[English] feedback on the exam

[Caruso, Greta]

Hi folks,

After many years of talking about this issue, I have lodged my feedback on the ESL exam with VCAA. I have also sent this around to a couple of on-line email discussion lists. (Last time I did this was in relation to the removal of The Reluctant Fundamentalist  from the text list and VCAA  then made a change. I  not expect to have the same success this time, but it is possible that if enough people give the same feedback, change will happen.

The VCAA survey is being circulated.
Perhaps this will spark an interest.


Get rid of the note-form summary. The instruction "Do not use complete sentences" is linguistically ill-informed and semantically ludicrous. As soon as a student has a complete verb, they have a complete sentence. This puts the note form summary at odds with the pieces of writing they are meant to analyse. The writing is persuasive, therefore the whole purpose is to undertake the process of persuading. There is naturally enough a contention and an intention, and that intention relates to shaping opinion and sometimes actions.   The function is centered around effect and thus verbs are necessary. To exorcise verbs is to cut against the whole function of the text and common sense. This means that ESL teachers spend their time teaching ESL students how to avoid constructing proper sentences for Section C, then spend the rest of their time teaching ESL students how to construct complete sentences for Sections A and B. It is a tremendous irony that an English exam carries the instruction "Do not use complete sentences".

I can see the argument that a  note-form may be valid academic task. But that does not explain the emphatic instruction "Your response must be in note form. Do not use complete sentences." I simply do not see why you can note have a note form summary  which includes complete verbs.  I know examiners are then duty bound to reward those students who have managed to sidestep verbs and see look less favourably upon writing where they use their eagle eyes to spy a verb. It gets into the realm of the ridiculous when teachers argue that the writing can have verbs, but not full stops and capital letters, because it is the punctuation that makes the sentence complete. This is not what I want to be talking to ESL students about.

Section C was too long for ESL students. Students doing English only have to do one task in this section, but ESL student have to do two. Getting the two tasks done in the time and processing all of the written information means that students who possibly could demonstrate skills in the tasks will have been burdened by the reading load. The decoding aspect of the task was too onerous and detracted from the text user, text participant and text analyst aspects of critical reading.

Greta Caruso

[Description: Description: Description: cid:3409834952_8763038]

355 Station Street, Box Hill, Victoria, Australia 3128
T: +61 3 9896 1706
E:caruso.g at kingswoodcollege.vic.edu.au<mailto:caruso.g at kingswoodcollege.vic.edu.au>
www.kingswoodcollege.vic.edu.au<http://www.kingswoodcollege.vic.edu.au/>

CRICOS Provider 00150G
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Confidential:
The information in this message and in any attachments may be confidential.
If you are not the intended recipient of this message, you must not read, forward, print, copy, disclose, or use in any way the information this message or any attachment contains.
If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and delete or destroy all copies of this message and any attachments.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


[Description: Description: cid:3409834952_8763038]

355 Station Street, Box Hill, Victoria, Australia 3128
T: +61 3 9896 1706
E:caruso.g at kingswoodcollege.vic.edu.au<mailto:caruso.g at kingswoodcollege.vic.edu.au>
www.kingswoodcollege.vic.edu.au<http://www.kingswoodcollege.vic.edu.au/>

CRICOS Provider 00150G
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Confidential:
The information in this message and in any attachments may be confidential.
If you are not the intended recipient of this message, you must not read, forward, print, copy, disclose, or use in any way the information this message or any attachment contains.
If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and delete or destroy all copies of this message and any attachments.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Confidential:
The information in this message and in any attachments may be confidential.
If you are not the intended recipient of this message, you must not read, forward, print, copy, disclose, or use in any way the information this message or any attachment contains.
If you are not the intended recipient, please notify the sender immediately and delete or destroy all copies of this message and any attachments.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.edulists.com.au/pipermail/english/attachments/20121101/5a7d8d1d/attachment-0001.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.png
Type: image/png
Size: 23388 bytes
Desc: image001.png
Url : http://www.edulists.com.au/pipermail/english/attachments/20121101/5a7d8d1d/image001-0001.png