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Saturday, June 12, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Dunman Secondary School 2008 Passage B
Paragraph One
Many parents feel stressed when their children sit high-stakes examinations like the Primary School Leaving Examination or the O or A levels. They feel responsible for their children’s performance. Even balanced parents, who understand that their role is mainly a supportive one, feel as stressed as though they are taking the test themselves.
Paragraph Two
Schools should be an ally in the grueling preparation for this major race. Unfortunately, many see their role differently. Many schools use shock scare tactics that are remarkably out of date. I am talking about the habit of many schools to set mid-year-examination papers of an unduly high level of difficulty.
Paragraph Three
A friend who is a full-time mother and coaches her son personally was aghast when he scored just above 50 in his Mathematics paper in a mission primary school. However, the teacher assured her that it was a very good score, considering the average score across the entire school was 40-something. In other words, more than half the school failed the paper.
Paragraph Four
Many schools set mid-year examination papers at an unrealistically high level of difficulty, deliberately to “jolt” students and parents into a state of panic to work harder for the PSLE or O level examinations. When the preliminary examinations roll around later this year, the same pattern will repeat itself.
Paragraph Five
Thousands of students will be in tears over unwonted failing grades. Thousands of parents’ stress levels will rise, fearing their children will do as badly in the PSLE or O levels, as they did for their preliminaries. I am not a pedagogist, but it seems sheer bad educational practice to deliberately set an examination paper that seeks to fail most students. That is not education; that is psychological manipulation of a rather negative and perverse nature.
Paragraph Six
This practice of setting punitively difficult examinations in schools has been around for years. Schools justify it by saying that a little bit of failure spurs students to try harder. The practice results in better grades, they may argue. However, people who argue this forget the impact of repeated failure on a child’s motivation and self-esteem. Top students who score 75 instead of their customary 90 in a particularly difficult paper may indeed feel motivated to work harder to bridge the gap. But what about the impact of a repeated failure on the average child? A borderline student who fluctuates between a B and C, is likely to be pushed into a sea of red ink when confronted with an exceptionally difficult examination. Imagine the impact of getting four straight Ds in June, four months before the PSLE examinations. Demoralised, goaded by fear, the child works harder. Teachers raise the spectre of failure to urge the child to try harder. Tutors add on extra sessions.
Paragraph Seven
My question to those principals and teachers out there blithely setting examination papers they know most students will fail in: is the child, in such a state above, in a good frame of mind to take a high-stakes national examination? Some principals and teachers who use this “fail-them” examination scare tactic will point out that it has worked for years, and raises the school’s average scores in PSLE. My retort to that is simple: Your school’s aggregate average grades may improve, but how many vulnerable children’s self-esteem have you destroyed in the process? Just as pertinently, how many children’s zest for learning have you destroyed? How many individual students ended up doing worse, not better, because of anxiety and stress?
Paragraph Eight
The Education Ministry should monitor and discourage this perverse practice. Guidelines should spell out the difficulty level of school preparatory examinations, to align them with the actual standards of milestone examinations. Schools with large numbers of students who consistently fail mid-year and preliminary examinations, but who go on to do well at PSLE or O levels, should not be praised for their students’ “improved” results, but should instead be questioned on why their internal school examinations are so out of whack with the national ones.
Paragraph Nine
Punitive examinations designed to fail students based on warped ideas of human motivation should have no place in Singapore’s education a system today.
The above passage discusses the effects of “sure fail” examinations on students, parents and schools.
Using your own words as far as possible, summarise what the author thinks are the effects of setting “sure fail” examinations and what should be done to discourage such practice.
USE THE MATERIAL IN THE PASSAGE FROM PARAGRAPHS 5 TO 8.
Your summary, which must be in continuous writing (not note form), must not be longer than 150 words (not counting the words given to help you begin).
Begin your summary as follows: One effect “sure fail” examinations bring about is… [25 marks]
Many parents feel stressed when their children sit high-stakes examinations like the Primary School Leaving Examination or the O or A levels. They feel responsible for their children’s performance. Even balanced parents, who understand that their role is mainly a supportive one, feel as stressed as though they are taking the test themselves.
Paragraph Two
Schools should be an ally in the grueling preparation for this major race. Unfortunately, many see their role differently. Many schools use shock scare tactics that are remarkably out of date. I am talking about the habit of many schools to set mid-year-examination papers of an unduly high level of difficulty.
Paragraph Three
A friend who is a full-time mother and coaches her son personally was aghast when he scored just above 50 in his Mathematics paper in a mission primary school. However, the teacher assured her that it was a very good score, considering the average score across the entire school was 40-something. In other words, more than half the school failed the paper.
Paragraph Four
Many schools set mid-year examination papers at an unrealistically high level of difficulty, deliberately to “jolt” students and parents into a state of panic to work harder for the PSLE or O level examinations. When the preliminary examinations roll around later this year, the same pattern will repeat itself.
Paragraph Five
Thousands of students will be in tears over unwonted failing grades. Thousands of parents’ stress levels will rise, fearing their children will do as badly in the PSLE or O levels, as they did for their preliminaries. I am not a pedagogist, but it seems sheer bad educational practice to deliberately set an examination paper that seeks to fail most students. That is not education; that is psychological manipulation of a rather negative and perverse nature.
Paragraph Six
This practice of setting punitively difficult examinations in schools has been around for years. Schools justify it by saying that a little bit of failure spurs students to try harder. The practice results in better grades, they may argue. However, people who argue this forget the impact of repeated failure on a child’s motivation and self-esteem. Top students who score 75 instead of their customary 90 in a particularly difficult paper may indeed feel motivated to work harder to bridge the gap. But what about the impact of a repeated failure on the average child? A borderline student who fluctuates between a B and C, is likely to be pushed into a sea of red ink when confronted with an exceptionally difficult examination. Imagine the impact of getting four straight Ds in June, four months before the PSLE examinations. Demoralised, goaded by fear, the child works harder. Teachers raise the spectre of failure to urge the child to try harder. Tutors add on extra sessions.
Paragraph Seven
My question to those principals and teachers out there blithely setting examination papers they know most students will fail in: is the child, in such a state above, in a good frame of mind to take a high-stakes national examination? Some principals and teachers who use this “fail-them” examination scare tactic will point out that it has worked for years, and raises the school’s average scores in PSLE. My retort to that is simple: Your school’s aggregate average grades may improve, but how many vulnerable children’s self-esteem have you destroyed in the process? Just as pertinently, how many children’s zest for learning have you destroyed? How many individual students ended up doing worse, not better, because of anxiety and stress?
Paragraph Eight
The Education Ministry should monitor and discourage this perverse practice. Guidelines should spell out the difficulty level of school preparatory examinations, to align them with the actual standards of milestone examinations. Schools with large numbers of students who consistently fail mid-year and preliminary examinations, but who go on to do well at PSLE or O levels, should not be praised for their students’ “improved” results, but should instead be questioned on why their internal school examinations are so out of whack with the national ones.
Paragraph Nine
Punitive examinations designed to fail students based on warped ideas of human motivation should have no place in Singapore’s education a system today.
The above passage discusses the effects of “sure fail” examinations on students, parents and schools.
Using your own words as far as possible, summarise what the author thinks are the effects of setting “sure fail” examinations and what should be done to discourage such practice.
USE THE MATERIAL IN THE PASSAGE FROM PARAGRAPHS 5 TO 8.
Your summary, which must be in continuous writing (not note form), must not be longer than 150 words (not counting the words given to help you begin).
Begin your summary as follows: One effect “sure fail” examinations bring about is… [25 marks]
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