Regarding the Mode of Chinese Assessment here

My English grades are probably worse than my chinese grades, but I resent the latter more. For one reason - when I look at the mistakes and inadequete standards I meet in english, I feel that I deserve it. Thus I accept this without qualms.

When I review why my answers are insufficient to answer a comprehension question, I can see for myself that there is a lack of logical flow. I can see that my essays lack developed vocabulary and organized structure. This is strange, but I feel a lot happier with my english grades than my chinese grades(which a probably slightly higher)

The mode of assessment of chinese here is rigid. I will not forget the time when I had a real good laugh upon reading a letter to the newspaper. It complained about the rigidity of science marking in the country in this era, by flashing an example in which a question, "What is the difference in the rate of evaporation of water in A and B?", was posed. A student, giving the answer: "B will evaporate faster because A has a smaller surface area", was marked wrong!

The "Model" answer was something along the lines of A will evaporate slower because B had a larger surface area et cetera. This is a rather extreme case.

Anyway, in chinese letter writing, the assessment is such that content marks are allocated based on how many points one writes down. i.e the paragraph count. It does not matter how well developed each idea is, how much elaboration and explanation it contains. It does not even matter how much it stands out an important and crucial point that no one else had though of.

One point just mean one content mark. Three reasons and three ways to solve the problem is required. Just two is not an option, no matter how good they are like I mentioned. And its letter writing, not a proposal of advocacy or analysis report.

This method of assessment destroys the fair advantage critical thinkers have over those who do plain memory work and 'mind-readers' (Those who writes what the teachers want to see).

That is only one issue. Another thing I feel uneasy about is the open-ended comprehension passages. Contrary to English assessment, where marks are scored, when one answers the question to the point, has the correct answer with a logical structure, in chinese this requires unnecessary elaboration which is irrelavant.

Take for example a standard 4 mark question. Should you just answer the question, the most you will obtain is two marks. The other two comes from the elaboration that revolves around the main answer. So it almost always ends up with a lot of ctrl-c ctrl v s from the passage.

There are times when elaboration is not needed and 4-5 marks are awarded straight for a one line answer. Yet the differences between them are almost impossible to tell.

Life is indeed unpredictable.

However the central problem lies in the choice of comprehension passage. Many times they just love to give passages that teach the reader some moral, or a lesson. Most of the time they are illogical and look as if they are written by a child. (Verified by trusted source) One can argue that my standard of comprehension is probably not high enough to attain the level of 'mind-reader', but again it is not so low as to be able to stoop down to their level and think from the writer's point of view. As such, I can't comprehend such passages.

Let me translate one such passage.

"Distance" brings about beauty. But why do we destroy such a dream? Humans, with their selfish desires, have destroyed the beauty of "distance, and have started to possess others by force. No longer now is the forest quiet, but it rings with the sound of gunshots, tigers face extinction. Never again will we see birds soaring in the air, or the fluffy white sheep roaming in the plains. But the humans feel that this distance must not be maintained, and they pick up their axes and saws, and start deforestating, destroying the 'distance' ,destroying their beautiful home...

...

The beauty of literature requires distance too. Have it not been for the long time that has passed since they have been written, will ancient poems still spark the endless imagination of mankind?....

...

But today, our fast paced society will destroy all the beauty of distance. Fast food culture has taken over the distance humans have always been longing in their hearts. Authors no longer pen classics, rather they mass produce hasty works, works that are not worth passing on for generations...

Yes, my translation is horrible, but thats approximately the idea of what kind of passages I get

I really hope that the setters of paper use news articles or articles regarding governmental policies to test us, rather than these sort of 'moral-instilling anecdotes'.

It is difficult to comprehend, and I do not mean that in a good way. Let's put it this way, when I do a difficult English comprehension question, I think hard, because I know an answer is there somewhere, waiting to be found. But here, it's like it can never be found.

Snopes - 1

Urban legends can be interesting. Some of them are plain funny, others encompass deep substance and a few are actually quite inspiring. Even if they are not true, some of them are just lovely to read, giving new satisfaction each time it is being read over again.

