Mixer #140 | Intermediate B1

Tasking Tests

Listen to six people share their thoughts on tests and whether they help people learn.

Script
Vocab
Quiz

Rese / Botswana
I think test do help people learn, because they give you the opportunity to evaluate how much you know and how far you've gone with whatever it is that you're learning, and they give you a chance to also see how close you are with your peers in the class.

Lindsay / United States
I think tests help people learn, because they hold you accountable for information. Otherwise, even with myself, if I know I'm not being tested on it, I might write it down, but I'm not going to absolutely spend the time to sit and learn it, so they hold you accountable. That's why people are--

Sunny / Korea
Yeah, definitely, I think tests help you to learn, because they can review the things and then organize the knowledge in a systematic way, too, when they prepare for tests, and they can adopt many learning technologies when they prepare for tests.

Paul / England
I think tests are good in a sense that students are able to kind of organize their study. I think overreliance on tests is a bad thing, whereby the test result dominates the student concerns. The focus should be, I think, more about learning rather than test-taking.

Katia / Mexico
I do not think that tests help people learn. I actually believe it's quite the opposite: tests would stress some people and it tends to make the students memorize rather than learn. So, I really don't believe that tests help students learn.

Tim / United States
I think some tests are good because they motivate people to learn. But I think a lot of people have the tendency to study for a test very hard, to do well on a test and not really appreciate what they're learning, because they're only concerned about just getting a good grade on the test.

Learn Vocabulary from the Lesson!

evaluate

Tests give you the opportunity to evaluate how much you know.

When you evaluate something, you rate it by quality. Notice the following:

We need to evaluate the results.
Students always evaluate the teacher at the end of term.

hold accountable

Tests hold you accountable for information.

If you hold someone accountable, you make them take responsibility for their actions. Notice the following:

The man was held accountable for his crime.
The boss holds all the sales people accountable for sales revenue.

systematic

They can organize the knowledge in a systematic way.

If something is systematic, it follows a designed process or system. Notice the following:

She has a systematic way of thinking.
His approach to teaching is very systematic.

overreliance

I think overreliance on tests is a bad thing.

If you have an overreliance on something, that means you rely on it more than you should. Notice the following:

There is an overreliance on computers in education these days.
We can all agree that we have an overreliance on our cell phones. We can't live without them.

appreciate