May Peter, Maley Alen. Exam Classes (Resource Books for Teachers)

Oxford University Press, 2000. — 172 p.Exams - the thing we all love to hate! Examinations have been part and parcel of language teaching all along and will doubtless continue to be so. Everyone hates them yet, at the same time, we all recognize their importance for measuring our achievement against our personal goals, for proving our worth in the academic stakes, for improving our career prospects. They also have the potential to change educational practices through their powerful 'washback effect' on teaching and learning. In short, they cannot be ignored.
This book attempts to address the difficult problem of how to teach 'exam classes' without losing sight of the need to teach the language too. All too often, examination books prove to be no more than tactical guides to techniques for passing the exam. It is as if it were possible to learn the exam rather than learning the language. By contrast, the activities set out here are as valid for language learning as for testing.
An important strength of the book is its attempt to demystify the examination by taking students behind the scenes and making them a party to the sorts of decisions made by those who design test items, thus building self-confidence.