Preparación Oposiciones-Profesores Inglés y otros profesionales

Ayudamos a profesionales a superar con éxito el examen de inglés de la oposición que preparan, y a profesores de inglés a preparar la oposición de manera eficiente y sus clases de forma innovadora

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Madrid’s Practical Exam 2018 is published! Congratulations on this 2nd step!

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Madrid’s Practical Exam 2018 for Secundarias and Escuelas was published on September 11th. That was one of the points of my 1st question in the post Madrid 2018 Part 1A. It is also the second step towards a much-needed openness in the Competitive Exam. We really hope other Education Authorities follow suit.

My Congratulations to Madrid’s Education Authorities

I didn’t think I would be saying this, but here it goes…and it makes me happy. POPPIES would like to congratulate Madrid’s Education Authorities. This is a clear, much-needed step towards openness. And we hope others follow.

Madrid’s Practical Exam: 1st step towards openness

The first step towards openness, as I mentioned in the Problem with the Practical Exam in Madrid, was that the candidates could keep a copy of their exam. Being able to keep a copy of what you actually did is essential. Essential for you to see if you did as well as you thought you did. And essential to show that you did well. Hopefully, if this practice is continued, it will help candidates to pay attention to being clear, tidy, concise and to the point.

The second step towards openness in Madrid’s Practical Exam

No doubt that the publication of the exam is a further step towards the openness we are all demanding. There’s a little glitch in the exam, though, and I would like to comment on it. I wonder whether any of you has spotted it. It may just be due to the fact that we are using both English and Spanish in the exam. Particularly in the translations. However, the ” minor flaw” I have noticed concerns the questions on the text. The marks for the questions. Admittedly, it does not affect the text or the questions. Yet, if you are going to penalise candidates for mistakes, I would pay attention to things like this.

A general comment from some board members

Talking about mistakes. A former student who got a position this year and is a member of the POPPIES blog has mentioned to me what some board members told her about candidates in general. There were lots of spelling and grammar mistakes. Hence the importance of re-reading what you write. Write a bit less, revise a bit more. This should be your motto.

What should the third step towards openness be?

The obvious third step should be to publish the answer key provided to the panels or boards and the specific assessment criteria and penalisations. There are too many differences among the number of candidates who passed in each of the 21 panels. It’s hard to think that all the good candidates went to one particular panel and all the bad ones went to another.

Should POPPIES publish a “suggested answer key”?

For a while, I considered this option. But then, as those who know me know, I like to make you work and question yourselves. And I want to do the exam with my new candidates. So, I decided to send my feedback to those candidates who send me a copy of their exam. No answer key, but feedback or, if you prefer, LOA or A4L.

If you did the exam and did not send me a copy of what you did, or you did not prepare for the exam with me, I have a proposal. We can discuss the answers in the comments below. State the question you are answering. We can then analyse if it is right or wrong and why.

Petición a todas las Comunidades Autónomas

En aras de la claridad, de la justicia y de la equidad en los examenes de oposiciones a profesores, todas las Comunidades Autónomas deberían hacer públicos los exámenes una vez hayan sido realizados. También unos criterios de evaluación claros y precisos y las respuestas proporcionadas a los tribunales como esperadas. No hay ninguna razón para mantenerlos en secreto. No hay justificación para no hacerlos públicos. Así demostrarían que sí quieren seleccionar a los mejores preparados para la enseñanza. A quienes saben teoría, pero sobretodo saben escribir bien y enseñar y guiar a sus alumnos aún mejor.

Si te gusto ¡Compártelo!

Madrid 2018 Part 1A. The problem with the Práctico

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Madrid 2018 Part 1A -Práctico had three parts, just as in previous years.

This is truly a continuation of  the previous post on Oposiciones Profesores Inglés Part 1A

Madrid 2018 Part 1A: 3 parts

Finally, there are other Autonomous Regions which include listening, text analysis of sorts and translations. Such is the case in Madrid. Since I do have the carbon copies or the pictures of the carbon copies of some of my candidates, I will briefly comment on each of the 3 parts.

One striking fact is the small number of candidates who got a 5 out of 10 in this part. In panel 1 only 7 people got 5 or over. Many were “saved” by the topic. Why was that? I can only speak based on the exam copies I have seen. And, at this moment, I only have three pages of the exam.

Listening

There have always been complaints about the listening: too much background noise,  sound quality deficient or dependent on seat location, the speaker or speakers going at unusual speed…you name it.

In previous exams in Madrid, sometimes you had multiple choice questions, while others there were open-ended questions.  Some other times you had to fill in some gaps. The questions were usually five or six, until 2016 when there were 15 multiple choice questions. There had always been a summary too. Until this year, when you had to fill in 4 gaps and you had to answer 8 questions. No summary.

