EXAMINATION (OPEN BOOK TESTS)

     

     Hello everyone! I am back! :D So, today's post will be about OPEN BOOK TESTS. Well, I am sure everyone of you have experiences about open book tests during your school life and I can say that most of you would rather have open book test than normal quiz. The reason i chose this topic is because I personally favor open book tests too rather than pop quiz. Open book tests are easier and it can tests if the students are quick enough to catch on the content of the particular topic. 

     

     Open book tests are simple and easy as it only need the teachers to prepare questions and the students to bring their own books for the tests. The students only need to open their books and search for their answers and copy the answers from the books. That is why students favor open book tests than quiz because they do not need to think for the answers as they can get the answers from the books. 

     Since 2013, our Malaysia's exam system has started to implement Paper 3 for the History paper. Students are allow to bring in any reference books that they want into the exam hall because this Paper 3 is an open book test. We have a type of thinking that we don't have to study for open book tests because we can get the answers from the books. But, if we ourselves are involved for this paper, we would realize that open book tests also required preparations.

     Here, I would like to share a few tips on the preparations for open book tests. The first tip is to prepare brief and concise notes on the ideas and concepts that will be tested. Since there will be lots of questions that you need to answers in an open book test, it is important to prepare brief and concise notes because it helps you to save a lot of time during the exam. The second tip is carefully select what you intend to bring with you to the exam. Some students think that it is a good idea to bring all their reference book into the exam hall. However, you need to understand that you do not have a lot of time to flip all the reference books that you brought into the examination hall. Hence, choose only those you need to use into the exam hall. The third tip is to list out the data and formulas that you learnt and available in the books. When you list out all the important data and formulas, you can save a lot of time during the exam as you do not need to flip every single pages to look for the formula you needed. 

     My opinion about this open book tests is that if there is open book tests, students will become too reliable on the books and they will not study much about the subject. The students know that the answers will be in the books and all they need to do is to open their books and look for the answers. They know that if they search through the books, they will eventually found the answers for the questions. The students will become lazy and will not study for their examinations. As for the ways to improve this type of assessment, teachers can set questions that requires the students to think creatively. If in Malaysian's education context, this type of question is called KBKK question. Through this type of questions, teachers are able to see if their students are able to answer questions that they cannot get the answers from the textbook. They can see if the students can think creatively and answer the questions that needed their own opinions. 

     

     Open book tests is a way to assess the students but the teachers need to know how exactly they want to evaluate the students. Students love open book tests so teachers can have open book tests once in a while to let the students enjoy the examination process. 

     I think that's all from me today. Have a good day everyone! :) 

Oral Speaking

     For my third topic related to assessment, I decided to talk about Oral Speaking. If you are a Malaysian student, you will be familiar with this term. Throughout the eleven years of schooling, from elementary school to secondary school, i believe that you had gone through oral speaking for the BM and BI subjects. And if you went to Form Six before, I am sure you had gone through the MUET examination too, where there is four paper for the MUET examination. The reason I chose this topic is because oral speaking is a common test in our country and I would like to share some tips on how to do well for oral speaking or oral presentation.

     The purpose of this assessment is to evaluate the students' language pronunciation and proficiency, their on the spot reaction and also their creativity in answering the teacher's questions during the Question and Answer (Q&A) session. When I was in the secondary school, our teacher always let us choose our own oral speaking's topics. She will give us two to three weeks to prepare for our oral speaking. During the actual day of presentation, she will be sitting at the back of the class and she will observe and assess our presentation. She will be evaluating our topic, whether it is interesting and caught people's attention, our language pronunciation and proficiency and after our presentation, she will ask a few questions regarding our presentation topic, to see whether we did our preparation fully and understand the topic that we presented.

     There are people who are good in speaking in front of the crowd and there are people who don't. There are actually a few tips on how you can do well for your oral speaking. The first tip is to pick a suitable topic. For oral speaking, there will always be a problem, that is not knowing which topic to pick and talk about. It is important for you to surf through the internet and look for topic that caught your eye. If you read through an article and you yourself find it interesting, bookmark the page or website first and look for another topic. Prepare a few topics and choose the best one out of it later.

