What concerns you about interviews?

prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 

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Remember that at this stage, the people who want to interview you see you as a strong prospect. They want you to be successful, look forward to meeting you and know that you are likely to be nervous.
At the start of the day, your interviewers will be looking forward to talking to enthusiastic and able candidates and to recruiting promising people. They want to be impressed and get a feel for how well you will fit in. There is nothing worse for interviewers than to spend a whole day interviewing and have nothing to show for it. So use the interview to make their task as easy as possible by being friendly and ready to talk about yourself.
Regardless of their level of experience, interviewers will be ‘matching’ you to the criteria they have established for the job or course. This is no mystery; you have already done this in your application and have met their requirements.
Interviewers are human beings too and will understand just how anxious candidates can be and will make allowances for this. So don’t panic if you have a memory lapse or if you stumble over an answer occasionally. You may be nervous at the start of the interview, but you will probably find that your nerves are controllable and subside as the interview progresses.
In an ideal world your interviewer will be highly trained, experienced, and a good judge of character. In reality, your interviewer may be some or none of these things. Whoever you are confronted with, it is up to you to adapt to the situation.

Most interviews are challenging and you will need to demonstrate evidence of your motivation, thinking and communication skills. But they are also designed to give you an opportunity to talk about why you are right for the job or course. By preparing for it, you should be able to take full advantage of that opportunity. 

Tragedy and Tradition

prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 
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Modern Tragedy 

