They never cease to amaze me!

Thursday is test day. I am so sick of writing them, giving them, or hearing about them. If I never hear about tests ever again, I will be a happy person. Oh well, I guess I will learn to live with it. I am getting a bit concerned with my lower class; they don't seem to be getting it at all! I am not sure if they are not taking it seriously, if there is something wrong with the way I am teaching, or what. I haven't finished with all of them yet, but the ones I have corrected don't look all that promising :(

On a slightly happier not, for the dictation, I had an interesting surprise misunderstanding of what I said. The phrase was "He sold me a swordfish." What I got was "He sold me asorted fish." The fact that he knew the word was surprising, though the spelling was off. Maybe he didn't actually know the word, and it was just a coincidence. Either way, it made me happy.

While my test only took one class, during their reading period time, they had to take another diagnostic test; this one a math test. It was mostly Algebra, geometry type questions asking about angles and such (maybe an Algebra II math course in high school). They were allowed to use dictionaries for this, and they were given an hour to do 20 questions. Some of them took the full hour!

I am not sure what this test is meant to measure. It really doesn't measure there math ability as it is in a foreign language; it doesn't really measure their English ability as they are able to use dictionaries. I proctored the test for the higher level class, and two of them left after 10 - 15 minutes. One said "I guess we are not that clever in mathematics." One who took the whole hour was a combination of frustrated and victorious. Every time he figured out what the question was and then answered it, he would silently celebrate. After he turned his test in, I learned that he was top math student at his high school, but that was all in Kurdish!

When I think about it, it does make sense to give the test this way. We have to know what level we have to start teaching at in English. There is a combination of teaching skills and teaching language specific to the field, and we are going to have to do both this summer.

It looks like there are also more students coming in soon. These ones are from the Ministry of Agriculture. I have been told that these students are fairly advanced educationally (Ph.D many of them), and they are looking mainly for conversational English as their English ability otherwise is not too bad. It may be interesting to teach them, though I am not certain how that is going to work. We have two teachers and the dean who will also teach; this is really not enough. Hopefully more teachers will be on their way soon; we need them!