Each year the 10th grade students go through a series of exams at the end of the year. These exas are in all of their subjects (math, science, social studies, English, Norwegian, and their chosen foreign language). The students are randomly chosen to receive either oral or written exams in these topics. Not all students take all the exams. Prior to the exams, the teachers often give the students a chance to practice by organizing mock exams. I was a part of the English mock orals.
The day before the oral exams, the students chose one of the following topics from a hat:
Indigenous people
What does it really mean to be indigenous?
There are still a lot of indigenous groups of people around the world today. This topic has a wide variety of challenges and aspects to it.
You are hereby asked to present this topic in a way that will shed some light upon how history has created changes in their way of life.
Migration
What does migration really mean?
Migration is a phenomenon that has increased
You are hereby asked to give an outline of challenges/problems immigrants (or migrants) face.
Cold War
What does the word cold war really mean?
You are hereby asked to discuss historical events and explain how war in general affects soldiers and civilians.
Future Jobs
The world of work is changing and people will have to be prepared to change jobs several times during their working life.
You are hereby asked to give an outline of what career options young people have today, and what factors that need to be considered in order to make the ”right” decision (i.e. what is right for you).
Culture
Culture is a word that means different things to different people. Culture could be music, books, film, sport – and a wide variety of other issues too.
You are hereby asked to give an outline of what the term culture embodies, and what it means to you.
World Wide English
English is a language that is spoken in a number of countries and nations throughout the world today. There are other nations besides Great Britain and The United States that have English as their mother tongue.
You are hereby asked to present countries/nations that have English as their native language, and discuss/compare issues such as geography, demography and culture.
News
The media is often said to be the fourth government force (statsmakt), and is very influential when it comes to a lot of important issues in society. Every day we witness things that could be made into news stories, and we see news reports on TV, hear about incidents on the radio, and we read about them on the internet and in newspapers.
You are hereby asked to give a short presentation of the different types of media we have, and what kind of challenges journalists meet when they are going to present an event in different kinds of media.
The schedule for the two days is as follows:
The students were given 24 hours to put together a 7-10 minute oral presentation about the chosen topic. During the oral exam, the student comes into an empty classroom with two examiners (in this case it was Renate and me). The student sets up any visual aids that he/she will be using, gives the examiner an outline of his/her presentation, and then begins the presentation. At the end, the classroom teacher (for us it was Renate) asks several questions of the student. The outside examiner can ask questions as well, but usually it is the classroom teacher who does this. The idea is that it offers the student a chance to be successful rather than trying to trip a student up with a difficult question. The student is more comfortable with the classroom teacher, the teacher also knows what the student can do and can better pose questions that offer the student an opportunity to show what he/she can do.After 5 minutes or so of questioning, the student leaves the classroom and the two examiners discuss the presentation and agree on a grade. The following rubric is used:
The English aims (what we would call standards) for 10th grade are as follows:
Language learning
The aims are that the pupil shall be able to
- use various situations, work methods and strategies to learn English
- identify important linguistic similarities and differences between English and the native language and use this knowledge in his or her own language learning
- use various aids critically and independently
- use basic terminology to describe grammar and text structure
- describe and assess his/her own work in learning English
Communication
The aims are that the pupil shall be able to
- master vocabulary that covers a range of topics
- use basic grammatical and text structures of English orally and in writing
- understand spoken and written texts on a variety of topics
- express himself/herself in writing and orally with some precision, fluency and coherence
- adapt his/her spoken and written English to the genre and situation
- present and discuss current events and interdisciplinary topics
- read and understand texts of different lengths and genres
- select listening, speaking, reading and writing strategies adapted to the purpose and situation
- write texts that narrate, describe, argue or give messages, with the appropriate basic structure and adequate paragraphing
- use content from various sources independently and critically
- demonstrate the ability to distinguish positively and negatively loaded expressions referring to individuals and groups
- communicate via digital media
- describe and interpret graphic representations of statistics and other data
Culture, society and literature
The aims are that the pupil shall be able to
- discuss the way young people live, how they socialise, their views on life and values in Great Britain, the USA, other English-speaking countries and Norway
- explain features of history and geography in Great Britain and the USA
- describe the situation for some indigenous peoples in English-speaking countries
- recognise some regional accents from English-speaking countries
- read and discuss a representative selection of literary texts from the genres poetry, short stories, novels and drama from the English-speaking world
- describe theme and composition in texts and visual expressions
- prepare and discuss his/her own oral or written texts inspired by literature and art
We used two rubrics to help us determine the final grade. The first one was to help me understand what a 6 or a 4 was supposed to represent.
The other rubric was used to take notes and was the official rubric in which Renate documented the score and comments. Renate translated it for me there (so I will put the quick English translation in parenthesis). It was as follows:
I am always impressed with the students’ grasp of English and once again I was thoroughly amazed at what the students were able to do. So I think I fulfilled the stereotype of US teachers in that I was much more generous in the grades than Renate was (though since it was mock orals, and she thought it would encourage the students, she gave the students the generous grade).
I did find several things interesting from this experience. The first I liked how the teacher had to give the grade and feedback directly to the student. No written documentation is given to the student (which is one thing I think might help the students because they are so nervous that I am not sure they remember everything that is told to them in English about their presentation). The students’ outlines were not in any official outline format as was the case with their references they cited. This was interesting because often teachers in the US focus so much on the appropriate format for the outline/references that the actual content suffers. The last thing I enjoyed listening to was the presentations in and of themselves. They often took very different perspectives on the topics which was just a further reminder of how our students often represent our own views.
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