‘Tragedy and Tradition’ is basically about tragedy and its historical perspective. He deems both tragedy and tradition inter-connected. He does not want to reject the present by the past or vice versa; but he thinks that concept of tradition is important to understand modern tragedy. In this essay, Raymond Williams discusses common as well as traditional meanings of tragedy. For him, tragedy is directly related to culture, society and also to the experiences in life. As he opines that we come to tragedy by many roads. “It is an immediate experience, a body of literature, conflict of theory, an academic problem” He feels that tragedy is not simply about death and sufferings, nor even any response to it; rather it is particular kind of event and a kind of response to the event that is purely tragic. However, there are certain events and responses in life that generally seem tragic, while others are not.
 According to Williams, Tragedy as a word has not changed but as dramatic form, it has gone under certain changes. He is of the view that these changes depend upon the changed perception of the people of the different ages.  According to him, “Tradition” does not mean to accept past entirely rather it is analyzing and evaluating the past in the present perspective. He says: “a tradition is not a past, but an interpretation of the past.” Moreover, tragic works should be examined critically as well as historically.
 To examine the tragic tradition means not necessarily to expound a single body of work and thinking, or to trace variations within an assumed totality. The present forces do not meet the conventional principles of tragedy and they have always been subject to change. It implies that the tradition of tragedy has been different in every age. As William observes: “tragedy comes to us as a word from long tradition of European tradition and it is easy to see this tradition as a continuity in one important way.” Tradition is a product of history, preserved through ages and is subject to the respective age’s socio-cultural consciousness. So tradition is the word used for continuity of something through a long past. In short, he describes historical development of the idea of Tragedy as follows:
Classical and Medieval Era:             
Tragedy originates from the religious festivals of Greek culture. Greek tragedies are unique and genuine. They did not depend on some specific doctrine; rather they are related to a network of beliefs that were common in that culture. In Greek tragedy, the forces weaving the fabric of tragedy are Fate, Necessity, Chance and gods. Greek felt that “Fate” and “Necessity” had become natural part of Greek tragedy as well as life in general. That’s why, the suffering of the main character symbolizes the sufferings of everyone.
To Williams, tragedy is neither simply death and suffering nor a response to it. It is a particular kind of event and response as well, which are purely tragic and embodied by long tradition. His basic intellection is: “the meaning of tragedy, the relationship of tradition to tragedy and the kinds of experience which we mistakenly call tragic” Deliberating the historical development of tragedy, Williams says that when the unique Greek culture changed, the chorus which was the critical component of dramatic form was discarded and the unique meaning of tragedy was lost. He says that things change and concepts change. On the basis of our concepts we tend to seek permanent meanings in art which is a serious mistake. He says: “It is not that we lack the evidence. But we fail to use it because it doesn’t fit our idea of tragedy”.
In Medieval era, tragedy underwent a vivid change. The governing forces in the Medieval tragedy are no more the supernatural forces of classical tragedy. They are replaced by the circumstantial forces. The protagonist is not in the grip of the supernatural forces but he is to be entangled in the social upheavals. Feudalism and the church are the two main forces in the Medieval culture. In Greeks tragedy, the tragic change is from ‘happiness to misery’ but in Medieval tragedy, it is from ‘prosperity to adversity’. It means Medieval tragedy emphasizes on the change of worldly or material change. The tragic hero remains unchanged both in classical and Medieval tragedies. The protagonist is to be, in all cases, a representative figure of the age. The tragedy was considered to be a story, an account but not an action.
Renaissance:
          In the Renaissance era, the feudal world of the Medieval is replaced by a new world of science, learning and materialism and individualism. The Renaissance period was also dominated by the idea of rank.
 The tragic hero eminent in Renaissance tragedy is fallen to supernatural riddles and subjected to his own faults and desires as well. Tragedy was considered to be a story of a noble man who falls in adversity from prosperity. But later, Renaissance tragedy ceases to be metaphysical in nature and becomes critical in development. The character of Elizabethan tragedy is determined by a very complicated relationship between elements of an inherited order and elements of a new humanism.
 Williams holds that Shakespeare was not the real inheritor of the Greeks; rather he was a major instance of a new kind of tragedy. Secular drama was a major step in the historical development in the idea of tragedy. In fact, Elizabethan tragedy anticipates the trends of Humanism and Romanticism. Raymond William says: “In one sense, all drama after Renaissance is secular”.
Neo-Classical:
During Renaissance, there is a precise emphasis on the fall of famous men, as ‘Rank’ was still important because the fate of ruling class was the fate of the city. But with the dissolution of feudal world, the practice of tragedy assumed new directions and modifications.
During the Neoclassical period, emphasis on dignity and nobility of the hero continued. But the moving force of the tragedy was now a matter of behavior rather than a metaphysical condition. The term “dignity” was given special importance. A dignified man was considered to be a man of style, hence, language used was also beautified with different features of embellishments. However, almost at the end of this era, changes took place in the concept of dignity. Thus “behavior” became more important as it was thought that an ordinary man could also behave in a dignified manner. The real spirit of tragedy was moral than metaphysical. The tragic error (hamartia) was moral, a weakness in an otherwise good man who could still be pitied. The elements of pity and fear were replaced with admiration and commiseration. The spectator’s response to sufferings became an activity in itself rather than a mere response to a particular action.
Lessing and Tradition:
According to Raymond Williams, Lessing a German critic and dramatist also contributed in the idea of tragedy by writing “theoretical rejection Neo-classicism”, a defense of Shakespeare” and an advocacy and writing of bourgeois tragedy. He considered neo-classicism as false classicism, because they were wrongly trying to be as exact and precise as the classical writers were. They were quite different from them in contents of tragedy and the only closeness with them was of style. He is of the view that Shakespeare was the only real inheritor of Greek tragedy.
Secular Tragedy:
It is believed that all the dramas after “Renaissance” were secular, whereas the Greek drama was religious. Elizabethan drama was secular in practice but retained a Christian consciousness. Neo-Classical Age is an age of peace, prosperity and secularism. Neo-classical is the first stage of substantial secularization. It insisted on relating suffering to moral error. With the gradual secularization of tragedy, morality became less important and more attention was paid to the critical side of the tragedy. The increasing emphasis on rational morality effected the tragic action. Tragedy, in this view, shows suffering as a consequence of moral error and happiness as a consequence of virtue; meeting the demands of poetic justice. The weakness lies in morality as it is static and moral emphasis is merely dogmatic.
Hegel and Hegelion:
Further he discusses Hegel who didn’t reject the moral scheme of poetic justice but he said that emphasis on morality would make a work social drama not tragedy. Tragedy, he said, was a specific kind of spiritual action. What is important for Hegel is not the suffering ‘mere suffering’ but its causes. Mere pity and fear are not tragic. It does not consider the external contingency beyond the control of the individual i.e. illness, loss of property, death etc. To Hegel, conscious individuality, individual freedom and self-determination are essential for genuine tragic action. Hegel asserts that tragedy recognizes suffering as: ‘suspended over active characters entirely as the consequence of their own act’. The modern tragedy is wholly personal and our interest is directed not to the abstract ethical questions but to the individual and his conditions.
Hence, Hegel feels that Greek tragedy has been seen as the embodiment of the conflict between primitive social forms and new social order, whereas with Karl Marx, Renaissance tragedy has been seen as the result of the conflict between dying feudalism and the new individualism. Individual suffers, not because he is in conflict with gods or fate, but with the process of the social transformation. Tragic hero, in Marxist Criticism becomes ‘world historical individual’, in conflict with ‘world-spirit’.
Schopenhaur and Nietzsche:
The views of these two German philosophers also contributed in the development of tragedy. Before, Schopenhauer, tragedy was associated with ethical crises, human growth and history. He secularized the whole idea of tragedy. He is of the view that ‘true sense of tragedy is the deeper insight into man’s original sin i.e. the crime of existence itself’. According to Nietzsche, tragedy dramatizes a tension, which it resolves in a higher unity. There the hero, who is the highest manifestation of will, is destroyed, but the eternal life of the hero will remain unaffected. According to him, the action of tragedy is not moral, nor purgative but aesthetic.
          In the end, it can be said that Raymond Williams’ concept of tragedy and tradition is not only profound but highly philosophical and thought provoking also. He has given forceful and historical perspective of tragedy and tradition. He has coded the views of English as well as German philosophers to make his arguments forceful. In short, all his discussion shows his power of critical talent and observations.
Tragedy and Contemporary Idea
In the essay ‘Tragedy and Contemporary Idea’, Raymond Williams discusses tragedy in relation to the contemporary ideas. He has discussed the four things: order and accident, the destruction of the hero, the irreparable action and its connections with death and the emphasis of evil. The tragic experience of every age is unique. Williams says that modern and its suffering are very complex and it would be a mistake to interpret the tragic experience of the modern man in the light of the traditional concepts. Tragic experience attracts the beliefs and tensions of a period.
It is neither possible nor desirable to have a single permanent theory of tragedy. Such an attempt would be based on the assumption that human nature is permanent and unchanging. Rejecting the universalistic character of tragedy, Williams says: “Tragedy is not a single or permanent fact, but a series of conventions and institutions….The varieties of tragic experience are to be interpreted by reference to the changing conventions and institutions”
 Raymond Williams has discussed following four main aspects of tragic theory:
Order and Accident:
Williams does not agree to this view that there is no significant meaning in ‘everyday tragedies’ because the event itself is not tragic; only becomes so with a through a shaped response. He cannot see how it is possible to distinguish between an event and response to an event, in any absolute way. In the case of ordinary death and suffering, when we see mourning and lament, when we see people breaking under their actual loss, we have entered tragedy. Other responses are also possible such as indifference, justification, and rejoicing. Depending upon varied responses, Hegel calls it “true sympathy and “mere sympathy”. But where we feel the suffering, we are within the dimensions of tragedy. But a burnt family or a mining disaster which leaves people without feeling are called Accidents. The events not seen as tragic are deep in the pattern of our own culture: war, famine, work, traffic, and politics. To feel no tragic meaning in them is a sort of our bankruptcy.
Raymond Williams opines that we can only distinguish between tragedy and accident, when we have conception of law and order. According to that law and order some events are tragic while others are mere accidents. Hence, some deaths do create tragic affects and others don’t. The death of a slave might be considered an accident, whereas that of a prince truly tragic as it might affect the whole country. However, the emerging bourgeois class rejected rank in tragedy. According to them individual was not a state, but the entity in himself.
Raymond Williams rejects the argument that event itself is not tragic but becomes so through a shaped response. It is not possible to distinguish between an event and response to an event. We may not have response but it doesn’t mean that the event is absent. Suffering is suffering whether we are moved by it or not. In this way, an accident is tragic even if we do not apply to it the concepts of ‘ethical claim’ or ‘human agency’. He also doesn’t seem to approve the distinction between accident and tragedy. Famine, war and traffic and political events are all tragic.
