Teaching Students to Grade Quizzes

This semester--in a continually evolving process about how best to teach English to my students--I find myself doing many more vocabulary quizzes.

I say the word, and the students write the word in both English and Korean.

In order to check the quizzes (usually consisting of 6-12 words) the students exchange papers and check each others' spelling/writing.  Because of my limited Korean-language ability this is really the only option, and it usually works well.

However, sometimes--like today--the process can be very frustrating.  In this case it was a class of 2nd-3rd grade students who have not done this type of quiz process before.  They had a problem with grading the quizzes accurately, to the point where I had to keep changing some of the grades.

Then some of the students got into a disagreement about the correct Korean translation, so I had to take two tests and ask my director (Korean) which translation was correct.

Hopefully the process will become easier and faster, as it currently takes too much class time.

On the plus side, I am learning some Korean vocabulary, and I have found out that, for example, the English words "sweater" and "truck" are the same in Korean (but pronounced quite differently).

This kind of quiz and homework checking is something that our students need to learn how to do, but it does try my patience, especially when my correction tape runs out (as it did).