Modern Examinations

Read the text and speak about different kinds of exams and their advantages and disadvantages.

Examinations in Our Life

Read the text below and decide which option (A, B, C or D) best fits each gap.

Lionel Mendax: The Truth

It was my misfortune to be Lionel Mendax’s form master in his last year at school. Lionel was a 0) compulsive liar and an inveterate cheat who, when not 1) ______________ truant, plagued the hell out of both myself and my teaching collegues. Contrary to his own inflated opinion of his intellectual abilities, Lionel was not a 2) ____________________ student. Far from it. He was at best a 3) __________________ candidate for his GCSE exams and as such it was perhaps a blessing that he was 4) ________________ from school before he took them. It is only fair, however, that I should give Lionel credit where credit is due. No one had ever been 5) ___________________ out of Greyfriars School before. Notwithstanding that, even our ridiculously 6) __________________ and excessively liberal headmaster could not ignore the fact that Lionel had been caught cheating 7) ________________ every single one of his 8) _________________ GCSE Exams. After his 9) ___________________, he 10) _______________ a course in printing and design at the local technical college, but soon 11)_________________ out.

0 A hardened	B heavy	C compulsive	D addictive
1 A running	B playing	C making	D doing
2 A gifted	B upstanding	C skilled	D strict
3 A grey	B borderline	C futile	D debatable
4 A evacuated	B expelled	C evicted	D expired
5 A thrown	B pitched	C discarded	D hurled
6 A harsh	B light	C stringent	D lenient
7 A on	B at	C in	D by
8 A false	B pretend	C mock	D fake
9 A eviction	B extraction	C expulsion	D evacuation
10 A made	B did	C assisted	D sat
11 A fell	B went	C let	D dropped

Most teachers and students would probably agree that examinations – spoken or written – are unsatisfactory. Students dislike taking them, teachers dislike giving them and scoring students' answers. Dining examinations teachers and students are expected to act like machines; there is nothing very human about the examination process. Success or failure in spoken examinations greatly depends upon the examiner's feelings at the time of the examination. If he is feeling tired or bored, the student may receive a lower mark than he should. Very often attendance is taken into account, too.

From this standpoint written examinations give the student a fairer chance. Two types of tests are commonly used nowadays. The first type is sometimes called an “objective” test (or “multiple choice questions”). To make it up the teacher writes a series of questions, each of which has only one correct answer. Along with each question the teacher writes the correct answer and also three statements that look like answers to the students who have not learned the material properly. The student must recognize the correct answer and circle it (or copy the letter/number on his examination paper).

For testing some kind of learning, however, such a test is not satisfactory: a lucky student may guess the correct answer without really knowing the material.

To get a clear picture of what the student knows, most teachers use "essay" tests, which require students to write long answers to broad general questions.

One advantage of the essay test is that it reduces the element of luck. Another advantage is that it shows the examiner more about the student's ability to put facts together into a meaningful whole. Sometimes, though, essay tests have disadvantages. Some students are able to write rather good answers without really knowing much about the subject, while other students who actually know the material have trouble expressing their ideas in essay form.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-29