          It is often believed that tragedy was possible in the age of faith and it was impossible now, because we have no faith. Williams, on the contrary, believes that the ages of comparatively stable belief do not produce tragedy of any intensity. Important tragedy seems to occur, neither in periods of real stability not in the periods of open and decisive conflicts. Its most common historical setting is the period preceding the complete breakdown of an important culture. Its condition is the tension between the old and the new order. In such situations, the process of dramatizing and resolving disorder and sufferings is intensified to the level which can be most readily recognized as tragedy. Order in tragedy is the result of the action. In tragedy, the creation of order is related to the fact of disorder, through which the action moves. It may be the pride of man set against the nature of things. In different cultures, disorder and order both vary, for there are parts of varying general interpretations of life. We should see this variation as an indication of the major cultural importance of tragedy as form of art.  “I do not see how it is finally possible to distinguish between an event and response to an event”….“behind the façade of the emphasis on order, the substance of tragedy withered”         
Destruction of the Hero:
The most common conception about tragedy is that it ends with the destruction/death of its hero. But in many of the tragedies story does not ends with the destruction of the hero; rather it follows on. It is not the job of the artist to provide answers and solutions; but simply describe experiences and raise questions. Modern tragedy is not what happens to the hero; but what happens through him. When we concentrate on hero, we are unconsciously confining out attention to the individual.
Tragic experience lies in the fact that life does not come back, that its meanings are reaffirmed and restored after so much sufferings, and the ultimate death gives real meanings and importance to life. The death of an individual brings along the whole community in the form of rituals and condolence as in ‘Adam Bede’; so tragedy is social and collective and not individual or personal.
The Irreparable Action:
Raymond Williams believes that death in tragedy enables the witness to see the real meaning of life. In fact, death is a universal character, which has a perpetual effect on human soul and makes them to relate their faiths and believes with it. Death is universal so a dead man quickly claims universality.
 In a tragedy, the tragic hero faces an absolute meaning of death and a sense of loneliness. Hence, death of a person is considered an “irreparable loss" and which causes lamentation to the audience and makes them realize a “universal principle” or a mere “personal tragedy”. However, Williams Raymond thinks that it is not a single death, or an individual loss, rather it brings a change in the lives of the people surrounding and relating him. Thus, the loneliness of the dead man, blindness of human destiny and the loss of the connection as a result of that death are “irreparable”.
When we confine ourselves to the hero, we are, unconsciously, narrowing the scope of tragedy. By attaching too much attention to the death, we minimize the real tragic sense of life. Man dies alone is an interpretation; not a fact; when he dies, he affects others. He alters the lives of other characters. To insist on a single meaning is not reasonable. The tragic action is about death but it need not end in death. Moreover, what about the other characters who are destroyed? Williams says: “We think of tragedy as what happens to the hero but ordinary tragic action is what happens through the hero”
Emphasis of Evil
According to Raymond Williams, “evil” goes side by side with “good”. However, it is often perceived that evil is more powerful and attractive and make the society to surrender before it. But he believes that it is temporary phase, because, ultimately it is good that is victorious. Hence, the tragedy demonstrates the struggle between good and evil going on in the world as well. Tragedy dramatizes evil in many particular forms: not only Christian evil but also cultural, political and ideological, making the audience to have a clear recognition of the fact that one can be good or evil in particular ways in particular situations of the play, thus achieving different responses as well. Good and evil are not absolute. We are good or bad in particular ways and in particular situations; defined by pressures we at one received and can alter and can create again. Hence, tragedy does not teach us about evil, rather it teaches us about so many aspects of life and their consequences. Williams rejects that man is naturally evil or good as he believes: “Man is naturally not anything and we are good or bad in particular ways in particular situations”
          In the end, we can say that Raymond Williams has very aptly analyzed the concept of tragedy with reference to contemporary ideas. From modern concept of tragedy, a minute observer and critic can get a lot of information. In short, it is a great work of criticism by Raymond Williams.
A Rejection of Tragedy (Brecht)
Williams’ essay ‘Rejection of Tragedy’ is a study of the rejection of tragedy in modern age with special reference to Bertolt Brechet who founded epic theater as compared to the emotional theory of Aristotle. He rejected the conventional idea of tragedy and made tragedy more experiential and rational.
He made people think above the situation presented in the tragedy and not within. Aristotelian drama enforced thinking from within and Brechet’s theater from without. He used distancing affects to turn people like spectators who sit in the chair, smoke and observe. He showed what the audience wanted to see. Williams has discussed six plays: The Three Penny Opera, Saint Joan of the Stockyard, Die Massnahme, The Good Woman of Sezuen, Mother Courage and Her Children and the Life of Galileo. In the last play mentioned, the hero is offered two choices one between accepting the terms or the other being destroyed. Nevertheless, the hero recants. Tragedy, says Williams, in some of its older senses is certainly rejected by this ‘complex seeing’. The major achievement of Brechet is recovery of history as a dimension of tragedy. In tragedy we must see continuity and desire for change. Catastrophe should not halt the action or push the contradictions of life into background. Suffering should be avoided because suffering breaks us, Brechet thinks that our will to struggle should not die under the weight of sufferings. Brechet’s own words are the precise expression of this new sense of tragedy: “The sufferings of this man appall me, because they are unnecessary”
Brechet believes that response to suffering is crucial and weight of suffering is borne by all of us. Even the spectator becomes a participant. As a participant he can condemn or comprehend the sufferings. And for this purpose, he needs some active principle which he finds in the system. But system makes its principles for its defense not for its rejection. Our disgust is directed against morality; not upon the system. Under these circumstances morality serves the cause of the cruel system and religion and spiritualism lose their effectiveness. Morality, religion and spiritualism are used by the exploiting class as a shield against public resentment. Brechet rejected and exposed the validity of the so-called refined sentiments of goodness, love and sacrifice. There are, to him, fake sentiments, romanticized on purpose. Love, he thinks, separates us from humanity. The emphasis on love can look like growth but it is often a simple withdrawal from the human action. Love is defined and capitalized in separation from humanity. Williams declares: “An evil system is protected by a false morality”
Brecht's narrative style, which he called ‘Epic Theater’, was directed against the illusion created by traditional theater of witnessing a slice of life. Instead, Brecht encouraged spectators to watch events on stage dispassionately and to reach their own conclusions. To prevent spectators from becoming emotionally involved with a play and identifying with its characters, Brecht used a variety of techniques. Notable among them was the alienation or estrangement effect, which was achieved through such devices as choosing (for German audiences) unfamiliar settings, interrupting the action with songs, and announcing the contents of each scene through posters.
Brecht first attracted attention in the Berlin as the author of provocative plays that challenged the tenets of traditional theater. In ‘St. Joan’ a modern-day Joan of Arc advocates the use of force in the fight against exploitation of workers. In his play, ‘Mother Courage and her Children’ Brechet invites us to see what happens to a good person a bad society. Through Sheen Lee, he seeks to show how goodness is exploited by gods and men and how good person is alienated. The antiwar play ‘Mother Courage and Her Children’ shows an indomitable mother figure who misguidedly seeks to profit from war but loses her children instead. Brechet’s play ‘Good Woman of Sezuin’ presents a kindhearted prostitute. She is good but she is alienated. Brecht called this a parable play, the kindhearted prostitute is forced to disguise herself as her ruthless male cousin and exploit others in order to survive. According to Brechet the most alienated are the best. He collects life from all corners of the world when he says: “Today when human character must be understood as the totality of all social conditions, the epic theater is the only one that can comprehend all the processes which could serve for a fully representative picture of the world”
He rejected the idea that suffering can ennoble us. Bad societies, he thinks, needs heroes and it is bad life that needs sacrifices. He considers it a sin against life to allow oneself to be destroyed by cruelty. His mature dramas show that it is not possible to label people good or bad. Goodness and badness are the two alternate labels in the same individual. We have a split consciousness and live under this tension. Williams calls it ‘Complex Seeing’ which was rejected by the traditional conception of tragedy. ‘Mother Courage and her Children’ is a dramatization of conflicting instincts in a person who is not consciousness of these conflicts. But the case in ‘The Life of Galileo’ is different. Galileo is fully conscious and is free in making a choice. Galileo deals with the responsibility of the intellectual to defend his or her beliefs in the face of opposition from established authorities, in Galileo’s case the Roman Catholic Church. We can admire or despite Galileo but Brechet is not asking us to do this. He is only telling us what happens to consciousness when it caught in a deadlock between individual and social morality. We are so used to tragedy and martyrdom under such circumstances that we are unable to see this experience in a radically different way – complex seeing and accept the complexity of the situation as a fact of life. Facts that are concealed and brought to light as in, ‘The Life of Galileo’ Barberini says: “It is my own mask that permits me certain freedoms today. Dressed like this. I might be heard to murmur. If God did not exist, we should have to invent him”
Williams in this case presents the example of Mother Courage and comments that the historyand people come alive on the stage, leaping past the isolated and virtually static action that we have got used to in most modern theatre. The drama, in his opinion, simultaneously occurs and is seen. It is not ‘take the case of this woman’ but ‘see and consider what happens to these people’. The point is not what we feel about her hard lively opportunism; it is what we see, in the action, of its results. By enacting a genuine consequence, in Williams’ view, Brecht raises his central question to a new level, both dramatically and intellectually. The question is then no longer ‘are they good people?’ Nor is it, really, ‘what should they have done?” It is, brilliantly, both ‘what are they doing?’ and ‘what is this doing to them?’ In Williams’ opinion, to detach the work from its human purpose is, Brecht sees, to betray others and so betray life. It is not, in the end, what we think of Galileo as a man, but what we think of this result.
Order, Accident and Experience
Obviously the possibility of communication to ourselves, we, who are not immediately involved, depends on the capacity to connect the event with some more general body of facts. This criterion, which is now quite conventional, is indeed very welcome, for it poses the issue in its most urgent form. 
It is evidently possible for some people to hear of a mining disaster, a burned-out family, a broken career or a smash on the road without feeling these events as tragic in the full sense. But the starkness of such a position (which I believe to be sincerely held) is of course at once qualified by the description of such events as accidents which, however painful or regrettable, do not connect with any general meanings. The real key, to the modern separation of tragedy from ‘mere suffering’, is the separation of ethical control and, more critically, human agency, from our understanding of social and political life. The events which are not seen as tragic are deep in the pattern of our own culture: war, famine, work, traffic, politics. To see no ethical content or human agency in such events, or to say that we cannot connect them with general meanings, and especially with permanent and universal meanings, is to admit a strange and particular bankruptcy, which no rhetoric of tragedy can finally hide.
But to see new relations and new laws is also to change the nature of experience, and the whole complex of attitudes and relationships dependent on it. Its most common historical setting is the period preceding the substantial breakdown and transformation of an important culture. Its condition is the real tension between old and new: between received beliefs, embodied in institutions and responses, and newly and vividly experienced contradictions and possibilities. If the received beliefs have widely or wholly collapsed, this tension is obviously absent; to that extent their real presence is necessary. But beliefs can be both active and deeply questioned, not so much by other beliefs as by insistent immediate experience. In such situations, the common process of dramatising and resolving disorder and suffering is intensified to the level which can be most readily recognized as tragedy.

