This month is pure madness around here!… I can no longer count how many of my students have been and will be taking their SLE tests. Useless to mention that it affects me as much as it affects them!… Each time one of them is on the grill, I am kind of nervous myself. And it does not stop with the tests… afterwards, it is the long and painful waiting for their results which of course takes time to come in.
Monday Cyndie was the first to contact me with the results of both her reading comprehension and written expression exams: she got her B in reading but missed it by one mark in written (one lousy point!). Of course she was truly disappointed… it is always worse to miss by one answer than by many! So close… yet not close enough! I would love to see the day candidates would have access to their tests… I am convinced that, after thorough review, those who would have missed the targeted level by one or two marks would actually get their levels… only because I do know there are mistakes in those tests. I have seen too many in the sample tests (the ones that were actual tests of previous years) from Campus Direct!… For instance, today, I worked on an 80 question version sample with Christie: I counted four mistakes!… Indeed I never came across one of those tests with no mistakes.
This morning, Dave wrote me an email from Vancouver, where he is vacationing this week… once again, he missed his B!… He had taken the written expression test for the second time two weeks ago and the results came in only today!… It is unacceptable that someone has to wait for so long… yet it does not seem to bother the PPC: business as usual!…
Earlier tonight I got an email from Lauren in Edmonton… she had her oral interview over the phone this morning. She thinks she did not do too well… for some reason, she got nervous and started stumbling and looking for words in French. Also she noticed that the examiner was speaking very slowly and she took it as a bad sign… as if the person assumed that she did not understand the questions. I told her not to interprete this as a red flag: assessors within the PSC are trained to speak slowly… and some of them exaggerate! She has been told that she would probably not receive any news before seven days… Give me a break! It does not take that long to figure out someone’s results after an oral test!…
Next Monday both Luna and Christie will go for their written expression tests: one in Montreal and one in Ottawa… I am confident that both will pass! Although Christie is only seeking a B, in my book, she could easily get a C… if, of course, the tests were testing her knowledge of the language! This afternoon, I saw her for the first time and, not being a public servant, she had no clue of what was the test about… She was stunned!… and relieved that she had found me because she would have probably lost her confidence next Monday… at least, now, she knows what to expect and we will work on strategies in the next few days so that she can manage to finish the test on time with the minimum of effort. It is what this test is about: strategies on how to avoid falling into traps!… It has nothing to do with French grammar, syntax and spelling…
Christie said something that stayed we me afterwards… after about ten ridiculous questions, she said this test looked like GMAT tests… and what is the purpose of those tests?… Right! To eliminate people!… I never took such tests but she did… according to her, the similarities between the two tests are striking!… I have to admit that I find that quite disturbing… Public servants under’go months of full-time training in order to learn how to communicate in French and, then, at the end they would be tested with exams similar to those designed to eliminate people?… In other words, tests designed to have them fail?… It certainly makes me feel truly uncomfortable… yet I am not even sure that the so called panel of experts who create the tests are aware of what they are doing! Perhaps it is time to give this mandate to real experts… because so far they failed miserably!
Do they know? Yes and no… once again, the written expression test will be modified in the summer… three times in less than two years, which is quite unusual: the 55 question version (one hour) had been around for ages, with only minor modifications over the years… When they introduced the 80 question version (two hours) in October 2007, it did not take them long to realize that they had made a huge mistake: less than three months later, the results were no longer calculated in raw scores but rather in standardized scores… in June 2008, there was a new version on the market: 65 questions (90 minutes)… since they cut on the time, reducing the number of questions did not improve anything. So here they are now, launching a pilot project to test the new test that should be in effect some time this summer!
I dream of the day they will finally wake up to reality and see that changing the number of questions and adding or reducing time will not make any difference!… It is the nature and the content of the written expression test that has to be modified… They can play with numbers, raw or standardized scores and time as much as they want to, but they will never see change in the results. How much longer will it take them to see what is obvious to everyone else?… Is it because they are stubborn and will not admit that they made a mistake?… Or is it because they are truly incompetent?… I would say a little of both!… And how much longer will public servants have to be their guinea pigs?…
“Si le monde explose, la dernière voix audible sera celle d’un expert disant que la chose est impossible”
Peter Ustinov
March Madness!