What has been going on in Madrid means that you need to be prepared for anything, as far as the listening is concerned. Click To Tweet

The complaints this year had to do with the beginning of the listening. At least one of the panels started playing it and they thought there was something wrong with the audio. It was the clicking of the keyboard. So they re-started it again to then realise that it was part of the audio.

Some people found it hard to have to focus on filling the gaps and answering questions at the same time. In any case, since I only have the “answers” given by some of the candidates but not the actual questions, it’s difficult for me to say anything.  I have found some very different answers, to be honest. The only exception is question number 2,  of the second part, which is”keyboard”. No idea whether you were penalised for wrong answers. I guess that misspelt words or grammatical mistakes had an influence.

Text Analysis

Since I don’t have the second page of the text yet, there are questions I cannot comment on yet. The answers given by different candidates are not enough.

Having said that, I did notice that there were some pictures on the first page. That should have served as contextual evidence. It would have helped you at least with the question related to Whipsnade. Yes, there were 16 questions. More the reason to be brief in your answers.

Those who did the Poppies Foundation Course either in 2016-17 or 2017-18 should have known at least one of the answers because we covered that specific expression in one of the texts. I am not going to say which one. You can guess. They should also know the phonetic transcription of words like “charisma”.

Having read some of the answers, I feel the importance of being brief in your replies. Or at least, get to the point and show your command of the language.

My impression is that candidates did not always pay full attention to what they were reading. Time pressure, no doubt. Yet, we have often spoken about the importance of reading carefully, paying special attention to what and how you write. And always revise, revise, revise. Re-read what you write. Always.

Translations

The translations were not long. Consideration of register and location in time and place of the two texts was essential here. Also the contextual elements and the problems presented by the source when rendering the version in the target language. This helps you see that one of the texts was set in the 19th century and the other in a newspaper environment.

One question for reflection. Consider text with words such as The Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, El País or El Mundo. Would you have translated them as Los Tiempos, El Guardián, El Correo de Washington, The Country or The World? Always essential to re-read the translations to make sure that the rendered version reads “natural” in the target language.

Preparación Oposiciones Profesores Inglés +
Preparación Oposiciones Profesores Inglés

Final Conclusions on Part 1A

Tips for future candidates

Do not panic about time. Do your very best when you write and always re-read what you’ve written before handing in your exam. Pay attention to spelling and structural mistakes.

2 questions to the corresponding panel members

  1. Why isn’t there open access to the specific assessment criteria, exam contents and expected answers? This would make the existence of an open, fair competition possible.
  2. Why is there such a diversity in the scores among panels?

and a request

If you have been a member of a board or panel, would you mind telling us your views and experiences on the matter? What, in your opinion, should be done to foster fairness and clarity in the final scores among the different panels?

If you do not want your name to appear, you can always send me your comments and I will publish them without your name. Although, to be honest, I don’t see why we need to fear.

Next, I’ll be wanting cover the second part of the exam, so you can also send me your views on this part.

And you may also be interested in reading or commenting on Oposiciones Profesores Inglés Part 1B. Should it change?

Si te gusto ¡Compártelo!

Part 1A-Oposiciones profesores inglés 2018. Too diverse

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Part 1A-Oposiciones profesores inglés: Text analysis and text use in the language exam
Text analysis and class-use in the examen práctico

Part 1A-Oposiciones profesores inglés varies greatly from one Autonomous Region to another.

Sometimes the marking in Part 1A varies a lot from one panel to another within the same Autonomous Region Click To Tweet

Part 1A varies widely from one Autonomous Region to another

Canarias: Didactic orientation

In some Autonomous Regions like Canarias, the examen práctico has a wholly didactic orientation.  The candidates have to choose one action plan among several to develop it as a practical case in a Secondary School. The specific information  for the exam was provided here

Assessment criteria were included in the published call although we assume that the panels were provided with more specific guidelines or rubrics.

Other Autonomous Regions combine language and teaching proposals

Other Autonomous Regions combine text analysis of sorts with various types of language exercises and one or more proposals on how to teach some aspects of the text or even the whole text. Some include listening while others have a bit of translation. Or some years they do, and others they don’t.

I will briefly comment on the ones I know about because some of you, taking part in Poppies as a Collaborative Project in the making have sent me information on what you remember about the exam. More on this aspect at the end of the post.

Preparación Oposiciones Profesores Inglés +
Preparación Oposiciones Profesores Inglés

Andalusia

There was a text from the Washington Post of highly topical content, particularly in the USA. The exam included:

  • Definition of words and verbal idioms (or phrasal verbs) from the text using as an example a complex sentence where those words/verbs were used in a different context.
  • Translation of two paragraphs from the text into Spanish.
  • 5 sentences to complete using one word from the text per sentence.
  • Essay explaining how to use the text with CSE students.