I selected 4 good ones from this section.

http://www.snopes.com/college/exam/exam.asp

EXAMS:

Introductory Chemistry at Duke has been taught for about a zillion years by Professor Bonk (really), and his course is semi-affectionately known as 'Bonkistry'. He has been around forever, so I wouldn't put it past him to come up with something like this. Anyway, one year there were these two guys who were taking Chemistry and who did pretty well on all of the quizzes and the midterms and labs, etc., such that going into the final, they had a solid A.

These two friends were so confident going into the final that the weekend before finals week (even though the Chem final was on Monday), they decided to go up to UVirginia and party with some friends up there. So they did this and had a great time. However, with their hangovers and everything, they overslept all day Sunday and didn't make it back to Duke until early monday morning.

Rather than taking the final then, what they did was to find Professor Bonk after the final and explain to him why they missed the final. They told him that they went up to UVa for the weekend, and had planned to come back in time to study, but that they had a flat tire on the way back and didn't have a spare and couldn't get help for a long time and so were late getting back to campus. Bonk thought this over and then agreed that they could make up the final on the following day. The two guys were elated and relieved.

So, they studied that night and went in the next day at the time that Bonk had told them. He placed them in separate rooms and handed each of them a test booklet and told them to begin. They looked at the first problem, which was something simple about molarity and solutions and was worth 5 points. "Cool" they thought, "this is going to be easy." They did that problem and then turned the page. They were unprepared, however, for what they saw on the next page. It said:

(95 points) Which tire?

Assuming the car had four tires, they had a quarter chance of 'getting it right'.

~~~

Just before Christmas a college professor read the following on an examination paper: "God only knows the answer to this question. Merry Christmas."

Across the paper the professor wrote: "God gets an A, you get an F. Happy New Year."

~~~

The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the
University of Copenhagen:

"Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer."

One student replied:

"You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building."

This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed immediately. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case.

The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did not display any noticeable knowledge of physics. To resolve the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer that showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics.

For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use. On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:

"Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer."

"Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper."

"But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked
out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T =2 pi sqr root (l /g)."

"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up."

"If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building."

"But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him 'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper'."

The student was Niels Bohr, the only Dane to win the Nobel Prize for physics.

