What do you think?
I had a slightly panicked phone call from one of my JTEs today. She teaches at a school which has a brother and sister (1 and 3-nen chugakkou) who are kids of American missionaries who have a church near the school. From what I understand, the family's been in Japan for at least 6 or 7 years, so both kids are fluent in Japanese. They study English with their mum 4 days of the week, and attend English class with the rest of their classmates 1 day a week, because they still have to take tests with them. Anyway, the concern of the teacher was that she had marked two of the answers on a test the boy had taken as wrong, and she said that his parents "became angry" and told her that they were sure his answers were acceptable, even though they were different from the answer key. Here they are:
Q1) Write a question for this answer: "He played baseball after school."
his answer: "Did he play baseball after school?"
Q2) Change to plural: "this girl"
his answer: "the girls"
The questions may have been worded differently, or the instructions in Japanese, I'm not sure since this was all over the phone, but she did tell me that "after school" was underlined. The teacher had called another foreigner to ask about this as well, and he said they were both fine... So, what do you think? Full marks?
Q1) Write a question for this answer: "He played baseball after school."
his answer: "Did he play baseball after school?"
Q2) Change to plural: "this girl"
his answer: "the girls"
The questions may have been worded differently, or the instructions in Japanese, I'm not sure since this was all over the phone, but she did tell me that "after school" was underlined. The teacher had called another foreigner to ask about this as well, and he said they were both fine... So, what do you think? Full marks?
posted by Laura at 5:17 a.m.
8 Comments:
should be "these girls" to keep the same meaning.
as far as the after school. i would have said "when did the boy play baseball?" but that is getting really picky.
anyway. i love your dream. that is amazing! i WISH that was my job! i love how i appear to be my 10-11 year old self in your memory of me. thats how i think of myself still too. as appearing in the mrs brisby video or maybe the back to the 1950s past through your closet.
i dreamt last night that i was in this house that there were definately bad guys in. locked myself in the bathroom and went out the window. which was VERY small and i was very nervous about that fr a second. but i squeezed through and ran to the neighbours where i hid in the bush. then i snuck along their house and found this little girl. who i took and ran with adn checked into a hotel. but apparently her father was a police officer who found her too quickly. dang. criminal record for me!
fuck. im so tired. all the time. what to do?
love you.
Definitely not full marks! I would give partial credit on the first, and mark the second completely wrong. Do you think the parents really yelled at her, or was she exaggerating?
I doubt the parents would have actually yelled at her, all she said was "became angry" or "became upset" or something, so they were obviously making some kind of argument about it, though on what grounds I'm not sure...I'm also confused that the other english speaker she asked about it told her they were both correct!
My answer was that if she could give half marks then maybe each could be awarded a half mark, but that neither was really a fully acceptable answer.
I think the first should be...
What did the boy do after school?
or as Meg said.... and I think question 2 should be...
"these girls"
So in conclusion, I agree with the teacher... If I had that on a test at home (Primary school, Australia) I think I would mark it wrong.
I know that family from when I was on exchange. Loopy. Certifiable!
You're it, Laura! (See my blog for details.)
oi you..update!!!
An update on this post:
A week later when I was at this same school, the boy's teacher showed me a letter his mother had written her requesting that she give him extra credit in the class because he is doing "grade level" work in his English studies at home. The mother had included a selection of this work for her to consider...
I guess that he is not achieving a perfect mark in his school English class and his parents are a bit upset about it.
I had to basically help the teacher write a letter which politely refused the mother's requests...Aparently the mistakes he makes on exams which bring his marks down are things like spelling mistakes and forgetting question marks, which would not be acceptable in English-speaking countries either. Seems to me that he just needs to check over his work more carefully. The teacher did not think it was fair to the other students to give him extra marks based on assignments he does which are not related to the school's English course, and I agree. (Also, his older sister does achieve perfect marks in her school English classes, so obviously it can be done).
Post a Comment
<< Home