What Personal Narratives Reveal About Assessments and Education
This is a collection of personal stories from educators, learners, and researchers across ten countries that explores the human side of testing and assessment. Through real-life narratives, the book reveals how exams, feedback, and educational policies shape emotions, identities, learning experiences, and future opportunities. Offering insights beyond test scores and metrics, it highlights the profound impact of assessment on individuals and serves as a valuable resource for educators, researchers, and anyone interested in understanding the lived realities of education.
CAN A TEST SCORE CAPTURE THE HUMAN SPIRIT?
Tests, Learning & Us: What Personal Narratives Reveal About Assessments and Education is an anthology featuring over 30 narrative reflections from educators, language learners, and researchers across ten countries. Moving beyond academic prose, this volume bridges the gap between educational research and creative writing to disclose the lived realities of learning and tests.
From national examinations to classroom pop quizzes, these story-driven accounts explore the nuanced mechanics of both assessment of and for learning. The contributors capture the profound emotional highs and lows of the testing experience, showing how feedback, institutional policies, and academic pressures actively shape human identity, future trajectories, and classroom dynamics.
This book is essential. Offering a multi-dimensional perspective on how testing impacts our lives, this volume benefits teachers, researchers, student teachers, and anyone seeking to understand the deep human element behind the metrics of modern education.
Introduction
Azirah Hashim
Prelude
Martin Cortazzi
Preamble
Qu Tang
Acknowledgements
The Editors
A Few Words Make A Change
Martin Cortazzi
Testing Misconceptions: The Case of The Open-Book Exam
Shameem Rafik-Galea
The Writing Teacher
Jayakaran Mukundan
What is an Adjective?
Vahid Nimehchisalem & Elissa Nimehchisalem
An Afternoon of Sweet Awakening
Hui Geng
Distance
Jiyang Hu
Protecting Minority Rights in All Respects: Minzu University of China
Mark Levine
Book Report Retort
George M Jacobs & Willy A Renandya
Is It Cheating To Be Kind To Classmates?
George M Jacobs
Failure: The Teacher
Sharon Leslie
Testily Tested by Testing
Mark R Freiermuth
More is Less? Chinese Idioms and Modern Curriculum
Huiying Long
Wine Glass, Li Bai, and Modern Youth
Haoran Liu
The Journey of Assessing
Oscar Jialin Wang
Teaching Writing Made Me Bonkers
Hooi Chee Mei
A Journey Beyond Words
Saraswathy Thurairaj
Teaching and Assessment in English Class: A Recollection
Swagata Sinha Roy
How Ms Rose Helped Pupils Bloom in English
Raganeswari Ramasamy
Unearthing My Teaching Skills
Thinusha Selvaraj
The Lost to Found
Leo Chong Jun Yuan
The Language in Us
Henry Tan Tze Heng
From Cameron Highlands to Tokyo: A Train of Languages
Soo Wei Loon
The Sawtooth Effect of Testing
Norazha Paiman
Beyond Words and Marks
Nur Haziq Fikri Ahmad
Diverse Methods Towards Language Mastery
Muhammad Athar Qaysa
Navigating New Horizons: Language Assessment and Cultural Integration
Abdul Bari Khan
Foreign Tongue, Native Standards: Notes of an Outsider
Dini Handayani
A Day at School!
Suvan Gupta
Happy English and Having Fun
Shuangzi Wang
Where You Are Today: A Journey of Resilience and Growth
Yumei Song
Different Genes
Aneeta Sundararaj
Lucy’s Inside Out
Fernanda Felix Binati
From Teacher to Advocate: A Journey of Transformation in Education
Gui Ying Annie Yang-Heim
Epilogue
The Editors
Contributors’ Notes
References
Index
Vahid Nimehchisalem, PhD, started teaching English in 1994. He has since been extensively involved in the field of applied linguistics as an English teacher, lecturer, teacher trainer, materials developer, researcher, editor, and writer.
Hui Geng, PhD, is a senior lecturer at the Guilin University of Technology, China. Her primary research interests encompass corpus linguistics, academic writing, creative writing, discourse analysis, humanistic language education, and translation.
Basic Information
- 978-629-7646-65-7 (Paperback)
