they were unanimous in declaring university degrees irrelevant to ultimate success. Studies show that among top business people, school failure is actually the norm.

It is staggering, then, when you consider that parents and teachers consistently exhort children to 'do well at school for your future', that there is no scientific evidence that school or university exam results predict success throughout life. There is even evidence suggesting the opposite. In the 1970s Professor Liam Hudson published a number of studies showing that high level researchers with the highest grades at university were actually less successful than those with lower grades.

Given what it takes to get a first class degree at university, this should not be surprising. You need to please your teachers, enjoy being supervised closely and, ultimately, please the examiners. You must ignore what you think and concentrate on what they want. To do important scientific research you need the opposite: to think originally and be highly self-motivated rather than craving constant praise, and to be able to work alone for long periods.

I suspect that it is a myth that those who achieve the best grades are of superior originality. They work hard and they are ambitious to do well in exams, but that does not prepare them for success in their subsequent careers. In many cases they peak too early, exhausting their supplies of competitiveness and adaptability, and their university success is their last outstanding achievement. If so, we need to question the underpinning of a system the crowning glory of which is getting the highest possible mark.

Indeed, success at any stage in the process is probably more a measure of motivation and the desire to please than of talent or intelligence. Good exam results at school do not tell us that someone is able to think, only that they are able to identify what examiners want and comply with it. Exams do not test knowledge or scholarship so much as memory and eagerness to succeed.

2) Transcribe and pronounce correctly the following words:

cohorts, casualty, grievously, exaggeration, failure, carnage, perpetuate, technical, initial, retail, fable, survive, survivor, unanimous, staggering, exhort, supervise, subsequent, exhaust, adaptability, comply.

3) Find the English equivalents for the following in the text:

процент неудач (на почве нервозности), преувеличение, тяжёлое испытание, неудачник, заниженная самооценка, кровавая бойня/резня, оправдывать, профессиональное будущее, розничная компания, система оценки, предсказывать, долговременный, опрашивать кого-л., единодушный (в чём-л.), (наиболее) успешные бизнесмены, быть под наблюдением, научное исследование, нуждаться в постоянной похвале, целеустремлённый, истощать запасы, конкурентоспособность, приспособляемость, выдающееся достижение, эрудиция, желание быть успешным.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-29