The most common interpretation of tragedy is that it is an action in which the hero is destroyed. This fact is seen as irreparable. At a simple level this is so obviously true that the formula usually gets little further examination. But it is of course still an interpretation, and a partial one. We move away from actual tragedies, and not towards them, when we abstract and generalise the very specific forces that are so variously dramatised. We move away, even more decisively, from a common tragic action, when we interpret tragedy as only the dramatisation and recognition of evil. Indeed, its business is trying to arouse human pity, there are a few things that’ll move people to pity, a few, but the trouble is, when they’ve been used several times, they no longer work. Human beings have the horrid capacity of being able to make themselves heartless at will. So it happens, for instance, that a man who sees another man on the street corner with only a stump for an arm will be so shocked the first time that he’ll give him sixpence. But the second time it’ll be only a three penny bit. And if he sees him a third time, he’ll hand him over cold-bloodedly to the police. It’s the same with these spiritual weapons.

What did you see first?

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prof.Abdelhamid 

Fouda 

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Definitely B for me and it’s accurate

What did you see first? 
Definitely B for me and it’s accurate

What did you see first? 

Let us see what it says about your unique personality traits. 

A. Trees

If the first thing you see are trees and/or tree trunks, there is a large possibility you are an extrovert. You show kindness to strangers and are polite to those you know, but you have a limit and there are two things you won’t tolerate: being pushed around or mocked.

You are a sensitive soul who shows compassion to others. You pretend not to really care, but the truth is that you care greatly what they think of you.

Even though you surround yourself with people you consider to be friends, you know deep down in your heart that only a few of them are sincere and authentic. You come across as a sensitive person, but make no mistake- you are as strong as they come. You are also extremely intuitive and when it comes to showing your true emotions you would rather hide them than put them on display.

In addition, you tend to not trust people very easily. You are a mystery to some people, and they’ll never figure out what’s going on in your mind. You have a tendency to say ‘yes’ to new opportunities, making sure you succeed in anything you put your mind to.

B. Roots

If you noticed roots first, you are likely an introvert. Acknowledging your mistakes and accepting constructive criticism is what helps you to improve yourself for the future.

At first, when people meet you, their first impression of you is usually wrong. It’s likely you’ve heard “when I met you I didn’t think I’d like you,” or “when I first met you I thought ___” countless times. However this impression changes when they get to know you and they start to realize you are extremely wise, and have tons of personality. It’s really not your fault you give off a different vibe at first- we all have walls for a reason after all.

You are someone who is incredibly diligent with tasks. If you want to accomplishing something, you will. You have morals and principles which you use as a guide to live by. This has made you the kind of person who knows what they want and will achieve success in life because of this clarity.
When people get to know the real you, it becomes obvious you are an independent and responsible person who always strives to be a better version of themselves. You suffer from low self-esteem sometimes, but you have genuine friends who remind you of how amazing you truly are when you need to be reminded of it.

C. Lips

If lips are what you first saw when you looked at the image, you are a simple and quiet person. You prefer an average life which is not complicated by unnecessary commotion to find fulfillment. You are very flexible in your thoughts and manners and always go with the flow.

You are wise and also sometimes naive as your thoughts are not malicious and you always have good intent. You may be perceived as weak and in need of help but in reality that is not true. You have strength in dealing with problems on your own without the help of anyone.

You do not care for complicated relationships and like to be honest with people. Therefore people come to you for advice or to talk to because they know they can trust your opinion.

I thought this was cool so I wanted to share! Its copied from a friend.
Let us see what it says about your unique personality traits. 

A. Trees

If the first thing you see are trees and/or tree trunks, there is a large possibility you are an extrovert. You show kindness to strangers and are polite to those you know, but you have a limit and there are two things you won’t tolerate: being pushed around or mocked.

You are a sensitive soul who shows compassion to others. You pretend not to really care, but the truth is that you care greatly what they think of you.

Even though you surround yourself with people you consider to be friends, you know deep down in your heart that only a few of them are sincere and authentic. You come across as a sensitive person, but make no mistake- you are as strong as they come. You are also extremely intuitive and when it comes to showing your true emotions you would rather hide them than put them on display.

In addition, you tend to not trust people very easily. You are a mystery to some people, and they’ll never figure out what’s going on in your mind. You have a tendency to say ‘yes’ to new opportunities, making sure you succeed in anything you put your mind to.

B. Roots

If you noticed roots first, you are likely an introvert. Acknowledging your mistakes and accepting constructive criticism is what helps you to improve yourself for the future.

At first, when people meet you, their first impression of you is usually wrong. It’s likely you’ve heard “when I met you I didn’t think I’d like you,” or “when I first met you I thought ___” countless times. However this impression changes when they get to know you and they start to realize you are extremely wise, and have tons of personality. It’s really not your fault you give off a different vibe at first- we all have walls for a reason after all.

You are someone who is incredibly diligent with tasks. If you want to accomplishing something, you will. You have morals and principles which you use as a guide to live by. This has made you the kind of person who knows what they want and will achieve success in life because of this clarity.
When people get to know the real you, it becomes obvious you are an independent and responsible person who always strives to be a better version of themselves. You suffer from low self-esteem sometimes, but you have genuine friends who remind you of how amazing you truly are when you need to be reminded of it.

