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Section C
Directions: In this section, you will heara passage three times. When the passage is read for the first time, you shouldlisten carefully for its general idea. When the passage is read for the secondtime, you are required to fill in the blanks with the exact words you have justheard. Finally, when the passage is read for the third time, you should checkwhat you have written.
Now listen to the passage.
Tests may be the most unpopular part ofacademic life. Students hate them because they produce fear and anxiety aboutbeing evaluated, and focus on grades instead of learning for learning’s sake.
But tests are also valuable. Awell-constructed test identifies what you know and what you still need tolearn. Tests help you see how your performance compares to that of others. Andknowing that you’ll be tested on a body of material is certainly likely tomotivate you to learn the material more thoroughly.
However, there’s another reason you mightdislike tests: You may assume that tests have the power to define your worth asa person. If you do badly on a test, you may be tempted to believe that you’vereceived some fundamental information about yourself from the professor, informationthat says you’re a failure in some significant way.
This is a dangerous—andwrong-headed—assumption. If you do badly on a test, it doesn’t mean you are abad person or stupid. Or that you’ll never do better again, and that your lifeis ruined. If you don’t do well on a test, you’re the same person you werebefore you took the test — no better, no worse. You just did badly on a test.That’s it.
In short, tests are not a measure of yourvalue as an individual — they are a measure only of how well and how much youstudied. Tests are tools; they are indirect and imperfect measures of what weknow.
