The External Meitzav

The External Meitzav
•Monday, 4 th April 2011

The External Meitzav
• Why do we need it
• Types of questions in the Meitzav exam
• Getting ready – what to do before, during and after the
exam
• Dealing with pupils with LDs
• Recommendations from teachers on how they deal with
the Meitzav exam
• Motivating your pupils
• The challenges
• Putting it all into perspective
• Questions

Why do we need it
• The Meitzav exam uses benchmarks when deciding on
the different parts and types of questions – the
Ministry wants to know that teachers are teaching
according to the curriculum.
• The Meitzav exam gives invaluable feedback to the
Ministry of Education showing how the curriculum is
being implemented in the field.
• The Meitzav exam should be viewed as a learning tool
– when the school gets the results the English team
MUST analyze the performance of their pupils and
implement changes.

Types of questions in the Meitzav
Exam
• Up until now three types of questions have
been used in the in the exercises for Access to
Information from Spoken texts (AIS) and
Access to Information from Written texts
(AIW).
• Literal
• Integration
• Inference
New for 2011
• Personal Response

Definitions
• Literal Comprehension refers to an understanding
of the explicit meaning of a text. These questions can
be answered directly from the text at the sentence
level. These are questions that can require either
copying or rephrasing of information from the text.
• What Who Where When Do you know Can you
identify Etc.

Intergration and Inference
• Integration Comprehension - refers to an understanding
of the explicit meaning of a text but also requires accessing
information from various parts of the text in order to
answer a given question. For example; questions that
require thinking about how ideas or information in the text
relate to each other.
• Inference Comprehension refers to an understanding of
the implicit meaning of a text.
For example; questions that involve combining the pupils’
literal understanding of the text with their own knowledge
and experiences producing a response which is not
explicitly stated.

Personal Response
• Personal Response refers to questions that call for
pupils’ personal involvement with the text.
• The answers come from the pupils and are not found
in the text. However, the answers must relate to the
text.
• In order to answer these questions pupils have to draw
on both their literal understanding of the text and
their own knowledge and opinions.

Monday 4 th April, 2011
What you need to do:
• Make sure the pupils know which classrooms to go to.
Lists on the doors help to avoid confusion.
• Arrange tape players for each of the classrooms.
• Organize English teachers for the reading class,
preferably, the same teachers who did the mock exam.

Before the exam.
Getting Ready
No dictionaries – so you must practice:
• Vocabulary – extensive reading is essential to improve
your pupils’ vocabulary.
• Reading a variety of texts without dictionaries
• Word order in sentences
• Parts of speech
• Guessing words in context

Access to Information from
• Practice listening activities.
Spoken Texts (AIS)
• Use old Meitzav exams for practice.
• Make sure pupils read the questions and mark
important words before the listening task.
• Tell pupils to listen to the first broadcast without
marking answers

Access to Information from Written
Teach strategies:
• Marking the texts
Texts (AIW)
• Finding key words in the questions
• Looking for definitions of unknown words – maybe
italicized e.g. pide – a type of pizza
• Headings and sub-headings
• Example: April 2010

Written Presentation
The writing is assessed according to
• Communicative Ability 0 – 9 points
• Accuracy 0 – 9 points
• Length 0 – 2 points
You must work on:
• Sentence structure
• Capital letters and punctuation
• Vocabulary and spelling
• Text structure

What to do Before, During and
Before
After the Exam
• Send a letter explaining to parents about the exam
• Do at least ONE mock exam in exactly the same way
that they will take the actual exam
• Use old exams as worksheets explaining to the pupils
how to look for the answers
• Make sure the teachers have seen the Table of
Specifications.

• Stay out of the way!!
During the Exam
• English teachers should not be around while the
proctors are watching over the exam.

After the Exam
• The exam results take about 8 months to come
through so relax and wait.
Analyze the results:
• Check strengths and weaknesses
• Each question is analyzed so look at the types of
questions that caused problems
• Reevaluate how you teach – the same techniques are
needed throughout high school.

Pupils with LDs
• The school counselor should have filled in a form with
the names of the pupils who need to be in the ‘reading
class.’ This includes pupils who during the year have
been tested orally, with discs
• You must practice with these pupils at least once – the
mock exam – and if possible even more, before the
exam
• Use the same teachers to read in the mock exam as in
the real Meitzav exam
• All of the pupils are entitled to an extra 15 minutes

Teachers’ Recommendations
• Build comprehension skills
• Practice listening and writing skills all the time – not
just for the exam
• Work on vocabulary acquisition
• Encourage reading, reading and more reading
• Teach reading strategies – identification of text types,
etc.
• Have department meetings to discuss the exam
• Encourage ALL of the pupils to come to school on the
day of the exam

Motivating your Pupils
• Encourage your pupils to do their best for their own
pride and the pride of the school

• The length of the exam
The Challenges
• Getting the pupils to take it seriously
• Meeting with the principal’s expectations
• The level of the reading material
• The weaker pupils – getting them ready, motivated and
helping them to feel good about themselves after the
exam
• Working without dictionaries

Putting it All into Perspective
• All of the approved textbooks teach according to the
benchmarks, so if you use a textbook then you are
already teaching towards the Meitzav exam
• Keep your pupils calm: If you don’t get stressed out by
the exam, neither will they
• Learn from it: The booklet that explains the questions
and answers is an invaluable tool

Thank you for listening.
If you have any further questions:
Diane VanSpier
Phone: 050 -7468149