kanux
Member
- Joined
- Sep 7, 2008
- Messages
- 65
- Gender
- Female
- HSC
- 2009
http://www.smh.com.au/national/lett...arlier-the-great-exam-sham-20091101-hrht.html
Top marks to Adele Horin (''English by numbers - students find formula for HSC success'', October 31-November 1). For my daughter and her cohort, the HSC English exams involved memorising essays based on teachers' ideas and regurgitating them. Even the creative section of the exam entailed learning a story and tweaking it to match the ''stimulus'' material.
Furthermore, grammar is not in the syllabus after year 6, so technical English skills are not further developed in high school. Students who choose English at advanced and extension levels mostly do so because they love the language and want to use it well and creatively. This system is hardly the way to hone writing skills or engender an enduring love of English.
Vicki Tennant Neutral Bay
Adele Horin is right about the difficulty of HSC English. As a student who took extension English, I can safely say the main reason many find English so hard is time.
In the exam room, extended responses (essays or otherwise) must be written in 40 minutes. Any longer, and there will be less time for other responses. For many students, stopping to think critically about the question is a non-event: they must write for the entire 40 minutes in order to finish a response of the appropriate length. In a perfect world, students would conceive these responses on the spot, but in reality this is almost impossible.
In inter-school debating, the emphasis is also about ''thinking on one's feet''. But even then, debaters have an hour to prepare their argument after receiving the topic. In HSC English, the reading time is five or 10 minutes. This gives the student about three minutes for each response in which to devise something that will reflect weeks or months of study.
To expect any but the most meticulously prepared student to formulate a response entirely off the cuff is unrealistic.
Adam Murphy New Lambton Heights
Adele Horin gives voice to a lot of worried teachers. Having taught HSC English for a decade, and now the International Baccalaureate diploma, I think the HSC is much harder. HSC students need to be able to read to a level that I did not achieve until my fourth year at university. They must master huge, complicated novels, poems and media texts from different settings and literary theories, then weave them together with articulate wisdom.
On paper, it is a brilliant, world-leading credential, but in fact it is far too hard for most 17-year-olds. The widespread assessment-obsessed rote-learning that Horin recognises is a familiar panic understood by teachers of all epochs: it is the behaviour of the academically drowning. Students need to be taught to swim with what Harold Bloom calls ''deep reading'' before diving into the HSC literary criticism whirlpool.
David Hastie Blaxland East
In my experience as a year 12 student this year, a large number of students coped well with the unexpected changes put forward to us. In particular I would like to correct the notion that generation Y is less inclined to delve into, or to appreciate, English literature for its own sake, and that we are all robotic rote learners. My English class was enthralled by our study of John Donne's poetry and Hamlet. Endless and heated class discussions stand testament to our personal engagement with these texts.
Aarushi Sahore Lindfield
I am one of the old school parents ''aghast'' at the direction HSC English has taken. When I inquired about my less-than-interested child's particularly low marks, I was told by the school's head of the English, who is also an HSC marker, that ''the examiners are not interested in ideas. They know all the ideas. It's all about techniques.''
As my child faces the HSC next year, what advice have I given? Pretend its physics or chemistry and just learn it. He needs the marks and I have no power to change the system, as misguided as I believe it is.
The only comfort is that others share my perception.
Kerri Holman Bermagui
Top marks to Adele Horin (''English by numbers - students find formula for HSC success'', October 31-November 1). For my daughter and her cohort, the HSC English exams involved memorising essays based on teachers' ideas and regurgitating them. Even the creative section of the exam entailed learning a story and tweaking it to match the ''stimulus'' material.
Furthermore, grammar is not in the syllabus after year 6, so technical English skills are not further developed in high school. Students who choose English at advanced and extension levels mostly do so because they love the language and want to use it well and creatively. This system is hardly the way to hone writing skills or engender an enduring love of English.
Vicki Tennant Neutral Bay
Adele Horin is right about the difficulty of HSC English. As a student who took extension English, I can safely say the main reason many find English so hard is time.
In the exam room, extended responses (essays or otherwise) must be written in 40 minutes. Any longer, and there will be less time for other responses. For many students, stopping to think critically about the question is a non-event: they must write for the entire 40 minutes in order to finish a response of the appropriate length. In a perfect world, students would conceive these responses on the spot, but in reality this is almost impossible.
In inter-school debating, the emphasis is also about ''thinking on one's feet''. But even then, debaters have an hour to prepare their argument after receiving the topic. In HSC English, the reading time is five or 10 minutes. This gives the student about three minutes for each response in which to devise something that will reflect weeks or months of study.
To expect any but the most meticulously prepared student to formulate a response entirely off the cuff is unrealistic.
Adam Murphy New Lambton Heights
Adele Horin gives voice to a lot of worried teachers. Having taught HSC English for a decade, and now the International Baccalaureate diploma, I think the HSC is much harder. HSC students need to be able to read to a level that I did not achieve until my fourth year at university. They must master huge, complicated novels, poems and media texts from different settings and literary theories, then weave them together with articulate wisdom.
On paper, it is a brilliant, world-leading credential, but in fact it is far too hard for most 17-year-olds. The widespread assessment-obsessed rote-learning that Horin recognises is a familiar panic understood by teachers of all epochs: it is the behaviour of the academically drowning. Students need to be taught to swim with what Harold Bloom calls ''deep reading'' before diving into the HSC literary criticism whirlpool.
David Hastie Blaxland East
In my experience as a year 12 student this year, a large number of students coped well with the unexpected changes put forward to us. In particular I would like to correct the notion that generation Y is less inclined to delve into, or to appreciate, English literature for its own sake, and that we are all robotic rote learners. My English class was enthralled by our study of John Donne's poetry and Hamlet. Endless and heated class discussions stand testament to our personal engagement with these texts.
Aarushi Sahore Lindfield
I am one of the old school parents ''aghast'' at the direction HSC English has taken. When I inquired about my less-than-interested child's particularly low marks, I was told by the school's head of the English, who is also an HSC marker, that ''the examiners are not interested in ideas. They know all the ideas. It's all about techniques.''
As my child faces the HSC next year, what advice have I given? Pretend its physics or chemistry and just learn it. He needs the marks and I have no power to change the system, as misguided as I believe it is.
The only comfort is that others share my perception.
Kerri Holman Bermagui
