BF2S Forums Should oral exams be dropped?

I always did way better in my oral French than writing the stuff, it helped that my French teacher was abit of a hottie

kylef wrote:

Mek-Stizzle wrote:

I always did way better in my oral French than writing the stuff, it helped that my French teacher was abit of a hottie

I have a female French teacher too (assuming you are talking about a woman, Mek..)

My french teacher was some pedo-ish guy..

I can't believe I passed that class..

If anything, spoken language exams should be a more common facet of English classes. With each passing year, I understand less of what younger people say, and nothing's wrong with my hearing.

liquidat0r wrote:

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

If anything, spoken language exams should be a more common facet of English classes. With each passing year, I understand less of what younger people say, and nothing's wrong with my hearing.

They are at GCSE level (Exams at age 16) in England. You have to do 3 presentations throughout the year, one of which is in a group. Well, that's what I had to do, anyway.

Humm, not the same for me- all I had to do was one presentation and that was to just the teacher.

The exam system in general in the UK isn't too bad- In my opinion time could be easier spent on other things such as NHS... but thats another topic

Oral Exams in particular?- no I don't think they should be dropped- but that isn't what the article is suggesting . Oral exams are needed for languages, however, I only did a language because I was forced to, and never paid particular attention to the lessons- Oral exams as they are now sound easier for people like me to pass in however...

*runs out of D&ST again*

We don't really do a lot of oral tests in the language classes at our school. Instead we do lots of class discussion and occasionally presentations and whatnot, along with going to the computer lab and doing some diction stuff so the teacher can better analyze our speech.

No.  If you can't speak the language, you obviously don't know it well enough.  Someone who can't speak the language but can only write, should not get a better score than someone who can speak, but not write.

Do you have oral exams for other classes besides English? If you dont than what the hell.
In Bosnia its the preffered method for grading in most classes. I had about 40 oral exams per year in high school.

kylef wrote:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7249090.stm

"The announcement comes after it was reported that oral tests were being dropped as they were "too stressful"

I think that the entire basis on learning a language is the ability to speak that. If oral exams are to be changed / dropped then it surely defeats the purpose of even learning a modern language! The ability to speak the language is surely the fundamental basis of taking the subject. Currently, at least for my school - we must do a total of a minimum five minute oral assessment (which can actually be quite a while when just talking and answering questions)

What are your thoughts on this?

No - Reading and writing etcetera is all fair and well, but imho being able to communicate in the language without panic is the overall aim of the learning. Plus, once you get the hang of it, it's a wonderful feeling! And unfortunatly the only way to grade this ability is through oral tests.



However, i do feel the structure of the exams (at least the ones i've sat) should be changed.
I'm a big fan of the impromptu conversations in the exam - as it would be in the target country, but being made to memorise 200 words about a fictious holiday story (like i had to do) is pointless, and only proves the ability of short term memory - not skill in the language itself.

I can't think of an oral sex joke.  I learned Japanese with Rosetta Stone, and I thank GOD there was no oral test shit at the homeschool place.  A written test would be worse.  In general I hate second language shit.