Catalonia

There was a text analysis where candidates had to comment on:

  • Style and the different topics covered in the paragraphs.
  • Literary devices such as metaphors, anaphors, etc.
  • Register, adequacy, cohesion, etc.
  • How to use the text with 1st Bachillerato.

For the second task, the candidates had to design a Halloween workshop to be given by 4th-year CSE students for 1st-year students.

Murcia

Assessment criteria in Murcia were provided with a lot of detail for English on June 15th.

There was no listening this year, although there had been a listening activity in the previous call. Candidates were given 2 texts, one by C. Dickens the other by V. Woolf with 30 questions to answer. The questions included, among other:

  • Identify the novel or mention other novels by the same author.
  • Features of the novel
  • Identify various literary devices such as simile, satire, humour, etc.
  • Explain the meaning of some phrases
  • Cohesion, deixis, endophoric reference, etc.
  • Use of verb phrases in a given paragraph
  • Lexical fields
  • Phonetics and explanation of sounds
  • Punctuation
  • Dichotomy and its meaning
  • Word-formation processes in certain words
  • Questions on literature
  • Imagery and its purpose
  • Syntactic analysis
  • Translation into Spanish
  • Text types, genre and narrator
  • School of literary criticism
  • Learning Standard for Bachillerato most appropriate for text in terms of block of content, number of Learning Standard and summary of Learning Standard.
  • Methodological guidelines for FLT in Bachillerato
  • Lesson to foster productive oral skills on either gender equality or technological and industrial progress.

The two Castilles

In Castilla-La Mancha and Castilla-León there was also a combination of questions on text-analysis and how to teach something related to the text in question.

Castilla La Mancha had a text by Tom Wolfe. We covered Wolfe in Poppies Building Block 3 and is available for Poppies’ students and Sls Hallam’s former students regardless of the course they are doing. You’ll need a password, so contact me if you want to have access.

I do not include the type of questions because I haven’t been specifically told about them, although I do know they had to do with text type, genre, style and then some other questions related to teaching.

At all events, I encourage those who did the exam to share the contents as comments in this post.

As this is getting too long, I’ll comment on the Madrid Exam Práctico in the next post. You may also be interested in reading about Part 1B

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Oposiciones Profesores Inglés Part 1B. Should it change? Tips for the future

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Oposiciones Profesores Inglés Part 1B for Secundarias, Escuelas and Primarias, is common to all the Autonomous Regions. As we know, everybody has to write on one out of 4 or 5 topics – or two for Primaria, and depending on the public call.

Where we are now

In some Autonomous Regions, the candidates have to then read aloud their topic essay (Part 1B) and the Language Exam (Part 1A).  In other Autonomous regions, the members of the panel mark it directly to ensure the anonymity of the candidate.

Good move in Madrid 2017 & 2018

In Madrid this year for Secondary Education and Escuelas  -and last year for Primary education- the candidates wrote both part 1A and 1B on carbon copies. They took the carbon copy with them and handed in the original to the board.

Why such low marks? Analysis of the situation

The general complaint this year was that the panels had been told not to cover all the available posts.

I am in no position to say whether this is true or false. I can only say that I asked a former Poppies candidate  who was a member of one of the panels in  Madrid and she flatly denied the accusations. No reason to question what she told me. Consequently, I need to look further into the matter to explain the low marks.

Too many panels or boards, so it’s tough for them to follow exactly the same criteria when marking

Yes, I do know they are given assessment criteria to follow. I am also aware that they are given guidelines for penalisation procedures. But having read some of the exams this year myself from the carbon copies candidates have shown me, I was able to see some strict and some lenient penalisation procedures.

In some cases, the penalisation was so strict that candidates got a zero. I have only seen one of those and, to be honest, I doubt that a different panel would have assigned such a mark to the essay. Not that it deserved a pass, but a zero? I do not think it did.

General comments on Part 1B

Marks 8 or over

So, in general, those who got a high mark (8 or over) in Part 1B did so because they wrote a well-structured essay covering all the contents. They also included updated, relevant information, did not make major language mistakes and used appropriate lexis and grammatical structures. Finally, the ideas were presented logically, flowing nicely from one to the next. As we have often mentioned in the face-to-face classes.

Marks between 5 and 7.99

Well, obviously it is not the same a 5 as a 7.99, and I am going to comment based only on what I have seen.

My impression is that some of you wanted to include so much that you didn’t have time for revision. Or you gave too many details about the context and not enough about the subject matter. In some cases I found statements which were not quite right. Or they were expressed in a muddled way, lacking clarity. And so you may have been penalised for mistakes you could have easily avoided.  A name mistaken for another name, not explaining the connections between one section and the next. Fairly simple structures which do not show contrast or addition, consequence, etc.  All those elements count and may explain why you did not get the high mark you were expecting.

