BOS f@#king with our minds? (2 Viewers)

[thesinophile]

How can it be discrimination when everyone does the same test? Its your rank that matters, not the raw score because they get subjected to the same scaling. At most certain people get advantaged over others (people who prepared for any situation and people who got lucky by sheer dumb luck_

 

[salih08]

qquit complaining its all about rank and not mark so if its hard its hard for everyone i guess and the marks will be scaled heaps so nothing to worry about.

 

[sakatahahaha]

I for one am not a 'douche' who regurgitate's pre-prepared essays - I have never, ever walked into an english exam with a single paragraph memorised, just a simple body of knowledge, and I write my exam on the spot. That question, however, screwed me over. Aung San Suu Kyi was not a speech I knew particularly well, and the stress of seeing a question where they prescribed a speech that I didn't like caused me to rush and afterwards I realised that I quite probably had not answered the question properly as I was too focused on just getting as much written as possible about a speech I was not comfortable with. I had memorised quotes for almost all of the other speeches - but I ignored that speech because I did not like it, and I knew that it was highly unlikely that they would prescribe a speech, let alone that one. But I of course, was wrong. HOWEVER, out of my entire year only three people had focused on Suu Kyi's speech, and one of those three had gone against my teacher's recommendations and had a prepared essay that she regurgitated and moulded to the question. So no, that module B question realistically came more down to luck - there are people out there who were lucky and had memorised essays with the speech/poem they prescribed, while those who did not were the disadvantaged ones as I didn't have enough information to write an engaging essay. People are whining because they have something to whine about - they feel as though they did poorly in that exam because of that section, just as I do. This is a forum for HSC discussion and it is perfectly fine for people to complain if they are feeling down about exams. We are all in the same boat and most people at some stage will feel down or like they did poorly in something. Just because you thought it was an 'excellent' question does not mean that everyone else does. It's okay for everyone to feel differently.

you are a legend!

 

[jamesfirst]

2006/2008/2011 shall be the hardest 3 unit paper ever created

 

[jamesfirst]

1. Sure it was unconventional, but by no means was the overall exam especially hard. It was actually about the same level in terms of overall difficulty. 3U was a bit harder, but not so much so that it can be considered "unfair" and it will align more anyway.
2. No, I thought it was an excellent question, weeded out those douches who just regurgitate prepared essay and the question actually required you to think and know your text well and wholistically (ditto for mod B). I'm sick of explaining this to people whining.

wtf?


what about the people who prepared an essay with the given stimulus. Fuck, as if it was fair. It was all 'luck'. You can still regurgitate an essay in module B. The question was easy as fuck.

 

[salih08]

wtf?


what about the people who prepared an essay with the given stimulus. Fuck, as if it was fair. It was all 'luck'. You can still regurgitate an essay in module B. The question was easy as fuck.

to be fair bored of studies DOES ask in the syllabus that you study ALL the speeches :S though yeh in practice it went down to luck.

 

[2011_]

+1

Same with poetry, hardly anyone in my year focussed on Among School Children for Yeats, and at the end of the day those who were lucky enough to focus on it are going to fair better than those who didn't.

Also, perhaps instead of the BoS setting 7 poems for study, or however many speeches, they should bring the number down to say 3 or 4, that way a student will not neglect other subjects purely to learn all 7 poems back to front, and there will not be luck involved for someone who didnt know one of the poems. Just my two cents, would make it fairer I THINK, you can freely disagree with me, but in that way every student is on equal footing.

Eh, over now anyway, can't change it now

I agree. The reality is although most schools teach all of the poems/speeches/whatevers in class, when it comes time to revise the Teachers say "Know 2 - 3 poems / speeches really well and get an overall understanding plus a few quotes from the others". And that's what almost everyone does.
Take me, for example. I did Adv English last year and one of the speeches I really focussed on was Suu Kyi's. It inspired me, but my classmates hated it. So I was the only one in the class who chose it to focus on and had I done the exam this year I would most likely have outperformed my class. That wouldn't have been entirely fair, just lucky.

 

[juliastegner]

The english Advanced papers were all down to pure luck really and module A & C? Generic essays!

 

[kaur154]

yeah that was similar to general maths... the hard and easy questions were all mixed up .. the hard questions weren't all at the end...

and for society and culture it was the similar thing for the last question, no one expected that topic for an essay question (popular culture)...but business studies was easy peasy

 

[2011_]

yeah that was similar to general maths... the hard and easy questions were all mixed up .. the hard questions weren't all at the end...

Agreed - usually General Maths gets harder as you go further into the paper but that wasn't as true this year.

 

[juliastegner]

yeah that was similar to general maths... the hard and easy questions were all mixed up .. the hard questions weren't all at the end...

and for society and culture it was the similar thing for the last question, no one expected that topic for an essay question (popular culture)...but business studies was easy peasy

I wasnt expecting the whole unofficial/official censorship crap for popular culture they spurned out , so I was like okayy I'll do the essay question for popular culture and then I look at the essay question and I'm like O____O;;; and decided to do short answer instead.. and bullshit the censorship part.

