What Exam Papers Make us Think

Abstract

Although errors are accepted inevitable in the foreign language learning, they give information about teaching-learning process of the students. The fact that even ELT students' exam papers contain lots of serious errors has led to this research to find the reasons for them. With this aim, the exam papers of ELT students were examined in terms of their overall quality and the errors the students have made and they were listed according to their types. This study is a qualitative study which reflects the errors of students in their exam papers. To get the data, document analysis was conducted. The documents are the exam papers of sophomore and junior students of ELT department of Akdeniz University. It was found out that ELT students have problems in expressing their own ideas on any topic by analysing the situation. Besides, most of them are not careful with their writing, in terms of grammar, syntax and spelling. Some errors can be regarded as careless errors when the exam situation is considered. However, some of them result from overgeneralization of rules. Some errors occur because of the effect of the native language or students' inefficiency to use correct structures in writing although they know everything by heart. It is important for ELT students to use the language accurately as they are English teacher candidates. To overcome the problem, foreign language teaching and testing processes should be taken into consideration.

Boosted with Online Learning to Improve English Language Teachers’ Proficiency

“…They wanted strategies to answer the exams which these teachers would be sitting for after the course. In Saka's (2015) research, replies such as these are quite typical, as the systematic analysis of the responses implies that the course's learning outcomes and objectives have been achieved. The study also shows the learner types and their process of language learning.…”