[What happened to the title?]

Roll out the clichés; we’ll have a cliché of fun.

It’s monthly test time. Yawn. Another opportunity for me to see the same errors my little darlings made a month ago.

I tried to teach them how to write interesting responses to the writing tasks, but they’ve reverted to type and been dull and boring. Unfortunately, I can’t mark them down for being dull and boring, or regurgitating something half-remembered from Chinese English classes. Yes, once again I’m dishing out good marks for dog turds.

They’re also doing the usual thing of mixing up articles and letters. Knowing that they like to do this sort of thing, I’ve tried to make it clear that an article ≠ letter, but I’ve been doing that for years.

One nitwit has just written that snake charmers might be entitled to government acid. She probably got overexcited or was busy thinking about the Chemistry exam. Another nitwit talks about the younger generation becoming more interested in working with snacks (common error for “snakes”). The same dunce has just told me China is a clean country. Not round here it ain’t.

Fortunately, I have little to invigilate because we had SAT training yesterday and today, though I don’t need to go, there’s IELTS training, which has given me ample time to get marking, thus ensuring that my weekend isn’t completely ruined.