Education is not about "Teaching people how to think", it is about teaching them how to learn.

~~~

An economics professor at Texas Tech said he had never failed a single student before but had, once, failed an entire class. The class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer. The professor then said ok, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. But, as the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too; so they studied little... The second Test average was a D! No one was happy. When the 3rd test rolled around the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame, name calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for anyone else. All failed to their great surprise and the professor told them that socialism would ultimately fail because the harder to succeed the greater the reward but when a government takes all the reward away; no one will try or succeed.

Exam's over

English was not much of a surprise.

Chinese was difficult.

Biology was over long ago.

Chemistry paper was fun to do.

So was Physics. For the first time, a free body diagram helped me solve a question about a fireman. I forgot that smooth walls cannot exert any vertical force on ladders.

Functions and Graphs was smooth sailing. Although I had quite a bit of problem doing the linear law questions (because I did not attend the lessons on it and did not bother making up), I managed to self learn the day before so I managed to sail through by instincts. Ben made a stupid mistake of thinking e was 1.618. What a waste.

Now, for trigonometry...

I did not take the paper like everyone else in the hall, because the botanic garden students went for another rehearsal there. It was raining, and yet the sun was shining brightly, a most uncomfortable weather. We pulled through and went back to school, where everyone else have finished their exams and we (junruiterencezhishenghuiminamandanicktrangjoellezhanfeng) have not!

So we were isolated into a meeting room where we rested and studied, while the teachers bought snacks and drinks for us into the room.

It was still raining outside, the air-conditioning was blowing, the room was cold. I was shivering throughout. In addition, I felt a little left out.

Then we took the trigo paper. Maybe it was the stress of the morning and the cold; all the questions seemed harder than ever. I left several 6-8 mark questions in a mess of uncomprehendable methods which jumped from one to the other, leaving it in jumble for the marker to sort out my thoughts.

Just at the last question, when I had already given up, telling myself that it was only an exam which constituted 40% of final grade only for a module that constituted only 2 MCs over my entire semester report which constitutes a fraction of my entire transcript. So no worries. So I worked on a seemingly toughest last question with ease of mind, not giving two thoughts about figuring out how to prove the maximum area of a rectangle inscribed in a sector.

When I get nervous, I always write big and cancel things with a lot of noise. I realised that today.

Then I went back to several questions about finding the exact value of some stuff, and I stared into the solution. Having 10 minutes left, I tried to finish those which I knew how to do already, but my writing could not catch up with my thinking, so I did not finish the questions. I guess it was an unfair disadvantage to have our bodies and minds stressed by botanic gardens and temperature before the exam. I bet I could have done better (at least twice :( ).

I lost at least 13 marks out of 57 for questions which I did not even write a single thing about.
---
Anyway, taking things easy is not as easy as people always tell themselves. So although I did not complain much, like I always do about careless mistakes after exams, I felt rather unhappy.

The group of us started chatting outside the meeting room with mr yee and ms ng about class relations.

Suddenly mr yee pointed to me and said that I look innocent but actually is not or something like that, something which he has been talking about for sometime. Up to now I still did not get it, so, left out + bad exam + suspicion = very sad

And after about an hour, the chat steadily subsided, and the 305 people talked about 305 class outing. Which reminds me, 302 is not a very cheery class who interact and have fun with one another.

Later on the bus, Joelle was saying how unbonded her, in my opinion very bonded, class was, which made me think, how pathetic is this. Beginning of the year ms tay said that our class was not very bonded, and I did not really bother much about. Now I know what she means.

Which left me pretty lost now that exams are over. Many others were going out with their classes. What should I do?

And the thoughts drifted from social problems to self on the first half of the MRT ride, and I thought about how left out I nearly always have been, since primary school, when I only had one friend. To now. And how it is so true that the company you mix in affects you so greatly. I remember being innocently nice in primary school such that no one liked me. Now, I find it hard to even remember to be nice when I try to remind myself the night before. 'Nice' is such a cool word, a boring cliche, yet being able to express so many things.

Which I know isn't really true, but because I was feeling sad at that time.

And after the emo side of me have passed, I decided to stop complaining about the sad life of me. But to tell the truth, I am not feeling exactly happy right now either.

At white sands, I stopped for dunch (dinner and lunch) and got a footlong veggie delite at subway.

So I guess the holidays are coming. Now I feel like attending normal school days again.

Better set some goals for myself.

Exam revision

Other than practicing chinese and studying for biology, I did not prepare for exams in any other way.

Heres a chinese expository essay about teachers I studied on the day before the chinese exam.

师说

　古之学者必有师。师者，所以传道受业解惑也。人非生而知之者，孰能无惑？惑而不从师，其为惑也，终不解矣。生乎吾前，其闻道也固先乎吾，吾从而师之；生 乎吾后，其闻道也亦先乎吾，吾从而师之。吾师道也，夫庸知其年之先后生于吾乎？是故无贵无贱，无长无少，道之所存，师之所存也。
　　嗟乎！师道之不传也久矣！欲人之无惑也难矣！古之圣人，其出人也远矣，犹且从师而问焉；今之众 人，其下圣人也亦远矣，而耻学于师。是故圣益圣，愚益愚。圣人之所以为圣，愚人之所以为愚，其皆出于此乎？爱其子，择师而教之；于其身也，则耻师焉，惑 矣。彼童子之师，授之书而习其句读者，非吾所谓传其道解其惑者也。句读之不知，惑之不解，或师焉，或不焉，小学而大遗，吾未见其明也。巫医乐师百工之人， 不耻相师。士大夫之族，曰师曰弟子云者，则群聚而笑之。问之，则曰：“彼与彼年相若也，道相似也。位卑则足羞，官盛则近谀。”呜呼！师道之不复，可知矣。*1* 巫医乐师百工之人，君子不齿，今其智乃反不能及，其可怪也欤！*1*
　　圣人无常师。孔子师郯子、苌弘、师襄、老聃。郯子之徒，其贤不及孔子。孔子曰：三人行，则必有我师。是故弟子不必不如师，师不必贤于弟子，闻道有先后，术业有专攻，如是而已。

*1* : I love the sarcasm

And thats all the preperation.

Now that the exams are over and the stress is relieved, I feel more happy and lively! Went cycling with half of 205 on Tuesday(again) which was not too bad and later went to watch a movie with 5 other people.

Results would be out next week. Hopefully I won't do too badly (I know I won't).