وجهة نظر في امتحان هذا العام

[Essam Wahba]

اختلافنــا كمُعلمين في حل بعض أسئلة الامتحان يدُل علي وجود شيء ما في هذا الامتحان..فماذا ننتظر من طلابنا المساكين بعد أن تعبوا العام كله وأنفق أولياء أمورهم ما أنفقوه في سبيل أن يحصل الأبناء علي نتيجة أفضل ..

ويدهشني حقيقةً ادعاء البعض من الزملاء أن الامتحان لا غبار عليه وأنه ليس في الإمكان أبدع مما كان ..بل علق بعضهم علي صفحة مستشار المادة بما يُعد من قبيل التطبيل ...

السادة الأفاضل ..هل الامتحان الجيد هو الذي يتضمن العديد من الأخطاء؟

هل الامتحان الجيد هو الذي يتضمن ما لم يدرسه الطلاب في مناهجهم؟

سجلت ملاحظاتي علي الامتحان في ما يلي ونشرته علي الصفحة الرسمية لمستشار المادة وأنا أعلم تماما أنه لن يتغير شيء ..ولكنها قولة حق لا نبغي من ورائها شيئا ..والله المستعان

In spite of the official confirmation every year that the exam will be within the capacity of the average student, the English exam this year was still beyond all expectations.

I will give just a few examples to show the inappropriateness of the English exam. First of all, the exam contained some vocabulary and expressions that students have never met before, such as 'association', 'suspension', 'in theory' and 'in the process of'. This, needless to say, made it difficult for students to understand the context in which such words and phrases were used.

The exam setter made some 'unintentional' errors which caused even brilliant students to give the wrong answer. For instance, in the part where students are asked to correct the mistakes, the word 'research' was preceded by the indefinite article. We all know that this word is either used as an uncountable noun or in a plural form. So there are actually two mistakes in the sentence. This, of course, should be taken into consideration when marking the exam papers.

As regards 'the reader', students were so confused by the second question on the quotation given, where the exam setter used the words ' the speaker' instead of 'the addressed person' or 'the listener', which, unfortunately, made even brilliant students give the wrong answer.

We all realize how important General Secondary Certificate examinations are. They either send the poor student to a prestigious faculty such as medicine, or condemn him or her to a career of mediocrity. And if exams contain things students have never been taught before, what use is the syllabus? The catastrophic consequence is that students will quickly lose confidence in their teachers who are unsure of just what they are supposed to be teaching. The problem is that we teach something, but the exam deals with something else. Why do exam setters in this country insist on making students and their parents suffer as a result of exams that lack validity, reliability and fairness? Why must our poor students pay dearly for the mistakes of those who are supposed to help and support them most? It is teachers alone, not anyone else, who know best their students' standard and abilities, and therefore they must have a say in everything, including the exam.
Essam Hanna Wahba