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Why do we do any of the things we do, as teachers in the classroom? What is our purpose? Our goal? What are we trying to achieve both personally and otherwise? If you ask this question to any good teacher, the answer one hundred percent of the time, would undoubtedly be, for their students to learn, understand, and be able to apply the knowledge being presented to them in an effective and confident manner. Based on what students are able to produce at the end of a course, teachers would know the extent to which they have failed or succeeded and would know if relevant adjustments are needed for the future. This is where review and analysis come in. Its desired effect is two-fold, in that the focus is on both the students and the teacher. Let’s take the students first. In order to ensure that students are successful in their studies, review of the course material is important. A review lesson/s should be included in the teacher’s syllabus plan from the onset. If for example, we structure a course in such a way that it covers fifteen weeks. There should definitely be at least one review lesson at the end, say week 14, where week fifteen would be the final exam. The first reason that a review lesson is important is that, students will most likely have forgotten at least some of what was taught to them during the previous weeks of teaching. It may be that the students may have even missed some of the notes that was written on the board. In both cases, a review helps students to not miss out on any work that will be featured on the exam. The second reason that reviews are important is that, they give students a chance to ask more questions about topics that they feel weak in, or even forgot to ask about. Also in their studies, they may encounter new ‘problems’ in a topic that they need to ask about, and a review gives them the chance to do this. Not only them, but the others in the class would also be able to benefit from these types of questions. Thirdly, a review helps students to once again see how all the topics covered, flow into and fit in with each other, the general progression of the course. This is particularly important for course structures where each lesson builds on the previous one. This kind of summary leads to a further understanding of the course and students can now focus more on the course progression rather than a detailed lesson for each topic. A review also gives students a second chance to see if they truly understood a topic. Sometimes we may think we understand something until we see it presented to us again and realize that we have some holes in our knowledge and understanding. Reviews can help to build students confidence for both the final exam and their overall usage of the English language. This happens when the student realizes that he has a good handling of the topics of the course during the review. This ends the student side of things. Now for the teacher, and this is where analysis comes in. Analysis helps the teacher to see his/her shortcomings. Knowing where you fall short means that you can now work on this area so that you can do better in the future. An example of how this can be done is by the use of a questioner. The results of which can be studied in detail. The second reason why analysis is important is that it can show general problem areas for students. There may be topics that are naturally more difficult and would require a different approach for more effectiveness. Again, a questioner or analysis of exams can reveal what these areas are. The final reason is that the practice of analyzing data overtime is good as a way of collecting a big enough data sample that can be used to eventually create charts and graphs that can be used to not only analyze but also to look at trends which can enable you to make predictions or assumptions about the future, helping with you decision making when it comes to either testing or the methods you employ for various topics. All in all, analysis and review are important for both present and future situations, and are important to the improvement of both student and teacher alike.