C. Lips

If lips are what you first saw when you looked at the image, you are a simple and quiet person. You prefer an average life which is not complicated by unnecessary commotion to find fulfillment. You are very flexible in your thoughts and manners and always go with the flow.

You are wise and also sometimes naive as your thoughts are not malicious and you always have good intent. You may be perceived as weak and in need of help but in reality that is not true. You have strength in dealing with problems on your own without the help of anyone.

You do not care for complicated relationships and like to be honest with people. Therefore people come to you for advice or to talk to because they know they can trust your opinion.

I thought this was cool so I wanted to share! Its copied from a friend.

Which test should I take?

prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 

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There are two IELTS tests available – IELTS Academic or IELTS General Training. The test you choose should be based on what it is you want to do.

IELTS can help you with a variety of life choices, like moving abroad, getting the job you’ve always wanted or even just improving your English language skills. So before you book your test, be sure to check which one is right for you.

IELTS Indicator is an online test, that was recently introduced, for students not able to take an IELTS test due to Covid-19 shutdown.

IELTS Academic

IELTS Academic measures whether your level of English language proficiency is suitable for an academic environment. It reflects aspects of academic language and evaluates whether you’re ready to begin training or studying.

Take this test if you want to: 

• study at an undergraduate level or postgraduate level anywhere in the world
• apply for Tier 4 Student Visa at a university that is a Tier 4 Sponsor in the UK
• work in an English-speaking country for a professional organisation.

Book your IELTS Academic test

IELTS General Training

IELTS General Training measures English language proficiency in a practical, everyday context. The tasks and tests reflect both workplace and social situations.

Take this test if you would like to:

• study or train below degree level
• work or undertake work related training in an English-speaking country
• emigrate to an English-speaking country
• get another job in your own country.

Book your IELTS General Training test

Depending on your preference, IELTS can now be taken on either paper or computer at a number of locations. Read more about it here.

IELTS Indicator

IELTS Indicator is our new online test that you can use to measure your English language level and keep your educational goal on track during the Covid-19 shutdown.

Looking to work or study in the UK?

If you are taking the IELTS test to support a UK visa application to work, live or study in the UK, you may need to take the IELTS for UKVI (UK Visas and Immigration) Academic or General Training or the IELTS Life Skills test.

Paper or computer

You now have the choice of taking IELTS 

Philip Larkin Poetry's Theme

prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 

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PHILIP LARKIN's poetry has a variety of themes: such as religion, melancholy, pessimism, realism, isolation, love, nature, social chaos, alienation, boredom, death, time and sex etc. Some critics have pointed out the narrowness of his range of themes, while his admirers have expressed their praise for his distinctive treatment of these themes but his limited work has unlimited depth. There are many themes in his poetry which are as follow:

i. Religion is the most prominent and dominant theme of his poetry. Larkin has composed his poetry in the context of his temperament and of his personal views on life, religion, and religious dogmas. He shares his thoughts about God, religion and the existing scenario of religious beliefs of different classes of society in one of his poems, ‘Church Going’ in a realistic manner. His poem ‘Church Going’ chronicles the account of that time, when people had become suspicious of the existence of God and religion. Larkin’s sarcasm is seen from the very first line of the poem:

“Once I am sure there's nothing going on.”

The description of the church would be familiar to anyone who has visited a small parish church in Britain. The layout is typical of the architecture prevalent in the Church of England, with a central aisle flanked by wooden pews with cushioned kneelers and prayer books placed on small shelves on the backs of the pews. An altar rail separates the sanctuary on the east end from the rest of the church. Behind the altar rail, one sees a pulpit on the left, a lectern on the right, and in the centre a large altar or communion table. Large Bibles are normally kept open to the day's reading from both pulpit and lectern. Although the narrator himself is not an active member of the Church, he nonetheless mounts the lectern and reads the lesson, even closing with the words "Here endeth the lesson," (which would not be in the Bible itself -- suggesting the narrator recalls them from memory) precisely as a lay reader would during a service. He then returns to his persona as a non-religious tourist, dropping a sixpence (roughly equivalent to a quarter in U.S. terms) into the collection box and signing the visitor book. The narrator resolves this contradiction with an understanding that the value of churches and religion lies in what he calls their seriousness, or their long tradition of being a place concerned with the great and meaningful issues of life and death, as opposed to the ordinary and every day. The narrator finally understands his own reason for seeking out churches and the purpose of the churches he seeks in the final two stanzas:

“It pleases me to stand in silence here; / A serious house on serious earth it is, ... / And that much never can be obsolete, / Since someone will forever be surprising / A hunger in himself to be more serious, / And gravitating with it to this ground, / Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in ...”

ii. Melancholy which means "a deep feeling of sadness that lasts for a long time and often cannot be explained". Melancholy embraces all his themes. This is also the most prominent and dominant theme of his poetry. It is because of his incurable pessimistic attitude. ERIC HOMBERGER, in 'The Art of the Real ', describes him as:

"The saddest heart in the post-war supermarket".

LARKIN's attitude in his poem "Ambulances" is pessimistic with an atmosphere of pathos and melancholy hovering over it. The poem shows the hollowness and emptiness of a modern man who has no time to show love and sympathy for a sick man, he says:

"And since the solving emptiness / That lays just under all we do."

That modern man is devoid of sympathy, he only pays lip service to the sick man, but no practical solution.

iii. The element of Chaos which means "a state of complete confusion and lack order" and Destruction is distinct in LARKIN's poetry, as his poem MCMXIV(1914).It illuminates the poet's impression of the post-war world. LARKIN fails to come out of the horrors of war. His poetry revolves around the disastrous and chaotic effects of war. He minutely observes the chaotic social, political, economic and theological system. He discusses the chaotic situation in which people were forced to migrate to villages in search of shelter. LARKIN sympathises with the lost generation and criticizes at the craze for war.

iv. His poem, "Church Going" shows Nihilism which means ''a philosophical doctrine that suggests the lack of belief in one or more reputedly meaningful aspects of life'' and Pessimism which means ''a state of mind in which one anticipates undesirable outcomes or believes that the evil or hardships in life outweigh the good or luxuries.'' ANDREW MOTION says that:

"Larkin has often been regarded as a hopeless, inflexible pessimist"

 Church Going deals with contemporary agnosticism. The narrator in this poem is very sceptical about churches. LARKIN's dilemma is not whether to believe in God or not, but what a man can replace with God. Though the 'Church' is the symbol of faith, peace and purity yet in the modern age people have lost faith in Church. He says:

"Who will be the last, the very / Last to seek this place for what It was."

And further, he says that:

"Shall we avoid them as unlucky places? "

As for as the nihilism is concerned, LARKIN talks about the negation of life and shows his disgust with the modern civilization

When I Have Fears by JOHN KEATS Stanza Structure

prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 

==================================

“When I Have Fears” by the English Romantic poet John Keats is a sonnet that centers on the theme of fear: fear of his own mortality and the brevity of life, and the effects it has on his poetry and love. Keats’ use of the formal aspects of poetry to convey his ideas is particularly interesting, especially when complimented by other literary techniques. In particular, the stanza structure of “When I Have Fears” contributes greatly to the poem’s content.  The stanza structure serves the primary purpose of organizing the poem, so that individual themes are more pronounced, hence the poem holistically has greater meaning. The stanza structure is also notable for mirroring Keats’ ideas. The stanza structure ultimately makes Keats’ thoughts clearer and stronger.

