Original English

Does anyone care?

Some of the holiday has been spent marking exams. I haven’t done that to the exclusion of other things, but I have maintained a reasonably steady pace and finished off Pre-AL α.

The first writing task is (these days) usually a letter to a friend, which is designed to test pupils’ ability to write informal English. Usually the response is full of clichés and witless drivel, and I wasn’t disappointed. But this time something else was noticeable – memorised answers. A particular group of girls, who have possibly seen this topic before (from a certain source on line), all produced very similar answers in that what they wrote suggested a level of English beyond their present capabilities.

I don’t know what the official view of such answers is. Perhaps if the answer responds to the topic, then recitation is perfectly all right; if the answer makes no reference to the topic, then there are problems. Most of the letters were related to the topic even although the third point, which is often handled in a desultory fashion anyway, was poorly addressed.

One pupil, whose attitude to class is especially irritating, didn’t even attempt to connect her answer, which was little more than a bitchy review of some Korean TV series, to the topic. (Also, she couldn’t remember how to spell “Korea(n)” in spite of her expert level of English.) But this particular student has had a negative attitude to class all year because, it appears, she thinks she’s a genius. If you were a genius, you could spell “Korea(n)” without batting an eyelid.

As I said, I don’t know what the official view of recitation is and have been very, very nice about most of the answers because there is nothing in the marking criteria which allow me to blow this crap out of the water as I’d like to. It’s not cheating per se, but I can’t see how it can be acceptable either.

In the speaking exam, students are discouraged from monologuing, which is what this is; but unlike the speaking exam in which I can stop them, I can’t do anything until after the event.