I have more than a dozen copies of a midterm examination to correct. Over time, the writing test, which I handed to my students today, has been greatly modified from its original incarnation. The weighting has been tweaked and the questions clarified. Still, I have been using this same basic document for years.
As a new teacher I used to think I needed to create brand new material on each and every occasion. I used to spend hours making parallel sets papers, many of which were probably not improvements at all! I'm not sure where that mindset came from or when I began to exercise a little more pragmatism.
The English language, although extremely flexible, doesn't change a great deal from term to term! In addition, the basic skills necessary in my courses don't vary much at all. Of course, I do try to bring relevant examples to class from the world at large, but basic English sentence structures hardly witness noticable revisions in an entire lifetime.
So, although technology is under constant flux, the bedrock of understanding and the language skills associated with sharing it, are not.
Long live my exam!
