Idea Transcript
UNIVERSITY OF MALTA THE MATRICULATION CERTIFICATE EXAMINATION ADVANCED LEVEL
ENGLISH May 2005
EXAMINERS’ REPORT
MATRICULATION AND SECONDARY EDUCATION CERTIFICATE EXAMINATIONS BOARD
AM Examiners Report - May 2005
AM ENGLISH MAY 2005 SESSION EXAMINERS’ REPORT 1. Table 1 shows the distribution of grades for the May 2005 session: Table 1: Distribution of Grades – May 2005 Grade
A
B
C
D
E
F
Abs
Total
N=
4
15
100
118
261
268
34
800
%
0.5
1.9
12.5
14.8
32.6
33.5
4.3
100
2. Paper 1 - Drama: Shakespeare’s King Lear and Much Ado about Nothing; Poetry: John Keats, Wilfred Owen, and Elizabeth Jennings; Literary Criticism (Poetry): ‘Request to a Year’ (Judith Wright) Of the three papers, on average, candidates fared worst in Paper 1. Their answers to the set texts reveal that they tend to find poetry and drama less accessible than prose. Most of the candidates chose to answer Shakespeare’s King Lear while the rest answered questions on Much Ado about Nothing. Only a miniscule percentage of the candidates wrote intelligently, without serious grammatical and syntactical errors, and attempted to interpret critically. Most candidates tended to give the story back to the examiner, at best narrating, occasionally describing, and in very rare cases, analyzing. Shakespeare’s texts seem to lend themselves to a narratorial impulse. Candidates recount what they believe the story is all about, sometimes running wild in their imaginings with the result that the essay is replete with serious inaccuracies and outright false statements. What is more worrying is that in many cases the essays border on the incoherent, and are not phrased in a language that the examiners can understand. The following examples are taken from candidates’ scripts: (i) In Lear’s madness he finally feels for the social beings of these men with no superflux pomp. (ii) At the end Cordelia is hanged so she can say thank God. Shakespeare suggests that we are born to suffer, that is why we say when we are born, because we entered the branch of fools. (iii) William Shakespeare in King Lear adopts many mechanical and protagonistical tratis of tragedy.
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AM Examiners Report - May 2005
(iv) This is another mistake that makes King Lear. (v) As from the beginning we can see the power of Lear with all his land. (vi) A character who is morally good in the beginning is attached on his hubris; the small defect considered as the internal factor by an external factor. Apart from the above badly-constructed and at times meaningless sentences, the scripts are replete with spelling mistakes. A vast majority of candidates persist in spelling Shakespeare (Shakespear), Goneril (Gonereil), Regan (Reagan), Gloucester (Gloster, Glouchester), and Edmund (Edmond) wrongly. This gives the impression that these candidates have either never looked at the text, or else have not benefited from the kind of tutorial guidance indispensable at this level. With Poetry, again, virtually all the candidates opted to answer questions on Owen rather than Keats. Only one candidate answered on Jennings. Once again, the tendency is to write what the poem is all about in terms of a story, with the overwhelming majority of the candidates unable to distinguish between theme and story. The very few candidates who gave an in-depth, critical account of the poems chosen for analysis evidence that not only do they have a remarkably good command of the language, but they also possess the right critical knowledge that enables them to pitch their arguments correctly, directly and profoundly. The rest provide a narrative outline that adds up to a dry summary of the ‘events’ occurring in the poem chosen. Again, there are serious inaccuracies and semantic vagueness in the candidates’ understanding of the text. For instance: (i) (ii) (iii)
(iv) (v) (vi) (vii) (viii)
These themes are abolished clearly in power. Wilfrid Owen makes suttle use of transversed appetite [19 candidates used this phrase]. “The poetry is in the pity” unlike soldiers, poets must be able to empathize with their soldiers in order for the birth of poetry which manifests protest against war, which claims so very lives. This poem is a gas poem [58 candidates wrote this sentence]. Torture is one of the factors of stress from survival. He couldn’t support seeing all those horrible seens. A patriarchal sonnet [64 candidates wrote this phrase] Dulce et decorated east [79 candidates misspelt the title Dulce et Decorum Est]
The above examples are alas, but the tip of the iceberg. Persistent spelling, grammatical, syntactical mistakes are to be found in almost every script. For instance, the following badly spelt words below are not isolated cases: (ix) solgers (soldiers), enghou (enough) slawter (slaughter), tugeader (together), dauter (daughter), pletun (platoon), mabe (maybe), underneet (underneath),
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AM Examiners Report - May 2005
