Michelle's Reflection - Formal Assessment: CA1 Test

The first Literature test I had to administer was a test based on Act 1 of The Merchant of Venice for the Secondary 2 classes.The test had 4 questions. Question 1 was a characterisation question on Bassanio and students were required to write about two of his character traits using the PEEL format. Question 2 was another characterisation question, this time on Shylock, and students had to write about one of his character trait, also using the PEEL format. Question 3 and 4 basically asked students to describe aspects of the plot.

Overall, I felt that the test was meaningless and ineffective. Firstly, prior to the test, students were already given a worksheet with two to three character traits of each main character in the PEEL format. Thus, students who made sure to study that worksheet and memorise the character traits in the PEEL format generally did well for the test. All they had to do was to regurgitate what they had memorised. When I talked to students personally after returning the test, some of them admitted to me that they had no idea what they were writing and that they just wrote that Bassanio is an opportunist for example, because that was what the teacher taught them. So what I felt was that students with better marks were not necessarily better Literature students who knew how to interpret a text or explain a point coherently. The test was therefore not a good indicator of their ability as a student of Literature.

Secondly, the PEEL format which they were forced to answer in did more harm than good to some students.  Instead of writing a paragraph that flowed cohesively and coherently, some students wrote their answers in such a manner:

P: (one liner)
E: (quote that they memorised)
E: (one liner)
L: (repetition of P)

Many students saw it as lines to fill up and they felt that as long as they had one line for P, E, E, and L, they will get a mark for each line. The argument thus did not always flow consistently. The second E which is supposed to be the explanation sometimes was just a repetition and rephrasing of the quote they wrote in the first E, or sometimes just a different example from the text that supports the point but not related to the quote they provided.

Thirdly, I also felt that students were confused because the 'easier' questions that just required them to describe the plot were in the later section of the test. The way the questions in the test was structured was such that the inferential questions came before the literal questions. This did not make much sense to me, especially since I tried to use Hillocks' hierarchy of skills  in the design of the formal assessment for my group project for this ACR course. Evidently, my students also could not understand this and decided that it must be some sort of 'trick' so many students unnecessarily explained more than was required of the question.

In conclusion, the effectiveness of the test was affected by how the students were taught over the past few months and also, how the questions were structured and designed. As the Literature lessons seemed to focus on content more than skills, many students could only reproduce what they have been taught and what they have memorised, therefore defeating the purpose of the test which was supposed to evaluate how well they could explain a point.