While the focus of the thesis is on stanza structures and their inter-relationships, it is necessary to examine the structure of the poem as a whole. “When I Have Fears” is a classic Elizabethan sonnet, consisting of three heroic quatrains and a rhyming couplet, completely in iambic pentameter.  Despite the poem essentially being one sentence, four stanzas can hence be divided. Distinctive of Elizabethan sonnets, there exists the volta, in-between the third quatrain and the couplet, where Keats reaches his epiphany and settles the questions that have been plaguing him. From the natural stanza structure of an Elizabethan sonnet then, there is already the basis of some organization and a conclusion. Keats’ thoughts are made clearer by the natural stanza structure of the Elizabethan sonnet, where the first three stanzas are generally an exposition of an idea, and the final couplet offers an aphorism.

The four stanzas each contain their own respective concepts, which overlap. This similarity in content is reflected in a shared structure: again, the quatrains are all heroic stanzas of iambic pentameter. Furthermore, all the quatrains begin with the subordinate clause of “when”: “When I have fears”, “When I behold”, and “And when I feel”.  The couplet begins with “then”, which as an eye rhyme, also indicates some kinship. This similarity in structure also emphasizes Keats’ concern with the passage of time; indeed, his lament of the pithiness of existence is a recurring motif. Interestingly, the verb following the subordinate clause “when” for the three quatrains give a hint as to what the stanza’s subject deals with. The first stanza is about “fear”; the second is about awe, as Keats “beholds” beauty; the third stanza is one of emotion, of “feel”. Here, it is clear that the structure of the stanza reflects its content, and serves to divide the poem by its premise. It should also be noted that the quatrains are separated by semi-colons—indicating their close relationship that does not warrant a full stop.  It is also interesting to note that the final quatrain begins with a conjunction, reiterating it is the end.

The first stanza introduces the theme of mortality, explicitly stating through anaphora Keats’ fear that he will die “Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, / Before high piled books”. More importantly however, the first stanza serves to emphasize that the poem is a deeply personal one, about Keats’ own fears and anxieties. The monosyllabic first line’s scansion places the emphasis twice on “I”, reiterating Keats’ position as the author. Furthermore, the first line has long vowels, giving it further weight and emphasis. This idea is supported by the use of possessives in relation to important symbols in the metaphor: “my pen has glean’d my teeming brain”. The pen and brain serve as metonymies for Keats’ poetry and his ideas respectively, with the possessives emphasizing again the individual. The ABAB rhyming structure of the heroic stanza also supports this. The end rhymes of “I may cease to be” with “in charact’ry” explicitly states Keats’ fear that he will die before he can finish his ideas. The other rhyme of “Glean’d my teeming brain” and “Garners the full-ripen’d grain” subtly compares Keats’ mind to a bountiful yield, ready to be harvested. The second and fourth lines are associated through the use of a lexical set with farming diction. Both begin with dynamic verbs with connotations of reaping, use an elision, and have alliteration to further stress the association. It is important to understand that Keats is not only afraid of the end of his own existence. Rather, by associating his identity so deeply with poetry, Keats is more afraid that he will be unable to finish his poetry.

The second stanza elaborates on the idea that death means the end of his poetic ambitions.  The emphasis here is on the scale of poetry, Keats’ contextual insignificance, and the brevity of his life. There is heavy use of imagery and metaphors, particularly associated with nature. Strong juxtaposition is in works, the magnitude of the night sky diminishing Keats’ size.  As a Romantic, Keats would have encouraged raw emotions and untamed nature. In this sense, the reader understands that the beauty and magnificence of the world is where Keats draws his inspiration. He “traces / Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance”. The premodifier of “magic” is significant, for it confers great weight and beauty upon this task. It is also interesting that Keats can only capture “their shadows”, and not the true noumena. Keats realizes that poetry is far too wide a landscape for one brief lifetime to cover, and an imitation must be satisfactory. Here Keats’ meditations on poetry can possibly be found, particularly in relation to his Romantic roots. Romanticism stresses both the individual and nature. The “teeming brain” in the first stanza suggests inherent personal creativity, while the second stanza suggests that inspiration must also come from the real world. This is explicitly stated with “When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, / Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance”. Personification is used for the night, so the reader can truly understand how small a person Keats feels compared to an infinite cosmic giant. The second line overtly reiterates the size of the sky (and thus, the insignificance of the author), as well as noting that the skies are “cloudy symbols of a high romance”. The sky can be seen as symbolic of general beauty and muse. “High” can be also be a pun on the vertical height of clouds, or the magnificent splendor of the world. It is noteworthy that Keats uses “romance”, which can be seen as a reference and lead-on to the third stanza, which centers around love.

The third quatrain is the most ambiguous ambiguous, so the hint in the second stanza is useful. The interpretation is dependent on what the “fair creature of an hour” represents. Keats could be writing about poetry, romantic love, fame, or any other idea that Keats values. While all are possible versions, the structure of the stanza seems to indicate that Keats is speaking about love, specifically his love for poetry. The third quatrain is notable for being shorter than the others—the last line is truncated. Hence, the third quatrain ends on an exclamation, “Of unreflecting love!” Iambic pentameter and the exclamation place the stress on the “love”, suggesting it is the primary emotion here. This is further reiterated by the euphonic pre-modifier, “fair creature”. Clearly, Keats is very fond of this unknown character.  The evidence points towards the creature being a personification of poetry. Keats notes the “faery power / Of unreflecting love!” The pre-modifier “faery” has connotations of magic. This could refer to the second stanza’s “magic hand of chance”. Thus, through analysis of the third stanza’ structure and previous stanzas, an interpretation can be created.  This stanza structure can also be seen to mirror its content. Just like how emphasis is placed on the transience in the poem, “of an hour”, so the quatrain adheres to its contents by being the shortest.

Up until the volta, Keats has delved into his thoughts on poetry in the face of mortality. Initially Keats would appear to regret that there is not more time for poetry. As a result, he never reaches his maximum potential in terms of fame, writing, or appreciation of poetry. Ultimately, what Keats fears isn’t simply death. Rather, he fears the death of his art.

Through his three quatrains contemplating poetry’s place in a mortal world, Keats reaches a resolution.  While the previous stanzas have been structured around time, each stanza beginning with “When”, the final stanza begins firmly in a place: “then on the shore / Of the wide world I stand alone”. Keats has effectively reached the end of his journey, and is at his destination. He is on the threshold of boundaries. On one side, is his desire for fame, respect, love. On the other, are the great eternal seas, where Keats and his poetry are trivial in the face of the “wide world”. Keats is alone in this decision.

