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Vocabulary verb patterns (1)
Getting results Skills Reading: an article
Listening: stories about exams

QUICK REVIEW Auxiliaries Write four interesting things
El a Read the article again. Tick the true
about yourself or people you know. Work in pairs. Take turns sentences. Correct the false ones.
to say your sentences. Respond with an echo question and
a follow-up question. A I've been scuba diving a few times. The writer thinks that:
B Have you? Where did you go? 1 children are tested at too young an age. 5
2 parents should make their children study
harder for exams. '
3 there is no value in exams. '
Speaking, Reading and Vocabulary
4 our educational system encourages
D a Work in groups. Make a list of positive and negative things original thinking. '
about exams. 5 schools can't ever prepare students for
the future. 5
b Read the magazine article. Choose the best title A-C. Which,
if any, of the things on your list in 1a are mentioned in the article? 6 exams aren't the only way to evaluate ability. 5
7 some talented children go unnoticed. 5
A All exams are a necessary evil
B Exams discourage creativity b Work in pairs. Compare answers. Do
c Exams are no longer necessary you agree with the arguments in the article?
Why? /Why not?

I Monica Bolton looks at the relationship between testing and creativity

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I remember spending hours worst thing you can make." He because a child fails an exam
in exam rooms pouring out facts says we have to stop thinking this doesn't mean they are a failure.
that I had squeezed into my brain way. We are, after all, supposed They might be a brilliant inventor
the night before. That is what
to be educating children for the
or computer programmer, a
I exams force us to do. It's an future, but we have no idea what wonderful singer or comedian.
today's kids will need to do in
input-output model and there is
Still, most of us continue
generally only a right or a wrong
answer. However, according to their working lives. To prepare to believe we can only achieve
success through passing more
them, Robinson believes we
ave you ever stopped to educationalist Ken Robinson, 'If should try to develop learning and more exams when there
Hconsider how stressful school you're not prepared to be wrong, environments where they are are so many who manage
life is becoming because of tests you will never come up with encouraged to be creative and to succeed without them.
and exams? Why on earth do we anything original ... and we are discover things for themselves. Try googling the biographies of
make kids do tests in their second running national educational We should also remember to young entrepreneurs such as
year of primary school? This just systems where mistakes are the see them as individuals. Just Adam Hildreth, who started
encourages parents to pile on a social networking site called
the pressure. I know seven-year- Dubit Limited when he was
olds who have private tuition to SILENCE fourteen and ended up being
EXAM IN
help them pass their maths test! worth millions. Obviously, he
PROGRESS
And there are parents who coach believed he could achieve his
their three-year-olds so they can goals without passing the right
perform well in their interview for exams. His motivation came from
the 'right nursery school'. How do doing something he wanted to
you interview a three-year-old? "I do, he enjoyed being creative.
see from your CV, young Tom, you Of course, no one wants to
didn't do very much in the first fly with a pilot or be treated
six months of your life. Why was by a doctor who hasn't proved
that?!" I also know parents who their ability by passing exams.
don't allow their children to go However, how many more Adam
out near exam time. They expect Hildreths are sitting in classrooms
them to stay in and study every around the world just being
night and they refuse to let them tested and tested instead of being
play sport, watch TV or listen to discovered? Surely education
music. No wonder kids resent should encourage, not discourage
having to do exams. creativity? •