Final Testing, Part 2
One of the questions on my final test was “What country is directly south of the United States?” For some of you, this may seem either easy or difficult but most will agree it is irrelevant for an English conversation class. Well, you are half right. The question came from a geography quiz that we do in the computer lab. It is actually a great quiz because the answers to the questions are such that when the students look them up on Korean websites they find different (wrong) answers and are thereby forced to find the answers using English sites. The “south of the United States” question is good because too often students do not read the question carefully and then are confused when they find out that “Florida” is wrong. For the test, one part is question and answer, in which the students have to orally answer questions based on material straight out of what we talked about in class. I give them all the possible questions, but I only ask about four or five that I choose randomly. So, if you think this question unfair, because if you went up to most Koreans and asked them, “What country is directly south of the United States?” most would not know, remember this: my students have found the answer in class, been told the answer by me and studied the answer because they knew it was going to be on the test. On Friday, my last day of testing I had a student who was asked this question. Up to this point, every student had answered the question easily, and I had even removed my normally strict, “Always answer in a sentence” requirement from this question. So I ask this student the question and I know instantly he does not know it. My policy is to give the students as much time as they need but I will only repeat the question or ask them to clarify their answer, I don’t say anything else. I repeat the question. The student looks around. (This is actually a good idea, I use maps to decorate my office and one is a world map that is written in Korean; The student is sitting with this map in his direct line of sight. I am not worried though because the student still has to understand the question and read the small writing on the map for this ploy to work and I doubt he can do either.) The student hesitates. Instead of giving me an, “I don’t know” or, “Sorry,” he begins his answer. “America is big country,” he says. I am intrigued, where is he going with this. “America… good country.” Ah, students love to flatter me, but I have still not heard the one, single, solitary word that will get him credit for this answer. “America…important. America…kind. America people …so good.” It goes on like this with him connecting America to every single adjective he knows in a desperate attempt to hit the answer through dumb luck. He didn’t. The more he talked about America the less likely it was for him to hit upon the answer: Mexico.