There's something to be said for illiteracy

Some people shouldn’t be taught to write.

It’s marking time again. PreAL did their exams on Monday and Tuesday, which means that the holiday is going to be spent marking. Here is a sample of the genius I’ve had to endure so far:

When a person take bus in China, you will feel unhappy even angry because of so many people. He can’t keep his position in the bus.

This is not helped by this particular nitwit’s frequently awful handwriting.

The second writing task is meant to be an opinion piece about the advantages and disadvantages of cars. Even although I warn the little darlings to write on one side or the other, I can see them taking the “and” a little too literally as an injunction to consider both sides of the argument.

But, Mr Looms observes, there seems to be no official issue with this approach. From experience, I’d always say that this is a Bad Thing™ because it can bugger up the cohesion quite badly. Exam prep books tend not to give clear guidance on the matter since I can’t think of a single occasion in Lucantoni where this contrary approach is advocated. It turns the exercise into little more than a summary exposition. More annoying still is an Examiners’ Report which says

It is recommended that candidates are selective in their choice of prompts, perhaps one for and one against, and attempt to develop those in some depth rather than giving superficial coverage to all four. There needs to be evidence that candidates can develop arguments and persuade the reader of their convictions in order to gain access to the higher mark bands.

But then surely arguing for one side or the other is a better practice than the contrariness being encouraged here.

On reflection. Since none of my little darlings seem to have been inconvenienced by my advice over the past few years, I can safely conclude that I wasn’t pointing them in the wrong direction after all. Besides, the above is a recommendation.

I’m also expecting to see a lot of sentences beginning  or including “Car is…” when this topic mainly demands a generic plural.