The solution ultimately, is highlighted through anastrophe, “Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.” The inversion of the second half of the sentence places emphasis on “nothingness”. Romanticism stresses the intransience of nature.  It is only through accepting that the passage of time is inevitable, that love and fame will eventually crumble, that Keats will cease to fear. Importantly, Keats is still existent, “and think / Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink”. Despite love and fame having disappeared, Keats is still there, thinking. His poetry will outlive his desires, and be his legacy amidst the nothingness. As a result of accepting the transience of superficial goals, Keats’ poetry has reached a purer form, untainted by the impermanent desires of its author.

Stanza structure has a significant impact on Keats’ “When I Have Fears”. By taking the traditional Elizabethan sonnet, Keats inherits a natural framework. Keats changes this by inserting the volta half a line earlier, creating a personal structure that better reflects the philosophies of the poem. Through manipulation of stanza structure, Keats can ultimately give greater weight and organization to his themes and ideas.

Making your research count

prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 

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In this video, recruiters tell us why they think research into their organisation is so important. They expect you to know what their organisation does, and this needs to come across in your interview.

You should have done some research before you wrote your original application but this is something you need to revisit and do in more depth.

You would be amazed how many candidates turn up for interview not knowing what the organisation or institution does or what the job or course involves - and what a bad impression this creates!

Try using the web, relevant journals and other media to find out as much as you can about the place where you will be working or studying. If the interview is for a job or a vocational course, you should research the employment sector you hope to enter and the current issues facing the profession.

You can find out a lot about a potential organisation or institution through their social media channels such as Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter. Look up the name and go online to find out what they’re doing.

How do they present themselves? What news have they been sharing? These things are important to them, so they’ll be impressed if you mention them in your interview. It shows you’re serious.

To summarise, if you are to be interviewed for a job you should understand:

• the services or products the organisation deals with
• the organisation’s aims and values - what does it say in its ‘mission statement’?
• how you will fit in with its values. Can you identify its culture?
• who its clients / customers are
• who its competitors are and how the organisation compares to them
• if the organisation has been in the news recently and why?

Researching an institution

If you have applied for a course, you may be invited for an interview, although this varies between departments and at different universities or colleges. If you have applied to do postgraduate research you will almost always be invited to interview.

Before you attend, you should understand:

• the institution and department that you wish to join and its strengths
• the aims and values of the institution - what does it say in its ‘mission statement’?
• how you will fit in with its values. Can you identify its culture?
• the key areas of research currently being undertaken or the structure of the course
• the types of careers that students progress on to after completion
• if the institution has been in the news recently and why?

We have created templates that you can use to record your research. Download the template below and store it in your portfolio. If you are unable to open the DOCX files, please download the PDF files instead.

About English Literature

• prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 
• =================================
• #Who_is_the_mother_of_English? 

• Fanny Burney died on this day in 1840. Burney was one of the best-selling writers of the late eighteenth century, and for Virginia Woolf' she is “the mother of English fiction.”
• 
  
• #Who_is_called_the_father_of_prose?

• William Tyndale: The Father of English Prose. The King James Bible, since its publication in 1611, has had a profound influence on the development of the English language, not only in the words and phrases that it employed but also in the syntax and grammatical usages that it rendered into the English vernacular.
• 
  
• #Who_is_the_father_of_comedy?

• Aristophanes c. 446 – c. 386 BC) was a Greek poet and playwright of the Old Comedy, also known as the Father of Comedy and the Prince of Ancient Comedy. Of his forty plays, eleven are extant, plus a thousand fragments of the others.
• 
  
• #Who_is_the_father_of_the_short_story? 

• Edgar A. Poe is called the "father" of the short story because he is credited with setting up the first guidelines for the short story.
• 
  
• #What_is_realism_in_drama? 

• Realism in the theatre was a general movement that began in the 19th-century theatre, around the 1870s, and remained present through much of the 20th century. It developed a set of dramatic and theatrical conventions with the aim of bringing a greater fidelity of real life to texts and performances.
• 
  
• #What_are_the_key_elements_of_a_tragedy?
• Six Formative Elements of Tragedy. After discussing the definition of tragedy, Aristotle explores various important parts of tragedy. He asserts that any tragedy can be divided into six constituent parts. They are: Plot, Character, Thought, Diction, Song and Spectacle.
• 
  
• #What_is_realism_and_naturalism_in_Theatre?
• Naturalism is a movement in European drama and theatre that developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It refers to theatre that attempts to create an illusion of reality through a range of dramatic and theatrical strategies
• 
  
• #Who_is_known_as_the_father_of_naturalism?
• The best-known "proponent of naturalism" was the novelist and French art critic Émile Zola (1840–1902); he was one of the most passionate defenders of Taine's theories, putting them to use in his novels. Zola's foreword to his novel Thérèse Raquin (1867) became the fundamental manifesto of literary naturalism.
• 
  
• #Who_is_known_as_the_father_of_realism?
• Henrik Ibsen
• Transcript of Henrik Ibsen: The Father of Realism. Henrik Ibsen was a monumental playwright and revolutionary for the world of theater. Through his works, he made a significant contribution to sparking the women's rights movement, and changing previously accepted roles imposed by society as a whole.
• 
  
• #Who_is_the_father_of_tragedy_in_English?
• Christopher Marlowe
• Christopher Marlowe. English dramatist, the father of English tragedy and the first practitioner of English dramatic blank verse, the eldest son of a shoemaker at Canterbury, was born in that city on the 6th of February 1564.
• 
  
• #Who_is_considered_the_father_of_tragedy?
• Aeschylus
• Aeschylus (Aiskhylos) is often recognized as the father of tragedy, and is the first of the three early Greek tragedians whose plays survive extant (the other two being Sophocles and Euripides).
• 
  
• #Who_is_the_father_of_the_English_language?
• Geoffrey Chaucer
• Geoffrey Chaucer. He was born in London sometime between 1340 and 1344. He was an English author, poet, philosopher, bureaucrat (courtier), and diplomat. He is also referred to as the father of English Literature.
• 
  
• #Who_is_known_as_the_father_of_drama?
• Henrik Ibsen
• Henrik Ibsen is famously known as the Father of Modern Drama, and it is worth recognizing how literal an assessment that is.
• 
  
• #What_kind_of_plays_did_Aristophanes_write?
• The surviving plays of Aristophanes, in chronological order spanning a period from 425 to 388 BCE, are: “The Acharnians”, “The Knights”, “The Clouds”, “The Wasps”, “Peace”, “The Birds”, “Lysistrata”, “Thesmophoriazusae”, “The Frogs”, “Ecclesiazusae” and “Plutus (Wealth)”.

