One of the listening tests today was so short that those of us in the teachers’ room were afraid something was wrong. I had an immediate flashback to horrors from my own past. The other was so long I’m pretty sure students fell asleep before it was finished.

The test on my listening test will be somewhere in between, although this year I did add a lot of nonsense to it to confuse and befuddle the students. (More on that in a future post.)

I bring this up because a couple years ago a few members of the staff complained that students finished our tests too soon and that created some sort of problem for the test proctors. I personally ignored this as I can’t control how fast the students finish, especially if they’ve lived in an English speaking country or simply given up quickly.

People who are more diplomatic (and, oddly, more well liked by the staff) made an attempt to lengthen their listening tests by adding pauses or extra listening sections.

Each exam includes a listening portion and we write, perform, record, and edit the listening sections ourselves. This leaves it up to our own preferences and/or energy levels.

The results today were a listening test that was less than three minutes long and a second that was 18 minutes long. It also means the second year junior high listening will probably be more difficult than the second year high school listening. But, I consider that part of the fun.