[etni] nba
- From: "Sharon Tzur" <sharontzu5@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "etni" <etni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 15:37:55 +0300
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Dear Etniers:
I share everyone else's frustration. I took only 2/3 of my 5 point 11th
grade class to E this year - (The weaker students took C or C & D so they
will have the "insurance" of a 4 point bagrut by winter of next year) and
the results were poor - and very far from the results they had gotten all
year.
I hope that this year's E was an aberration. I think it was a strange text
to begin with, and there were three questions which I would term
"problematic" and that is a lot out of 7 questions. But I also think some of
the problems are not related to this specific test but to the NBA in
general, and perhaps they can be addressed.
In the old oral literature bagrut, our instructions were to award 60% for
"level 1" questions - questions about what is written "in black and white",
another 20% for answering level 2 questions (about themes, characterization,
etc,) and another 20% for answering level 3 questions (on the work "as
literature"). I think the same type of scale should be used for reading
comprehension. 60% - 70% for understanding what is written in black and
white, another 30%- 40% for questions that demand higher level cognitive
reasoning. (I would favor a 70/30 ration) It seems to me that in the new
bagrut, there are too few questions of basic understanding and too many
questions that demand cognitive processing skills.
Imagine the old lit exam again. Student A got 60 - could only answer level 1
questions, , Student B got 80 and student C got 100. Then imagine that the
instructions were changed and the students were asked to answer ONLY level 3
questions. The same students, tested in that manner, would get 0, 0, and 100
respectively. In other words, the test would show us what Student A and
Student B DIDN'T understand, but it would not show us what they DID
understand.
Again, I think the NBA should be written with the same principle in mind (as
I wrote above). I think it will be difficult to do this with so few
questions, and I really don't see why students can't be given 10 questions
instead of the current 5 to 7 (depending on the module). More questions
would provide a more accurate measure of the student's ability and would
allow for a wider range of question "levels".
I read the comment about students "coming up the pipeline" who will
theoretically have more experience with advanced reading skills. I hate to
be pessimistic, but I don't see it. As far as I can see, there is no
state-wide program for enhancing reading comprehension skills. I was pleased
to see that my daughter - who is now going into 7th grade - , had some
exercises in reading comp skills such as sequencing, guessing what comes
next, etc., but that was back when she was in 2nd grade. Except for a few
exercises then, and a few more in 4th grade, very little was done in reading
comp. In fact, when I asked my daughter about it just now, she thought of
reading comprehension only in terms of tests she had to take. not something
she spent time LEARNING or practicing. The Hebrew Language subject deals
mostly with grammar, and Hebrew literature is fine, but reading literature
is not the same as reading non-fiction prose. Furthermore, students did not
have a reading program that demanded they read books!! Therefore, I really
don't see why we should expect students coming up the pipeline to be better
prepared. Quite the contrary; I think that the students we are getting are
progressively worse in language skills, including reading comp, simply
because so few of them do any reading. Also, I think that many of the
students are not developmentally ready to deal with some of the higher
cognitive phases of reading comprehension until they are in High School. And
again, in High School, these skill are not being taught in any systematic
way. (If only we had some pull at the ministry. one of the things that this
country needs is a systematic program that helps foster good (Hebrew/Arabic)
reading skills and language skills, including a systematic program of
extensive reading that would go from 2nd grade up through 12th grade.)
In addition to all that, there is the question of whether the higher
cognitive processing skills CAN be taught or not to begin with. My
impression, after many years of teaching, is that you can enhance a
student's ability to process a text, but only to a certain degree. For years
I have felt the frustration of some of my students (many of them LD
students, but not all) who have a great deal of difficulty with the higher
levels of text processing, despite the work that we do fostering reading
comprehension skills. This is another reason to make sure that a significant
number of points be awarded for an understanding of the text that does not
demand the highest level of processing skills - again, to allow all students
to show not only what they can't do, but also what they CAN do.
I'd also like to comment on the deductions. Take a 10 point questions of F
or G; a student lost 3 points for any grammar mistake - another 2 points for
any spelling mistake, and 3 points for extra information. This meant that a
student with all 3 mistakes lost 8 out of 10 points. I think that is too
much. I would propose that the deduction for grammar not be 3 points
automatically, but be 1-3 points, depending on the severity of the mistake.
I would propose 1 point off for mistakes of articles (not using "the" or
"an", etc), 2 points off for minor mistakes of form (such as forgetting the
"s" in 3rd person singular verbs) and 3 points only for mistakes that
interfere with comprehension of the answer, such as the wrong tense, or
misuse of passives, or wrong part of speech. I also think that deductions
for x-tra info could vary - 1-3 points - 1 or 2 points off for just a bit of
extra information - especially if it is not totally unrelated to the
question, and 3 points off only where it seems that the student copied out a
whole passage in hopes that the right answer is in there somewhere. This
would mean that a student with a very minor grammar mistake, a spelling
mistake, and just a bit of xtra info, would get 5 or 6 out of 10 rather than
2 out of 10.
Yours,
Sharon Tzur
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