▶ Your Answer :
Some people believe that grading is the best way to encourage student to learn. Of course, using grade might be effective to student as a dramatical method. However, in my opinion, grading has to use just for evaluation of student’s learning process not just for giving motivation to encourage learning. This is because there are bunch of ways that can encourage student to study in a positive way and using grade has some disadvantage to student.
To begin with, there are many ways to makes student want to study in a positive way excepting grading. Actually, for early children, teacher’s attention and praise are most effective way let them know about fun of learning. Also, reward, such as medal or sticker plays same role as praise, but more effective because it is visual material that student can see and makes them realize that they get good stuff after learning. For example, when I was young, I really hated reading a book, so my teacher gave me a sticker after reading a book. After that, I tried to read books to get a sticker and finished filling sticker chart. Thanks to that, now I usually read a book as my one of hobbies.
On the top of that, we have to think about negative sides which come from using grade to encourage learning. Normally, student who gets a lowest grade feels frustrated and is disappointed himself. Also this frustration makes his self-esteem which is highly tied with social emotional development decrease. On the other hand, if student get a good grade, we could assume that it will be the turning point which leads student to learn and study. The problem is that the student might think the reason why he has to learn and he wants to learn to get a good grade. For example, my friend who always got a good grade when he was in high school is struggling to find what he really wants to be. When he was student, he just studied to get a good grade and after graduation, he couldn’t do anything because his target was always getting highest grade not just for his dream or future life. Although he had a good grade, compared with other friends, he is doing nothing like child who lost the way.
To sum up, grading is not the best way to encourage student to learning, Instead of grade, we can use rewards such as simple praise and stickers. Also, when we think about that using grading might makes student believe that grade is most important part of study, it is so dangerous for them. |