Comment on ESL homework
mastertigurius@lemmy.world 18 hours agoYou dont even know what subject this test was in. Judging from the information provided in the picture, the assignment was completed. If teachers want the kids to do stuff their way, they’ll need to put more effort into how they word their assignments.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
This was very clearly an ESL class and it’s rather insane of you to assume from this screenshot that instructions were in any way close to unclear
Uebercomplicated@lemmy.ml 13 hours ago
Maybe I’m messed up somehow (I guess I am in the 98th percentile of dyslexics), but the instructions aren’t clear to me at all.
This happened a lot to me in reading comprehension exams in highschool as well. I would have hated the teacher and the class had I received a question like this, because I genuinely don’t know how to proceed.
Funny, I did so badly in highschool until grades 11 and 12, where I started the IB, got a different set of teachers, etc. And suddenly I get straight As (or in IB lingo, 7s) instead of Cs. And I think a big factor, not kidding, was the style and formulation of exams like these. It really does make a difference for some people.
Good test design would be to have Bob‘s first answer already filled in, so you get a pointer to how the dialogue is supposed to develop. Or just to have an oral exam, which I think are superior anyway.
TrickDacy@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
This is a tiny cropping of the page. There’s barely anything to go on, yet you and op jump to conclusions that it’s unclear.
mastertigurius@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Judging from your post history, I only get the impression that you like to argue.
Uebercomplicated@lemmy.ml 9 hours ago
Seems pretty clear to me. You see “Task 3,” instructions (“Continue the dialogue with Bob:”, capital C for continue and colon ending the clause), and then “Task 4.” But you can come to your own conclusions, if you think context is missing.
Forgive me if I am not so sympathetic with the teacher who created/graded this. My experience of school was much closer to a torture experience conditioning me to be a good little servant than anything else. I had overwhelmingly bad teachers who made that experience all the worse and should never have gotten and kept their teaching positions. Though I remember the few good teachers all the more favorably, and have stayed in touch with a few of them. This is just to say that I’m a little biased, but that bias is also rooted in reality.