I've discovered that marking exams is possibly worse than actually doing them, However, every now and then one comes along which makes me smile... For example, one of my students has written about blue green algae for their essay on "My Favorite Animals". Needless to say, they got top marks. It certainly made a change from the relentless stream of cats and dogs: "My favorite animal is a dog. I like a dog because a dog is cute.....". Please, no more!
I've also been alarmed about the students' lack of geographical knowledge. I set an exam on flags for the third years and spent two lessons telling them what certain flags mean (what the stars mean on the American flag for example). I even gave them a handout with the answers for the exam underlined. Yet not one single student could answer the question "Name the four countries represented by the Union Jack". I even gave them the first letter of each country.
Maybe I should invest in a Union Jack waistcoat...
4 comments:
Pardon my ignorance, but which four countries are represented by Union Jack flags?
I can think of:
1) The U.K. of course.
2 & 3) Australia and New Zealand have Union Jacks in the corner.
4 sorta) The Hawaiian state flag has a Union Jack in the corner, but it's a state, not a country.
This is going to bother me all day, I just know it...
Nevermind. As soon as I read your post again, I saw: "Name the four countries represented by THE Union Jack". (emphasis mine)
So, THE Union Jack is the flag of the U.K., as in: England+Scotland+Ireland+Wales, right?
Sigh.
The typical Ignorant American.
Almost! Ireland is a separate country - Northern Ireland (or Ulster) is part of the United Kingdom.
You still did a damn sight better than my students though.
I'll admit that the UK is a tricky concept to grasp. But I've no idea what the Japanese is for "autonomous regions", so they're staying as countries in the exam. Tim, I challenge you to explain to a bloke from Glasgow that Scotland isn't really a country. See how far you get.
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