     The second tip is to practice and time your presentation. After you prepare for the script of the topic that you wanted to present, always remember to practice and time yourself. I myself is the type where I don't practice for my presentation. I only read through the script for a few times and this actually cause me trouble. I tend to forgot what I wanted to present. That is why we have to practice so that we do not forget about what we wanted to say to the audience. For timing, while you are practicing your script, have a timer with you so that it is easy for you to time yourself. Timing yourself is important because you need to know how long you are going to present. A long presentation will make your audience bored whereas a short presentation makes people think that you didn't prepare well enough for your presentation. Always remember to time yourself so that your presentation isn't too long or too short.
 

     The third tip is use visuals sparingly. I am sure all of you had gone through presentation process before and it is really boring when your friends keep on talking without showing you any pictures. Or, your friend put up too many photos and you do not know where to look at. It is important that we use images sparingly as images help to attract the audiences' attention and it can effectively help to deliver your messages.

     And the last tip is to TALK TO THE AUDIENCE. When we get nervous, we tend to look around when we talk and some people even choose to look at the wall behind the audiences. I have friends, where they took off their spectacles so that they don't feel nervous when they found out that the audiences are looking at them. It is important to make eye contact with the audiences. I am sure you want your audiences to listen and pay attention to you when you are talking in front of them. Hence, when your friends are presenting, make sure you pay attention to them because they also want us to pay attention to what they are trying to deliver.

     My opinion about oral speaking is that teacher must set time limits for every student's presentation and let the students voice out their opinion if they want to have oral presentation for the particular topic. Teachers need to know what topic is suitable for oral presentation and vice versa. Students will feel tired and loaded if their teachers always ask them to have oral presentation for every single topic.

     My suggestion for oral speaking is that teachers should apply oral speaking or oral presentation more frequently in the their daily classroom teaching and learning activities. As far as I remember, oral speaking was only done one or twice in a year when I was in the secondary school. It is a good idea to increase oral speaking activities in the classroom activities as it is important to train the students to speak in front of the crowd. Students nowadays need to be able to speak in order to compete with the others.

     Till the next post~ Have a good night! :)
 

    

OPINION

 

  So tonight, we will be talking about OPINION. Even though assessment are mostly related to education field, but I personally think that our own opinion is also a form of assessment. We have lots of opinions and evaluation towards the others and this happen everyday. It is quite unbelievable if you never have small voices in your head, telling you this and that about the person or the situations that happens in front of you. 

     

     The purpose of choosing OPINION as my topic is because it is closely related to our daily lives. We experienced assessment everyday without us realizing that it is a form of assessment. I find myself tend to assess people, or in other words have my own opinion towards a person. That is why I chose OPINION to talk about. I believe every one of us have things or person that we are envy of. We want to be like the other person, we make that person as our role model and motivator or we want the same situation to happen to us. For me, I envy those girls who are thin and fit and healthy. They have a good body figure and they look good in anything that they wear. I envy them and keep on questioning myself : Why can't I be like them? But i tend to forgot that they work very hard to keep their body in shape and I am LAZY.

     OKAY, back to the topic. The purpose of OPINION is that we each have our own thoughts regarding the person or situations that happen. Just like the clip-art at the top, different people have different opinion even though they are experiencing the same thing at the same time. Just look at the photo below and tell me your opinion.

I believe each one of us have different opinion regarding this body figure. Some may say she has a good body figure and wanted to be like her and some may say she is too thin. You see, the first though that came to you when you first see the photo is your own opinion. It shows what you think of the photo. The same thing happens in our daily lives. We judge things and people based on appearance. We have our own opinion even though ten or twenty people or even more are experiencing the same thing. 

     My opinion towards "OPINION" is that it is okay and normal to have your own opinion. Opinion can be positive or negative, depending on what situations are we in. So don't doubt yourself when you have negative opinion towards the situation. However, many people think that others opinion doesn't matter and think that one's opinion about him is rude. We have feelings and sometimes we really do not want to know about other's opinion about us and think that those comments are really rude. But I want to remind you and this include myself that everyone of us has the right to sound out our opinion. Always be open-minded and accept what they said. You can always improve yourself after hearing other people's opinion. It is a waste of time if you are angry with these opinion. People are evaluating you because you have weaknesses and somehow, they hope to be like you. 