shurly (surely), ipokrecy (hypocrisy), clotes (clothes), espetielly (especially), impretion (impression). The use or rather misuse of punctuation is a serious problem. The large majority of candidates have no idea what a comma stands for. Punctuation is used haphazardly, illogically and inaccurately. Sentence structure tends to be very weak, paragraphing loose, and the essays generally lack cohesion and framework. Ideas are disconnected and many loose ends are never tied up. Generally, candidates have no idea how to approach a text critically. Arguments, where they exist, are weak, lame and feeble, unsupported by textual reference and when quotations are inserted, they tend to be disconnected from what is being said. As regards literary criticism (poetry), very few candidates demonstrated an ability to carry out a full appreciation of Judith Wright’s ‘Request to a Year’ and a critical analysis acceptable at Advanced Level. Many candidates made mistakes that could have been easily avoided had they resorted to the basic expedient of revising what they had written. There were far too many avoidable errors involving punctuation, spelling and grammar (for example interchanging ‘he’ and ‘she’ and changing tense midway through a sentence). Other basic mistakes appeared consistently throughout certain essays, a fact that indicates that some candidates do not have the most fundamental knowledge of English grammar. The most common errors were syntactical, but others which related to poor phrasing suggest that some candidates may not have had sufficient practice in developing and honing their writing skills. There were also some essays where the points made were valid and showed adequate critical know-how, but where marks were lost because of the candidates’ inability to express themselves lucidly and cogently in English. This was indeed a pity, because poor expression cancelled out the marks given for insight and incisiveness. It has to be said, however, that in the case of far too many candidates, it was the lack of understanding of the poem and of its themes, style and tonalities that led to their scoring very low marks. Some candidates clearly struggled to come to terms with the almost inhuman strength of mind of the main character in Judith Wright’s poem: a mother who contrives to paint the scene of her son’s possible drowning the moment that she realises that she is too distant from the site of the disaster to avert the tragedy. Others had great difficulty in engaging with the elusive and ironic use of tone and voice in the poem, and with dealing with the temporal distance between the events narrated in the poem and the time of the narrating. In addition, many candidates failed to remark on the conceit—itself steeped in irony—shaping the poem and providing it with its title: that which turns on the admittedly abstract notion of addressing a request to a year.
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There were too many candidates who merely summarised the poem, but others evidently failed outright to understand the events narrated in the text. Some scripts, on the other hand, commented very sparingly about theme and content, focusing instead on versification, imagery and other stylistic features. However, even in this area, many candidates did not achieve the standard to be expected at this level, limiting themselves to superficial or tokenistic observations. In addition, basic factual errors were often made. To cite just two examples, quite a few candidates referred to this 22-line poem as a sonnet, or used the word onomatopoeia incorrectly (the latter mistake is particularly disconcerting, as one would think that onomatopoeia is one of the easier aspects of figural language to understand). Producing a 400-word critical essay seemed to be a challenging task for a substantial number of candidates. Some of these in fact wrote shorter essays or otherwise managed to reach the 400-word mark without saying anything very substantial. In fact, the amount of waffle in certain essays was quite remarkable. It was also disappointing to see that some candidates went off at a tangent and focused on topics not directly related to the poem. This included remarks upon changes in child-rearing practices that have occurred between the time of the events narrated in the poem and our own era. Some candidates even contrived to link the theme of the poem, quite irrelevantly, to divine displeasure and the struggle between good and evil. Indeed, the tendency of a number of candidates to strike a sententious and moralising tone in contexts where that was irrelevant and incongruous must be noted. Although one expects to find essays of poor quality in any examination session, one does not expect that the vast majority of candidates will fail to reach an adequate standard. At Advanced Level, candidates are expected to have learnt how to avoid certain basic mistakes and how to express themselves in a clear and comprehensible manner. In actual fact, only a small minority of candidates in this section of the examination reached the standard of written English necessary to gain a pass—and that without entering into the merits of their critical writing. 3. Paper II - Novels: Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles; Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale; Graham Greene’s Twenty-One Stories; John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men; Literary Criticism (Prose): Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye With a relatively small number of exceptions, the candidates’ essays on the novels were characterised by a generally unsatisfactory use of English and a lack of proficiency in writing about literature. There were very few essays written in what may be loosely termed ‘good’ English, that is, English devoid of basic grammatical and syntactical errors, poor spelling, lack of coherence and punctuation mistakes. Some candidates were even unable to use the simple past tense and invented words like ‘costed’,
