TEM 4 exam

Test for English Majors Grade 4

This is the major exam that all Sophomore English majors are required to take at the beginning of April. It has sections that test the student's listening, reading, writing, and speaking skills. Although I can not speak for the reading and writing portions of the exam, I can give some hints about the listening and speaking parts. I find that my students typically struggle in three major areas. Two of them are listening and one is speaking. The first and perhaps the most problematic area for my students is the NEWS section.

This section of the exam involves the students listening to several VOA or BBC newscasts and answering questions that are either fill-in-the-blank or multiple choice. To help my students prepare for this portion of the exam, I have them listen to a podcast called "Deutche Welle: Asia Compact." This is available through iTunes under the podcast section or you can get it online from http://www.dw-world.de/dw/0,,266,00.html you just need to search for Asia Compact. I recommend getting it through iTunes because the Chinese government tends to block the Deutche Welle English homepage, although you can get to it through a proxy. I use this one because it involves speakers with many accents and they tend to speak slightly slower than CNN or BBC newscasters do, but faster than VOA newscasters. While they are listening to it, I have the students answer 2 or 3 questions about each news section. This ability to listen and write an answer at the same time comes into play in a much more focused way in the second problem area.

The second listening area that my students tend to struggle with is the dictation portion of the exam. For this there are myriad websites that can assist teachers who need to get their students to be able to listen and write at the same time. One that I particularly like is http://www.englishclub.com/webguide/Listening/Dictation/ as there are several options and difficulty levels. The TEM 4 exam will read a short essay of two or three paragraphs to the students four times. Once at almost normal speed, twice at really slow speed, and the final time at almost normal speed again. Another good website for dictations is http://www.dictationsonline.com/ . All you have to do is play the dictation in class. Most of the websites will read the exercise three times; once at normal speed, once slow (with punctuation) and a final time at normal speed. This makes the practice harder than the actual exam, which I think is a good thing.

The third problem area for my students tends to be in spoken grammar. This is because they do not practice English outside of class except occasionally in e-mails or text messages to their instructors. As a result, they have very poor spoken and written grammar. Since the one is directly related to the other, I force my students to use good grammar in their homework by taking away points for gross mistakes. This was a shock to many of my students at first, but now they are beginning to get the point. Another good thing to do is to have them recite speeches or short stories to the class. This way they hear themselves speaking and using good grammar and are more likely to correct themselves.