Final Proctorings
Yesterday, Monday 1 August, was my final day of proctoring. I had a 0900 and a 1500.
Not much going on in between. I turned my extra hours sheet into Ms. N and we visited about her thesis. She is diligently working on the corrections I gave her. I will be able to look at it next week.
I did see our Chair this morning. We discussed the Businessweek collage the students did a couple of weeks ago. Told her I had already narrowed them down to the five finalist and asked her to go look at them. We will get together next week to choose the top three.
BusinessWeek did a contest for our Reading in Business English students and it was a real success. When the students finally got into putting together their concept of "Globalization," we did not have enough space for all the students to work. Even my "thugs (I call them that because they kind of act like thugs some times)" had a great time putting together a collage of pictures from the magazine.
The morning proctoring went slowly. Again, I do not remember what the exam was. I did get to listen to my bluegrass a little bit before the batteries died.
The afternoon proctoring was in one of the big rooms SM509. We had five proctors and so it is rather enjoyable. Three of the proctors were from Business English and one I knew from her teaching Western Civilization. Here is what I learned concerning testing and such at AU:
Students are often paid to steal exams from the exam rooms. The payment comes from the tutoring places located outside AU. There seems to be big baht to be made in tutoring students for their tests. This is why we proctors are given a single row to worry about. I was clueless. The students have to return their entire tests to the appropriate proctor.
Also, the two biggest money makers for the tutoring schools are Western Civ and World Civ. Woa! They sometimes pay students to take really good notes so they can transform these into Thai and charge around 800 or 1000 baht per student to get tudored in Thai. These tutoring schools are not very nice in that they encourage students to sneak out the tests, get a teachers powerpoint lecture or other such things.
Now I know why I feel like I am talking to a class full of "n shows." About half the class never pays attention. They attend for the credit (80% attendance is mandatory at AU) and then pay the baht to get tutored.
The test results of the World Civ test pretty well proves this information to be true. We have a new book, new teachers and the students did miserably on the test.
Now how to overcome the language barrier, the tutoring barrier and the lazy barrier and have my students get interested in World Civ. Maybe I should just go back to my Reading classes and be happy. Nope, I will solve these problems one way or the other.
The day ended without an incident and very rainy. I will be off until Thursday, 4 August.
Not much going on in between. I turned my extra hours sheet into Ms. N and we visited about her thesis. She is diligently working on the corrections I gave her. I will be able to look at it next week.
I did see our Chair this morning. We discussed the Businessweek collage the students did a couple of weeks ago. Told her I had already narrowed them down to the five finalist and asked her to go look at them. We will get together next week to choose the top three.
BusinessWeek did a contest for our Reading in Business English students and it was a real success. When the students finally got into putting together their concept of "Globalization," we did not have enough space for all the students to work. Even my "thugs (I call them that because they kind of act like thugs some times)" had a great time putting together a collage of pictures from the magazine.
The morning proctoring went slowly. Again, I do not remember what the exam was. I did get to listen to my bluegrass a little bit before the batteries died.
The afternoon proctoring was in one of the big rooms SM509. We had five proctors and so it is rather enjoyable. Three of the proctors were from Business English and one I knew from her teaching Western Civilization. Here is what I learned concerning testing and such at AU:
Students are often paid to steal exams from the exam rooms. The payment comes from the tutoring places located outside AU. There seems to be big baht to be made in tutoring students for their tests. This is why we proctors are given a single row to worry about. I was clueless. The students have to return their entire tests to the appropriate proctor.
Also, the two biggest money makers for the tutoring schools are Western Civ and World Civ. Woa! They sometimes pay students to take really good notes so they can transform these into Thai and charge around 800 or 1000 baht per student to get tudored in Thai. These tutoring schools are not very nice in that they encourage students to sneak out the tests, get a teachers powerpoint lecture or other such things.
Now I know why I feel like I am talking to a class full of "n shows." About half the class never pays attention. They attend for the credit (80% attendance is mandatory at AU) and then pay the baht to get tutored.
The test results of the World Civ test pretty well proves this information to be true. We have a new book, new teachers and the students did miserably on the test.
Now how to overcome the language barrier, the tutoring barrier and the lazy barrier and have my students get interested in World Civ. Maybe I should just go back to my Reading classes and be happy. Nope, I will solve these problems one way or the other.
The day ended without an incident and very rainy. I will be off until Thursday, 4 August.
posted by Cecil Hill @ 4:50 PM
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