I had to struggle with the Australian English to understand the headline, but if I read this correctly, people are unhappy that Western Australia's official English exam is being dumbed down:
Authors and academics have criticised Western Australia's new English exam for making spelling and grammar optional extras in written expression. Fremantle Arts Centre Press publisher Ray Coffey said yesterday punctuation and grammar were critical to written language.Mr Coffey, who publishes texts included on the WA English syllabus, said syntax, sentence structure and grammar had been taught to increasingly lower levels over the decades but they remained a crucial part of the language. "Educationalists aren't locked in a time warp," Mr Coffey said. "(Methods) may vary from the kind of approach we grew up with but expression and communication to others is a cornerstone (in education)," he said.
The Curriculum Council of WA's sample English exam for 2007 does not penalise students for incorrect punctuation or spelling and allows them to draw answers or respond in dot points.
Er, um, what do you mean, "draw" answers? Is this an English exam, or isn't it? How useful is it to test English reading comprehension if the examinee isn't required to communicate back in standard English? I went all over the CC/WACE website, but I'll be damned if I can find this information in any scoring rubrics. There is a nifty sample English exam here, which mentions that examinees can bring dictionaries and thesauruses to the exam.
If they can bring dictionaries, they should be required to spell correctly.
Posted by kswygert at March 20, 2006 04:08 PM