     If you want other people to accept your opinion, you must first learn how to accept other's opinion towards you. When you learn to accept the opinion of others towards you, no matter good or harsh, it proves to others that you are open-minded and have good manners. It may not be easy to accept what others think of you at first, but slowly you will know that those opinions are to help you grow. It helps to improve and strengthen your weaknesses and it can be counted as a motivator to motivate you to be a better person. 

     I sincerely hope that you gain something after reading my post. Have a good night and happy weekend! :) ♥ ♥

     

   

    

What is ASSESSMENT?

     For most people, when they first see or hear the word assessment, they will straight away link to some words. As for me, the first time I heard of the word "ASSESSMENT", the first word that came to my mind was evaluate or in other words, judge. For me, assessment is when we evaluate something or someone and have our own thoughts and judgement. 

     

     Assessment is defined as the evaluation or estimation of the nature, quality or ability of someone or something. And according to Cambridge Dictionary Online, assessment is the act of judging or deciding the amount, value, quality or importance of something, or the judgement or decision that is made. 

      Assessment is used in a wide range from education to our daily lives. Everyone experienced assessment before and it takes time for us to realize that we had undergo assessment before. I believe that even until today, we are still experiencing assessment. If you sit down and think back of everything that happened before or linked back to your past, you will eventually realize that "Oh! That's a form of assessment. I had done that before."

     In the education field, assessment  is usually in a form of examinations and presentations, where the teachers will be evaluating the students and give appropriate marks based on each of their performances. Whereas in our daily lives, the assessment that we have is in a form of interviews, daily conversations and also observations (we observe other people and make our own deduction about that person). Self-reflection is also another form of assessment that we have, where we reflect back to our actions and words and value ourselves.
   
     Assessment is very important in the education field as it helps to determine if the goals of education are being met. Also with assessment, the teachers can see how is the performance of each student and from there, they can know which area they should improve in order to meet the goals of the lesson. Through assessment, both the teachers and the students are able to adjust their teaching and learning strategies respectively. They can know what they can do together in order to achieve the best outcomes in the teaching and learning process.

     Assessment should be use in the education field but instead of the normal examination, why don't teachers make assessment a fun thing? Presentations, debate and field trips are also another way that we can assess or evaluate the students. Make the assessment process fun and interesting and let the teacher and students enjoy in this process. Rather than testing the students' knowledge from what they learnt from the book, it is more important to see the students' soft skills development. I am sure teachers will want their students to be able to compete with others once they step into the real world.
   

     

About Me ♥

     Hello everyone! Nice to meet you all :)

     So, like what was written as the title of this post, i would like to introduce myself briefly. 

My name is Liew Sim Hua, you can just call me Michelle or Sim. I'm currently studying at UNITAR International University, taking Bachelor of Education specifically in Early Childhood Education. 

     Erm, this is actually not my first time having a blog. I had a blog in the past, when I am still in middle school but didn't continue blogging. So, I am starting a new blog now because it is needed for my assignment. Basically for the upcoming posts, it will all be related to my assignment's topic. Bare with me and hopefully i get to update about my personal life other than my assignment  XD 

     

     I'm a Pisces baby and yeah, i love to dream. It actually fits my horoscope :D I love the name "Summer". I love Disney's cartoons and my favorite character is Mickey Mouse! Don't judge me. I am 21 but still super in love with Mickey Mouse. I bet you have your own favorite Disney character too. I am a fan of Running Man, watched every episode and enjoy the show very much. Can't say I am the biggest fan but if there are news or photos of them on Facebook, I still get super excited about them haha! 

     Couldn't think of what to say anymore, I am stuck! I'm just a normal girl, living a normal life, dreams a lot and love life to the maximum. Enjoying every moment and also complaints when feeling annoyed XD 

     

     Will be writing new posts soon. Stay tune! :) ♥ ♥