Tests and short-term memory

It is said that we humans can hold only three items in short term memory at any one time. So, there is a continual shuffling of material between short and long term memory, all happening at incredible speeds, which is why our thoughts can seem so chaotic at times.

Yet, if we think of this in the light of helping students to study more effectively, we certainly would not overwhelm them with mock test papers to do, but instead would give them three concepts to study, test those extensively, then do three more, test those etc. and repeat the formula the next day with the exact same set of concepts, but different tests.

In this way, we would utilise short-term memory most effectively, promote the retention of information as the short term memory repeatedly shuttles the information to long term and back again, and prepare our students for tests far better than we do if we simply have them write mock tests, give them the answers and then proceed to test them for real.

Grading on the curve

I've completed the 'speaking test' for two out of the three grades here in middle school, and will complete the remaining grade tomorrow.

As we were giving feedback to the completed grades, I once again realised just how futile my efforts to educate are, given the following:

Points scored in main test Points Awarded Points scored in speaking test Points Awarded

16 - 20 20 6 - 7 10

13 - 15 19 4 - 5  9

10 - 12 18 2 - 3  8

 7 -  9 17 0 - 1  7

 0 - 6 16

From this it can be seen that a student who has scored 0 on both tests will still have 23 out of a possible 30 points! If this is how the English grading works, I'm pretty sure that the other subjects follow suit.

Why, oh why, should anyone try to learn in such circumstances? Those students who love learning for its own sake are the 30 out of 30 students, but for how long can they remain motivated by that? They end up expending their efforts on the subjects they love, and blow off the rest since they will pass anyway!

And, even worse, the attitude to a test being meaningless carries over until they are then confronted with one that does, and then the stress sets in and we have students killing themselves because of the failure they were set up for.