Contagious Negativity

Back to drafting offline. The internet connexion is flakey, at best. Some sites open, others don’t. When blogspot does, I suspect that’s because most of the page is in the cache anyway. Sometimes, the page loads, but not the sign-in dialogue box...

Anyhow. Yesterday should have been a success, but turned out to be very disappointing. It started unpropitiously when it emerged during a conversation in the van on the way to college about air-conditioning, that we are liable for utility bills – gas bottles and electricity. KST went off it, with a tirade against “them” for putting us out in “the middle of nowhere and refusing to pay for our fucking electricity”. It was on the cusp between embarrassing and entertaining.

T2 and I finished the speaking tests. LM had stayed behind last night and finished the marking. I totalled up the all the placement test scores and crunched them in a spreadsheet. LM, who has taught these students in the past, looked at the scores and was pleased. And then it all started to unravel.

T2 said that she didn’t trust the speaking test criteria. I don’t know why she didn’t say this before spending two days working with them. She expressed reservations about the test validity in general, but couldn’t say what the reservations were.

To some extent, though, even if her concerns were justified, they are irrelevant because the ranking of the students is about right based on previous IELTS results and LM’s knowledge of them.

The big question now is, what level do we teach them at? I was for a small Advanced group, and two Upper Int groups, with the understanding that one of those groups will require more work, and will proceed more slowly.

T2 said that she thought these students were Intermediate, that we couldn’t teach them as Upper Int. LM said that they had been Intermediate for more than a year, that they would suffer colossal lack of face and a subsequent blow to confidence if the carried on as such...

The compromise he suggested was to use next week to do in-class assessment. That’s what we agreed to do.

I’ve come the conclusion that T2 is an idiot. Even if she does have genuine reservations about the test validity, then she needs to have reasons. Ditto the students’ levels. Sentences beginning with “I don’t feel that...” won’t wash.

Now, I can see why it could be objected that I’m feeling a personal affront because someone has slagged off my baby, “my” placement test. Actually, I’d be delighted to have anyone pick holes in it, because it’s still at the development stage, but say “I don’t think this is valid, because...” Subjectivity is out of place.

And anyway, this is criticism from someone who claims to have spent years in Spain and Mexico, and yet can’t tell a mosquito from a fruit fly.

The bottom line is, KST and T2 have got a very nasty dose of negativity and it can be contagious.