SAT Test

6 thoughts on “SAT Test”

1. Robert Harrell

   June 5, 2012 at 6:53 pm

   I can’t comment on the SAT test because I am unfamiliar with it. I will comment on your student’s goals.

   It seems to me that she has bought into extrinsic motivation. Her goal is not “to learn Spanish”, rather it is to “get into the SAT Spanish class”. Somehow I doubt it is because the class represents the pinnacle of language acquisition at your school. Instead, it probably represents of the pinnacle of the college entrance game. Chances are good that she will finish the SAT class, take the test and, if she does well on it, never take another Spanish class again. Why? Because the extrinsic motivation will be gone – she’s won the game – and she never had the intrinsic motivation to learn the language for the sake of actually communicating with someone in it.

   I may be totally off base because I have never met the girl, but your comment about “an odd feeling” tends to make me think this is the case.

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2. Ben Slavic

   June 5, 2012 at 8:27 pm

   You fricking rock, Robert. The Chevalier de l’Ouest hits the target again.

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3. lori f

   June 6, 2012 at 8:22 am

   I took a practice SAP Spanish test just to see what it was like. Of course, this was an abbreviated version (33 questions instead of 85, with no listening part). It was mostly reading comprehension and choosing which word should go in the blank in the passage. Some of the choices were different verb tenses, some were prepositions, but most were vocabulary. It felt just like any other SAT reading kind of test.

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4. chill

   June 10, 2012 at 10:51 pm

   Some colleges, I have heard from the kids, require 2 SAT II tests. With about 120 hours a year of seat time, I discourage my kids unless they want to spend some time doing some heavy duty test prep. I have heard colleagues say that the SAT II is more difficult than the old AP Language exam.

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   1. jen

      June 11, 2012 at 5:18 am

      This is my intuition about the whole thing. Kids who take it, from our school at least, do not do very well. Not surprising. They have only had the 120 hours of seat time, and then they spend a whole semester studying for the test. So they start out with a very shaky foundation and then try to build up a ton at the last minute, but it is all this random vocab rammed down their throats and lots of practice tests. I just don’t see what the point is. 1) They don’t improve their use of language, and 2) They don’e even do all that well on the test. ??? Glad I am not really involved. I just hope that over time, the level 5 class might not be all about this test. Talk about turning kids off and whittling away the upper levels! This year I had 8 kids in level 4. Next year only 1 signed up for level 5.

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5. Ben Slavic

   June 11, 2012 at 6:08 pm

   Upper levels need comprehension based instruction. They are not yet ready to output the language in the form of writing and speaking. Not really. That shift from input (years of listening and reading) occurs so wonderfully, even startlingly, when the wiring created by years and years of input finally starts to naturally produce output.

   We all know that our students, after four or five years of secondary instruction, have barely approached a point where natural output can occur (at the end of four years they still have experienced less than 1,000 hours of the 10,000 needed hours for natural output).

   Testing is the same way. They can’t write because the’re not ready, and studies have shown that writing more doesn’t make one a better writer. They can’t do grammar because they never heard real grammar (properly spoken language). They can’t speak because they are barely 10% of the way to being able to output speech.

   They can’t understand the spoken language because their teacher rarely spoke in the classroom when they were first learning. They can’t read it because they never heard enough language*, nor did they practice reading any where near enough for those tests, which are written by people who have nothing better to do than try to trick smart kids with “Gotcha!” type questions.

   If we still want to play the old 20th century game of preparing bright students for tests, I suppose there is nothing to stop us. It is natural for us to want to know how our CI trained kids would do. But, when I think about upper levels classes, I think of fully CI classes, not test prep classes.

   Upper level classes aren’t really upper level, and are nowhere near Intermediate Low, anyway. Why call them advanced classes? They are not advanced. Keep the CI flowing. Reading and discussion of same in the TL would occur most in my own advanced classes. Test prep? Been there, done that. No thanks.

   *they need to have heard the language to be able to read

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