What I read
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My response
It is not frequent that I hear about education protesting, doesn’t have to mention Thailand in which I was kind of glad if there was. According to the news the statue part of the exam just reminds me of history exam rather than English exam. However, cartoons analyzing make sense to me to be in English exam. Brexit is huge and has global impact, so school teachers probably expect that to get into their students’ critical thinking. It requires just a little attention to the world, need no special knowledge.
For most petitions we heard from news, it always sound simple to make one. In a company I worked for, I had ever made a petition to get a better welfare and asked people to join and sign. The further I proceed with it the more difficult I realized it was, when it came to large number of people who had different needs and gave different priorities and that you have to came up with clarity and reasonable claims
For most petitions we heard from news, it always sound simple to make one. In a company I worked for, I had ever made a petition to get a better welfare and asked people to join and sign. The further I proceed with it the more difficult I realized it was, when it came to large number of people who had different needs and gave different priorities and that you have to came up with clarity and reasonable claims
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My question
Have you ever signed a petition for/against something (could be casual or serious, for example, next season of a TV series that was cut by Netflix) ?
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Reference
- German teens condemn 'unfair' English exam in petition. (2018, May 4). BBC News. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43992841
I haven't checked Kan's source, which might not mention them anyway, so I don't have enough information to decide whether I agree with the students or not. If it was a high level exam, it's not unreasonable to expect students to have some knowledge of important elements of the culture that come with the language. This makes learning a language difficult, because you do need to understand a range of references that the users make, and it is generally assumed that a native English speaker knows the symbolic importance of, and some basic facts about, the Statue of Liberty. For example, a writer for The Economist (a British magazine), might reasonably refer to "Trump's failure to honour the principles from the French gift of the statue that welcomes migrants to New York": if you don't know a bit of the cultural background here, it will be hard to make sense of this passage in the article. On the other hand, if it was a junior high school exam, perhaps it was unreasonable to expect such knowledge.
ReplyDeleteCould someone know Thai well without also being aware of important objects in Thai history and culture, such as Wat Prakeow, or kai yang?
Although I never studied history at university, I had to read a lot of history and the cultural background to understand the frequent references in the languages that I studied.
Well, Peter's example on Economist is understandable. At first, I thought it was like interpretation of the look or the gesture of the statue and sort of symbolism. According to The New York Times, the exam is actually about comprehension on a text from “Call It Sleep,” a critically acclaimed 1934 novel by the American writer Henry Roth. The text is a reference to the Statue of Liberty that “Against the luminous sky the rays of her halo were spikes of darkness roweling the air; shadow flattened the torch she bore to a black cross against flawless light — the blackened hilt of a broken sword. Liberty.” I admit that this is too far for EFL and it's more like Literature, a subject of English course in university.
Delete*** Abitur is the exam that allows these student to leave high school for university.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/05/world/europe/germany-english-test-abitur.html
In my opinion, when we talk about education systems, it sounds simply. Actually, It is complicated. When I was preparing for admission to undergraduate study in ,the admission systems had changed to GAT & PAT system which is very much different from previous system. Sometimes exam is not appropriate enough to judge students knowledge. Personally, I love open-ended exams.
ReplyDeleteI like open-ended exams too only if it is by teachers whose expectation is known (by me) :D
ReplyDelete