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The task is to draw a thinking cat. You can complete this task in a million different ways. What you (should) get judged on is the technique used. Does it look

by pbz 10y ago

The task is to draw a thinking cat. You can complete this task in a million different ways. What you (should) get judged on is the technique used. Does it look like a cat, are the shadows properly drawn, are the proportions of the cat in order, does the cat look like it's thinking like a human would, etc. What is irrelevant is if that cat matches the image the teacher had in mind when she came up with the task.

Godel_unicode 10y ago
I agree that should be the task. Unfortunately, this is a multiple-choice test, so the task is more "guess what I think the poet meant". There's no room for technique here.
- slavik81 10y ago
  Yet some people consistently do much better on these exams than others. There is definitely a skill to it.
  - mikekchar 10y ago
    I should probably stay out of a discussion like this, but I once worked as a teaching assistant in a Japanese high school. Some of my students were studying for university entrance exams and the English sections were ridiculous. As a native speaker, I was not able to read everything in the time allowed. It became very clear to me that the test makers were not interested in whether or not the students could read English. They were interested in whether or not the students were clever enough to find the correct answers without reading the English. So I taught them how to do it. Now, the questions I often ask myself is - Would it have been better to let my students fail the entrance exam, knowing that English would not be required in their major? Keeping that in mind, was it wrong for the test writer to write a test that favoured clever application of technique over English knowledge? What were they selecting for and what was the best way to determine it? Why is English even on the entrance exam? Similarly, why would anyone have a test about poetry on a standardised exam if their intent was not simply to discover how well the students could jump through hoops?

by pbz 10y ago

Godel_unicode 10y ago

I agree that should be the task. Unfortunately, this is a multiple-choice test, so the task is more "guess what I think the poet meant". There's no room for technique here.

slavik81 10y ago
Yet some people consistently do much better on these exams than others. There is definitely a skill to it.
- mikekchar 10y ago
  I should probably stay out of a discussion like this, but I once worked as a teaching assistant in a Japanese high school. Some of my students were studying for university entrance exams and the English sections were ridiculous. As a native speaker, I was not able to read everything in the time allowed. It became very clear to me that the test makers were not interested in whether or not the students could read English. They were interested in whether or not the students were clever enough to find the correct answers without reading the English. So I taught them how to do it. Now, the questions I often ask myself is - Would it have been better to let my students fail the entrance exam, knowing that English would not be required in their major? Keeping that in mind, was it wrong for the test writer to write a test that favoured clever application of technique over English knowledge? What were they selecting for and what was the best way to determine it? Why is English even on the entrance exam? Similarly, why would anyone have a test about poetry on a standardised exam if their intent was not simply to discover how well the students could jump through hoops?