I left my Bulgarian language class really angry today.  It's the last week of class and our teacher has been telling us that we will have to take a test and that if we pass then we'll get a certificate of completion.  She is very nice and keeps telling us that it will not be a problem. So until today I've been thinking: no problem.  I've been practicing on my own: working on conjugating verbs, asking questions, and answering these questions.  I've been filling in my workbook and have been reviewing my class notes.  I haven't had much else to do so I've spent a lot of time working on my Bulgarian.

Then after our break this morning, we came back to class and she gave us a copy of the test.  Yes she gave us a copy of the test before we are going to take it.  This was a surprise to me because I've never received a copy of a test before I was supposed to take it.  That's the thing about a test, it's supposed to test your knowledge of a subject or topic area and what you know.  <em>What you know</em>.  And how do you know what you know and what you need to work on if you've already seen the test?

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However the bigger surprise came when I looked at the test and I couldn't even read the directions.  This, of course, does not bode well for actually taking the test because it meant that I didn't know what I was supposed to do in each section.  This alone is a scary realization and I don't like the feeling of not knowing what I am supposed to know.

And that's when things got even stranger.  Our teacher talked us through the entire test.  She told us what was expected for each section and then she had us work through every section.  We read each section out loud, we answered all of the questions multiple times, she explained all of the vocabulary that was new and in 10 minutes she tried to explain articles in Bulgarian--something that we never discussed in class before they appeared on the test (and which cannot be explained in 10 minutes). I can honestly say that I've never prepared to take a test like this before and the longer I sat there with the test I am supposed to take tomorrow the more and more frustrated I became.

I couldn't help thinking if our teacher knew what the test looked like, why didn't she structure our classroom time to prepare us for this? Or did she think that the test didn't really matter? Did the test matter or not?

I thought that the test mattered so that we could move on to the next level--the intermediate course.  I don't want to be placed into a course I am not prepared for because I saw the test before I took it.  I wanted to pass the test because I had mastered the material.  I didn't want to pass the test because the whole thing had been explained to me.

Looking at the test, it made me feel like I had been wasting my time for the last two weeks.

Now, I guess the question remains, is it better to be able to answer questions on a test or to be able to ask, understand and answer questions, to be able to talk about yourself, to be able order food and to be more comfortable in the spoken language? The test suggests that it's more important to know the grammar of the language but our teacher focused on conversation rather than grammar and as such, I think I would have been lucky to answer 50% of the test correctly without her going through the test ahead of time.

But it's not as if I haven't been learning things for the last few weeks, we simply haven't been studying or working on the skills covered on the test. And as a good student, I find this maddening.  I like to study, I like to learn new things and I like to ask questions and these are the skills that have served me well and carried me through me school.  It just turns out that these skills aren't going to help me on this test.

Instead, we went through question by question the entire test and I now know everything on the test and all of the correct answers.  The only thing I have to do is make sure that I can spell correctly in Bulgarian.  So when I take the test tomorrow what is this a test of? My short term memory? My ability to listen? My Bulgarian? Hard to say really.

So we spent the second half of class or about 90 minutes "preparing" for the test tomorrow and I left class angry.  Angry that we spent 90 minutes of our time preparing for what seems like a pretty pointless test seeing as it doesn't cover the material we worked on the last couple of weeks.  Angry that our teacher thought that this was an acceptable way to help us prepare for the test.  Angry that I hadn't learned what was on the test.  Angry that this was my introduction to academics in Bulgaria.

But by the time I got home, I couldn't help but wonder if my anger was misplaced. I didn't know what to think.  My anger at the test, my expectations for the course and my understanding of what school (and a test) is and is not is grounded squarely in the American tradition.  I was angry because I didn't understand what was going on with the upcoming test.

I didn't and still don't have a frame to understand what is actually happening with the test but my hunch is that it is important for us to pass the test not only so that we can be promoted to the next level but also so that it reflects well on our teacher.  It seems that it doesn't matter so much what we know as long as we give the right answers on the test and that runs counter to everything I've ever know about how school works.  But our teacher had no qualms about this method of instruction so here I am sitting at my computer wondering how it got to be this way.  And I can't help but wonder how this method of instruction has trickeled down to the high schools in Bulgaria? What are the expetations at my school and what are my expetations and how will I figure out how to balance these two when I can't seem to get over my anger at the test tomorrow?