This month is pure madness around here!… I can no longer count how many of my students have been and will be taking their SLE tests. Useless to mention that it affects me as much as it affects them!… Each time one of them is on the grill, I am kind of nervous myself. And it does not stop with the tests… afterwards, it is the long and painful waiting for their results which of course takes time to come in.
Monday Cyndie was the first to contact me with the results of both her reading comprehension and written expression exams: she got her B in reading but missed it by one mark in written (one lousy point!). Of course she was truly disappointed… it is always worse to miss by one answer than by many! So close… yet not close enough! I would love to see the day candidates would have access to their tests… I am convinced that, after thorough review, those who would have missed the targeted level by one or two marks would actually get their levels… only because I do know there are mistakes in those tests. I have seen too many in the sample tests (the ones that were actual tests of previous years) from Campus Direct!… For instance, today, I worked on an 80 question version sample with Christie: I counted four mistakes!… Indeed I never came across one of those tests with no mistakes.
This morning, Dave wrote me an email from Vancouver, where he is vacationing this week… once again, he missed his B!… He had taken the written expression test for the second time two weeks ago and the results came in only today!… It is unacceptable that someone has to wait for so long… yet it does not seem to bother the PPC: business as usual!…
Earlier tonight I got an email from Lauren in Edmonton… she had her oral interview over the phone this morning. She thinks she did not do too well… for some reason, she got nervous and started stumbling and looking for words in French. Also she noticed that the examiner was speaking very slowly and she took it as a bad sign… as if the person assumed that she did not understand the questions. I told her not to interprete this as a red flag: assessors within the PSC are trained to speak slowly… and some of them exaggerate! She has been told that she would probably not receive any news before seven days… Give me a break! It does not take that long to figure out someone’s results after an oral test!…
Next Monday both Luna and Christie will go for their written expression tests: one in Montreal and one in Ottawa… I am confident that both will pass! Although Christie is only seeking a B, in my book, she could easily get a C… if, of course, the tests were testing her knowledge of the language! This afternoon, I saw her for the first time and, not being a public servant, she had no clue of what was the test about… She was stunned!… and relieved that she had found me because she would have probably lost her confidence next Monday… at least, now, she knows what to expect and we will work on strategies in the next few days so that she can manage to finish the test on time with the minimum of effort. It is what this test is about: strategies on how to avoid falling into traps!… It has nothing to do with French grammar, syntax and spelling…
Christie said something that stayed we me afterwards… after about ten ridiculous questions, she said this test looked like GMAT tests… and what is the purpose of those tests?… Right! To eliminate people!… I never took such tests but she did… according to her, the similarities between the two tests are striking!… I have to admit that I find that quite disturbing… Public servants under’go months of full-time training in order to learn how to communicate in French and, then, at the end they would be tested with exams similar to those designed to eliminate people?… In other words, tests designed to have them fail?… It certainly makes me feel truly uncomfortable… yet I am not even sure that the so called panel of experts who create the tests are aware of what they are doing! Perhaps it is time to give this mandate to real experts… because so far they failed miserably!
Do they know? Yes and no… once again, the written expression test will be modified in the summer… three times in less than two years, which is quite unusual: the 55 question version (one hour) had been around for ages, with only minor modifications over the years… When they introduced the 80 question version (two hours) in October 2007, it did not take them long to realize that they had made a huge mistake: less than three months later, the results were no longer calculated in raw scores but rather in standardized scores… in June 2008, there was a new version on the market: 65 questions (90 minutes)… since they cut on the time, reducing the number of questions did not improve anything. So here they are now, launching a pilot project to test the new test that should be in effect some time this summer!
I dream of the day they will finally wake up to reality and see that changing the number of questions and adding or reducing time will not make any difference!… It is the nature and the content of the written expression test that has to be modified… They can play with numbers, raw or standardized scores and time as much as they want to, but they will never see change in the results. How much longer will it take them to see what is obvious to everyone else?… Is it because they are stubborn and will not admit that they made a mistake?… Or is it because they are truly incompetent?… I would say a little of both!… And how much longer will public servants have to be their guinea pigs?…
“Si le monde explose, la dernière voix audible sera celle d’un expert disant que la chose est impossible”
Peter Ustinov