English readings — Education
300 original readings written by the FitForm team, graded B1 → C2 and sorted by topic. Reading is free and needs no account; exercises, vocabulary review and essay marking need a FitForm login.
What a test can and cannot measure
A test is a measuring instrument, and like any instrument it has a range. A kitchen scale is excellent for…
The classroom that was too loud
Room 204 had a reputation. Teachers said the students there did not listen. Three different teachers said it,…
Why nobody asks a question
At the end of an explanation a teacher asks whether anyone has a question. Thirty students look at their…
The exam that measured the wrong thing
A national reading test was introduced with a sensible aim: to find out whether eleven-year-olds could read…
The map of the school day
A class in Hue was asked to draw a map of their own day: not a timetable, but a line showing how awake they…
The habit of the second draft
Most students write one draft. They write it, read it once for spelling, and hand it in. The single most…
In praise of working slowly
Speed is treated as a proxy for ability in almost every classroom. The student who finishes first is assumed…
The practice that felt worse
Two groups of students practised the same material for the same length of time. One group studied each topic…
The test before the lesson
A teacher gives a short test on material the class has not been taught. Students get most of it wrong, which…
The rule of the first draft
A student sits down to write an essay and spends forty minutes on the first paragraph. The paragraph is good.…
The last exam
The Chinese imperial examination, in some form, ran for about thirteen centuries. At its height it was the…
The shape of a good question
Teachers are told to ask good questions and rarely told what makes one good. There are at least three…
The notebook and the keyboard
Students taking notes on a laptop write more words than students taking notes by hand. On tests of factual…
The exam that tested reading speed
An examination intended to measure comprehension was found, after analysis, to be measuring reading speed.…
The homework that was marked twice
A department had every piece of work marked by two teachers for one term. The second marks were not reported…
The class that set its own test
A teacher asked each student to write three exam questions on a topic and to supply the answers. The exercise…
The tutor who said less
Recordings of tutorials found that the most effective tutors spoke for about a third of the session. The…
The timetable that was redesigned
A school moved its hardest subjects to the morning and its results improved in two of them and fell in a…
The footnote that held the argument
A student's essay was returned with a single comment: the argument is in footnote four, and it should be in…
The prerequisite that was not one
A course listed a prerequisite that had been added in 1998 and had not been reviewed since. Removing it had…
The group project that was fixed
Group work is defended as preparation for working life and complained about for a specific reason: the mark…
The mark that was a ranking
A score of 68 in one examination system means a fixed standard of work. In another it means being in the top…
The practice test that came first
A class sat a test on material they had not been taught. They scored almost nothing, and then learned the…