TOEFL Teacher Topics: When Only Half the Class Will Take the Test
When teaching ESL, you may find yourself with a mix of students who are preaparing to take the TOEFL and students who have no intention of taking the test. When I worked at a language school, I would regularly have students who were placed in my class because their language skills were strong and academic English would present a larger challenge for them or because they worked in an industry where they might be expected to know and write in more formal English. Although each situation was unique, having some students who really didn't need to take the test in my class every day made me slightly change the way that I approached the material. Though we still covered test taking strategies for the majority of the students who would eventually take the exam, I placed a great emphasis on why the skill would be useful after the test.
The detail questions, on the TOEFL, for example, are really just a way of testing someone's paraphrasing abilities. By shifting my perspective, I presented this to my students as paraphrasing in English primarily and then I showed them how detail questions are an example of this. The paraphrasing skill is one that goes far beyond the TOEFL; it led to a cultural discussion of plagiarism at the high school and university level. We talked about how teachers and even reporters giving interviews paraphrase to check for understanding. We spoke about how many tests--not just standardized college entrance exams--use this in order to generate questions. In other words, paraphrasing became a skill that wasn't being learned for the TOEFL. It was an essential skill needed to navigate the world in English for everyone in the room.
This situation also made me think outside the box about the material I would give the students to practice with. Suddenly I felt like I had more flexibility and could be less tied to the book. I could still give students real practice engaging with a text that was written at a difficult level, but now I felt I could look at popular websites and publications for inspiration. Students were more interested when they could listen to a video clip from PBS about new medical research or read passages from the History Channel's Hungry History section. For those who were preparing to take the test, they could see that practice material was all around them. For those who weren't, they additional learned something that they could use to make small talk with others.
Keeping the focus on the English skills being learned will help test-takers and non-test takers alike feel like they are making important progress.
-Danielle