Educational assessment or educational evaluation

• prof.Abdelhamid Fouda 
• ============================
• 
  

• Educational assessment or educational evaluation is the systematic process of documenting and using empirical data on the knowledge, skill, attitudes, and beliefs to refine programs and improve student learning.Assessment data can be obtained from directly examining student work to assess the achievement of learning outcomes or can be based on data from which one can make inferences about learning.Assessment is often used interchangeably with test, but not limited to tests.Assessment can focus on the individual learner, the learning community (class, workshop, or other organized group of learners), a course, an academic program, the institution, or the educational system as a whole (also known as granularity). The word 'assessment' came into use in an educational context after the Second World War.
• As a continuous process, assessment establishes measurable and clear student learning outcomes for learning, provisioning a sufficient amount of learning opportunities to achieve these outcomes, implementing a systematic way of gathering, analyzing and interpreting evidence to determine how well student learning matches expectations, and using the collected information to inform improvement in student learning.
• The final purpose of assessment practices in education depends on the theoretical framework of the practitioners and researchers, their assumptions and beliefs about the nature of human mind, the origin of knowledge, and the process of learning.
• The term assessment is generally used to refer to all activities teachers use to help students learn and to gauge student progress. Assessment can be divided for the sake of convenience using the following categorizations:

• Placement, formative, summative and diagnostic assessment
• Objective and subjective
• Referencing (criterion-referenced, norm-referenced, and ipsative (forced-choice))
• Informal and formal
• Internal and external

• 
  
• Placement, formative, summative and diagnostic
• 
  
• Assessment is often divided into initial, formative, and summative categories for the purpose of considering different objectives for assessment practices.
• Placement assessment – Placement evaluation is used to place students according to prior achievement or personal characteristics, at the most appropriate point in an instructional sequence, in a unique instructional strategy, or with a suitable teacher conducted through placement testing, i.e. the tests that colleges and universities use to assess college readiness and place students into their initial classes. Placement evaluation, also referred to as pre-assessment or initial assessment, is conducted prior to instruction or intervention to establish a baseline from which individual student growth can be measured. This type of an assessment is used to know what the student's skill level is about the subject. It helps the teacher to explain the material more efficiently. These assessments are not graded.
• Formative assessment – Formative assessment is generally carried out throughout a course or project. Formative assessment, also referred to as "educative assessment," is used to aid learning. In an educational setting, formative assessment might be a teacher (or peer) or the learner, providing feedback on a student's work and would not necessarily be used for grading purposes. Formative assessments can take the form of diagnostic, standardized tests, quizzes, oral question, or draft work. Formative assessments are carried out concurrently with instructions. The result may count. The formative assessments aim to see if the students understand the instruction before doing a summative assessment.
• Summative assessment – Summative assessment is generally carried out at the end of a course or project. In an educational setting, summative assessments are typically used to assign students a course grade. Summative assessments are evaluative. Summative assessments are made to summarize what the students have learned, to determine whether they understand the subject matter well. This type of assessment is typically graded (e.g. pass/fail, 0-100) and can take the form of tests, exams or projects. Summative assessments are often used to determine whether a student has passed or failed a class. A criticism of summative assessments is that they are reductive, and learners discover how well they have acquired knowledge too late for it to be of use.
• Diagnostic assessment – Diagnostic assessment deals with the whole difficulties at the end that occurs during the learning process.
• Jay McTighe and Ken O'Connor proposed seven practices to effective learning.One of them is about showing the criteria of the evaluation before the test. Another is about the importance of pre-assessment to know what the skill levels of a student are before giving instructions. Giving a lot of feedback and encouraging are other practices.
• Educational researcher Robert Stake explains the difference between formative and summative assessment with the following analogy:
• When the cook tastes the soup, that's formative. When the guests taste the soup, that's summative.^[11]
• Summative and formative assessment are often referred to in a learning context as assessment of learning and assessment for learning respectively. Assessment of learning is generally summative in nature and intended to measure learning outcomes and report those outcomes to students, parents and administrators. Assessment of learning generally occurs at the conclusion of a class, course, semester or academic year. Assessment for learning is generally formative in nature and is used by teachers to consider approaches to teaching and next steps for individual learners and the class.^[12]
• A common form of formative assessment is diagnostic assessment. Diagnostic assessment measures a student's current knowledge and skills for the purpose of identifying a suitable program of learning. Self-assessment is a form of diagnostic assessment which involves students assessing themselves. Forward-looking assessment asks those being assessed to consider themselves in hypothetical future situations.^[13]
• Performance-based assessment is similar to summative assessment, as it focuses on achievement. It is often aligned with the standards-based education reform and outcomes-based education movement. Though ideally they are significantly different from a traditional multiple choice test, they are most commonly associated with standards-based assessment which use free-form responses to standard questions scored by human scorers on a standards-based scale, meeting, falling below or exceeding a performance standard rather than being ranked on a curve. A well-defined task is identified and students are asked to create, produce or do something, often in settings that involve real-world application of knowledge and skills. Proficiency is demonstrated by providing an extended response. Performance formats are further differentiated into products and performances. The performance may result in a product, such as a painting, portfolio, paper or exhibition, or it may consist of a performance, such as a speech, athletic skill, musical recital or reading.

• Objective and subjective
• 
  
• Assessment (either summative or formative) is often categorized as either objective or subjective. Objective assessment is a form of questioning which has a single correct answer. Subjective assessment is a form of questioning which may have more than one correct answer (or more than one way of expressing the correct answer). There are various types of objective and subjective questions. Objective question types include true/false answers, multiple choice, multiple-response and matching questions. Subjective questions include extended-response questions and essays. Objective assessment is well suited to the increasingly popular computerized or online assessment format.
• Some have argued that the distinction between objective and subjective assessments is neither useful nor accurate because, in reality, there is no such thing as "objective" assessment. In fact, all assessments are created with inherent biases built into decisions about relevant subject matter and content, as well as cultural (class, ethnic, and gender) biases.

• Basis of comparison
• 
  
• Test results can be compared against an established criterion, or against the performance of other students, or against previous performance:
• Criterion-referenced assessment, typically using a criterion-referenced test, as the name implies, occurs when candidates are measured against defined (and objective) criteria. Criterion-referenced assessment is often, but not always, used to establish a person's competence (whether s/he can do something). The best known example of criterion-referenced assessment is the driving test, when learner drivers are measured against a range of explicit criteria (such as "Not endangering other road users").
• Norm-referenced assessment (colloquially known as "grading on the curve"), typically using a norm-referenced test, is not measured against defined criteria. This type of assessment is relative to the student body undertaking the assessment. It is effectively a way of comparing students. The IQ test is the best known example of norm-referenced assessment. Many entrance tests (to prestigious schools or universities) are norm-referenced, permitting a fixed proportion of students to pass ("passing" in this context means being accepted into the school or university rather than an explicit level of ability). This means that standards may vary from year to year, depending on the quality of the cohort; criterion-referenced assessment does not vary from year to year (unless the criteria change).^[15]
• Ipsative assessment is self comparison either in the same domain over time, or comparative to other domains within the same student.

• Informal and formal
• 
  
• Assessment can be either formal or informal. Formal assessment usually implies a written document, such as a test, quiz, or paper. A formal assessment is given a numerical score or grade based on student performance, whereas an informal assessment does not contribute to a student's final grade. An informal assessment usually occurs in a more casual manner and may include observation, inventories, checklists, rating scales, rubrics, performance and portfolio assessments, participation, peer and self-evaluation, and discussion.

• Internal and external
• 
  
• Internal assessment is set and marked by the school (i.e. teachers). Students get the mark and feedback regarding the assessment. External assessment is set by the governing body, and is marked by non-biased personnel. Some external assessments give much more limited feedback in their marking. However, in tests such as Australia's NAPLAN, the criterion addressed by students is given detailed feedback in order for their teachers to address and compare the student's learning achievements and also to plan for the future.