 

[MrBrightside]

Even for maths they included a lot of 1 markers, which is different to previous trends. I have never seen so many 1 markers in a paper. This means that even if you were so close to the answer you still get it wrong. BOS is trying to weed out the strong candidates from the weaker ones more accurately. Why this year? I do not know. Even IPT was weird. they left out like 75% of the syllabus and tested some points never tested before.

 

[kaur154]

yeah the censorship stuff was so unexpected and same with the future directions for the essay.. but i just did the essay .. i was more confident in doing the essay than the short answers but work and leisure was pretty easy

 

[mirakon]

I for one am not a 'douche' who regurgitate's pre-prepared essays - I have never, ever walked into an english exam with a single paragraph memorised, just a simple body of knowledge, and I write my exam on the spot. That question, however, screwed me over. 1. Aung San Suu Kyi was not a speech I knew particularly well, and the stress of seeing a question where they prescribed a speech that I didn't like caused me to rush and afterwards I realised that I quite probably had not answered the question properly as I was too focused on just getting as much written as possible about a speech I was not comfortable with. I had memorised quotes for almost all of the other speeches - but I ignored that speech because I did not like it, and I knew that it was highly unlikely that they would prescribe a speech, let alone that one. But I of course, was wrong. HOWEVER, out of my entire year only three people had focused on Suu Kyi's speech, and one of those three had gone against my teacher's recommendations and had a prepared essay that she regurgitated and moulded to the question. 2. So no, that module B question realistically came more down to luck - there are people out there who were lucky and had memorised essays with the speech/poem they prescribed, while those who did not were the disadvantaged ones as I didn't have enough information to write an engaging essay. People are whining because they have something to whine about - they feel as though they did poorly in that exam because of that section, just as I do. This is a forum for HSC discussion and it is perfectly fine for people to complain if they are feeling down about exams. We are all in the same boat and most people at some stage will feel down or like they did poorly in something. Just because you thought it was an 'excellent' question does not mean that everyone else does. It's okay for everyone to feel differently.

1. Not the BOS fault. Thew syllabus requires you to know all your speeches, so if you didn't know a particular speech well, its not theri fault at all, and it certainly doesn't make the exam unfair.
2. By the same logic all exam questions are based on luck. I for one didn't memorise any essay, but the question was perfect for anyone who knew their text well and wholistically. The fact is, the question was entirely fair and did not just cater for "luck" but for students who studied the whole text(s) as they were supposed to.
3. Yes but there is a difference between legitimately complaining and whining about how the BoS sets bad questions when the questions were entirely fair. Sure, complain all you want, but there is no need to blame the BoS for it, one can only blame themselves. Its harsh, but true.

 

[Galladrim]

I wouldn't call it a stuff up. They can test us on anything, so long as it's in the syllabus, and test us in any order they see fit. There's no rule saying easy questions must go first, harder questions towards the end. We don't determine how they set the exam; trends can be broken; exams were fair in a sense that if you were genuinely good at the subject, you'd do well, and if you are average, you'd do average. At least aligning will still take place and compensate for this level of difficulty this year. Anyway, it's far better that BOS actually discriminates between students and their abilities; otherwise it would just be another memory test.

I am in complete agreement with you.

And not every test is challenging guys. Ancient History was pretty easy. So its not going to scale as well.

 

[mirakon]

wtf?


what about the people who prepared an essay with the given stimulus. Fuck, as if it was fair. It was all 'luck'. You can still regurgitate an essay in module B. The question was easy as fuck.

The chances of someone preparing an essay specifically to do with how the ending of a text relates to the whole is incredibly incredibly small. Those who regurgitated essays probably didn;t directly answer the question and will be marked accordingly.

 

[MrBrightside]

The chances of someone preparing an essay specifically to do with how the ending of a text relates to the whole is incredibly incredibly small. Those who regurgitated essays probably didn;t directly answer the question and will be marked accordingly.

My friend only studied the last scenes and 'owned it'. But the question asked you to relate the last scenes to the rest of the play.

 

[juliastegner]

yeah the censorship stuff was so unexpected and same with the future directions for the essay.. but i just did the essay .. i was more confident in doing the essay than the short answers but work and leisure was pretty easy

Yes ! But work and leisure was a god send - it's a very bullshitable option so even if you don't know your content you can pull things out of your head on the day.

 

[juliastegner]

Actually with module B I regurgitated an essay and all I did was manipulate my essay so that I slotted in the 'ending' themes into every paragraph and pretended that it was the 'ending' that shaped my judgment and went on to -> insert regurgitated essay <-
but I can understand people who didn't do Aung Sang Suu kyi would be pretty pissed off seeing as teachers say you only need to do 3-4

 

[MrBrightside]

Actually with module B I regurgitated an essay and all I did was manipulate my essay so that I slotted in the 'ending' themes into every paragraph and pretended that it was the 'ending' that shaped my judgment -> insert regurgitated essay <-

Same. It was all I had, luckily though I had two quotes from the closing scenes of the play.