Marks below 5

I know you feel bitter about the exam results and you may not like what I am saying here. Yet, as English teachers, we need to write well in English. You may or may not know that very much about the topic in question, but if you write well and express your ideas with clarity and follow a good structure, you may be able to get at least a 5. Consider the number of topics you have studied and the possibilities.

In general, I found that those who did not get at least a 5 in the topic

  • had written on a different topic from the one they said they were going to write,  or
  • presented an almost illegible hand-writing, or
  • the essay contained fundamental errors, or
  • did not finish the essay or was badly written.

Sometimes we think we have done something well and then, when we re-read it we find we made serious mistakes. Be honest with yourself: did you really write a good essay and you failed this part?

If the answer is yes, I hope you have filed a formal complaint and have asked to see the correction and marking of your essay. I think that most of the times, the reason why we have failed this part is one of those expressed above. In which case:

My tips for the future

Write a good outline

Draft your own essay

Write good paragraphs, as we say in the Poppies’ mini-course on study techniques and on this post at Grammarly

Have a look at the picture in the post: the key words are tips for you!

And remember these tips from candidates who got a position

Should the exam for Oposiciones Profesores Inglés Part 1B change in the future?

After the results, candidates were questioning the exam. The general feeling is that it is not fair. That it rewards memorisation rather than whether the candidate is a good teacher or not. And I sympathise and partially agree with you.

Some were proposing a type of “objective” exam to make it “fair”. But, in my view, this is an oxymoron. The Oposiciones a Profesores de Inglés cannot, should not be a multiple choice test. This would turn the exam into something much more unfair than what it is now. People may get a pass just by pure luck, by randomly ticking the right answer without knowing what they are choosing. Think about it.

An essay of sorts in the Oposiciones Profesores Inglés Part 1B is necessary

The reason why I think there should always be an essay or, at the very least, some paragraph writing is that teachers need to teach their students how to write well in English. Consequently, they need to show that they can write well in English. So their writing should be assessed following clear assessment criteria

Your views on the subject

What are your views on this?  I would like to hear from candidates and from members of panels. And from different Autonomous Regions. We want a proper open call, with open and clear assessment criteria and exam procedures so that we can learn and improve. We all need to take part in it. Please, take part! Comment here or send me an email with your views. I do already have some feedback from  Catalonia. Thank you very much, Assumpta,  for your contribution. And congratulations on your success.

Si te gusto ¡Compártelo!

Congratulations from Poppies and myself to all the successful candidates

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Congratulations from Poppies    …. and from myself, of course    Here`s a toast and a big hip, hip, hooray!!!!!  

…to the successful candidates

In Madrid

  • Cristina S:

What a feat, my girl! I am so happy for you. A number 1 and a 9.3 & 9.4 in the syllabus and unit, is not something one achieves every day.  Do you remember what I said to you on the Friday before your performance? When you think you can’t, or you feel you won’t, go for a run or a quick long walk. And while you’re doing it, tell yourself that of course, you can, and of course, you will. As you have.

and her presentation

And I would like to add here what you told me when you called me after you had given your presentation: “At the beginning, I couldn’t remember things, but then, I started explaining what I do in class, how I handle the situations, what I do to motivate students, and I started remembering things and connecting them”. Those were, more or less your words. If I am writing them here is in the hope that anybody who has not managed to get through the net, reads this and doesn’t give up.

    • Oscar B, Laura G, Elena G, and Esther M

Hundreds of hips! and a great hooray! to you: It’s always hard for everybody who’s working and then needs to find time to study, revise the syllabus, prepare or improve the units…and come to classes. On top of that, I know that you’ve had family issues of various types to cope with: one of you felicitous, the others not quite so. I am so happy and delighted that you have succeeded and so grateful that either last year or this year, or both you chose me as your trainer.

  •  Tamara H, Patricia A, Ana J, Sandra B, Jorge C, and Inma Z

My heartfelt congratulations to you all: You have worked hard and you do deserve the position. I have been with you for almost a year or, in some cases even more. Let me thank you for your trust, even when in previous years some of you did not get the desired position. I am most grateful for the things I have learnt training you. I know you are great teachers and your students will be -have been- really fortunate having you as teachers. Well done and carry on working.

  • Elena R

Congratulations,  you have also achieved a great feat. Not anybody is able to get a position in their first attempt. But you have worked hard and you are very enthusiastic about teaching and willing to learn. Watch your fellow teachers with more experience than you and learn from them. Observe your students and learn from them. I am sure you will make a great teacher.

In Castilla León and Catalonia

My congratulations, too, to Silvia and Asumpta. Thank you very much for your trust and for the feedback you have given me.

For the rest…

I have the same words as in 2016, so, rather than bore you, I will give you the link. I’ll be reflecting on what I can do to improve and I’ll be expecting your feedback. Do not give up, and remember what a member of one of the panels told me in 2016:

How the panels usually feel

Have a great summer!

Si te gusto ¡Compártelo!