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‘forgived’, and ‘seeked’. Extremely poorly-constructed sentences like the following ones were unfortunately frequent: (i) ‘Animals are like human beings, I think that sometimes are better than us human beings because if you treat him bad still he runs after you and gives all the love he can gives.’ (ii) ‘In this story the boys doesn’t pay for doing the wrong but they just leave laughing – black humour, and leave poor Mr. Thomas miserable.’ Spelling mistakes abounded in most essays, but what was particularly discouraging was the misspelling, even by some candidates who did relatively well, of the names of the authors. These included the much used ‘Green’ instead of ‘Greene’ and ‘Steinback’ or ‘Steinberk’ instead of Steinbeck. Serious problems were also observed in the use of punctuation. Few candidates employed inverted commas and capital letters in writing the titles of the tales and novels they wrote about, and most candidates were unable to use punctuation correctly when quoting. More seriously, several candidates could not distinguish between the functions of commas and full-stops, as the following example shows: (iii) ‘We also learn that they have a dream. To have their own farm, “and live off the fat of the land” They plan on being independent and survive on their own products.’ The majority of the candidates also utilised an extremely limited range of vocabulary. Apart from limiting the shades of meaning these candidates could express, the limited vocabulary also led to numerous collocation mistakes or to clumsy round-about ways of expressing ideas. While a number of candidates combined a lack of proficiency in their use of English with an obviously insufficient knowledge of the texts, there was a significant number of candidates who would have done much better had they had an acceptable mastery of English, which is indispensable at this level. Many candidates demonstrated a reasonable knowledge of the texts, but then struggled unsuccessfully to express themselves clearly and accurately. The need for wider reading and more intensive writing training was palpable. Another major concern is the candidates’ inability to adopt or sustain a suitable style when writing about literature. Most candidates employed the past tense when paraphrasing the texts, or abruptly shifted tenses. Other common stylistic deficiencies were the poor linking between points and the abrupt transitions between paragraphs. Moreover, as exemplified in the following two introductions, many candidates were unable to write adequate opening paragraphs to their essays. They often reproduced notes which were irrelevant to the questions set or else introduced their work in a simplistic way: for instance, by presenting the theme to be discussed as one in a long list of themes tackled by the author:
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(iv) ‘Graham Greene, uses the cinematic technique, because he adds a degree of realism to each and every story. That’s why many of his stories were filmed.’ (v) ‘In his novels in “Twenty-one” short stories, Greene tackles a good number of themes which each and everyone of us may face throughout his/her life. As clearly seen in this collection his themes touch different parts from man’s life such as: childhood, relationships, religion, deception and fraud as well as many others.’ On a positive note, quotations were used widely, but, unfortunately, few candidates introduced their quotations, integrated them seamlessly in their essays and used them effectively, as a particular candidate managed to do in the following passage: (vi)‘A definitely subtler form of crime is portrayed in “A Chance for Mr Lever” in which a good man is tempted by “snakes sizzling away like flames” to fall from grace.’ Another commendable aspect of a few essays was their citation of other texts in addition to the ones being discussed in the essay. For instance, a handful of candidates made profitable use of references to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies in relation to Greene’s ‘The Destructors’ while one candidate hinted at the role of male characters in Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure and The Mayor of Casterbridge. Nonetheless, very few candidates showed an awareness of other texts written by the authors studied, while less than ten candidates referred to any critics. Introducing a point by writing, ‘As critics say’, is not adequate. It is recommended that candidates read around the set texts and that they learn how to acknowledge critics when they use them. A vast majority of the candidates chose to answer a question on Graham Greene. While there were some good essays, too many candidates limited their essay to a mere paraphrase of two or three tales which they considered to be relevant to the question. Indeed, the main problem in the essays on Greene was the lack of insightful commentary or, at least, the attempt to engage with the tales in any kind of critical depth. Various candidates answering the question on how Greene portrays horror in his stories provided a list of more or less serious crimes depicted in Greene’s tales as the main argument in their essay. The following paragraph exemplifies such a reductive approach: (vii) ‘T. decides to “destroy” Old Misery’s house, the group agrees. This is obviously a crime because it’s not permitted to break into people’s houses and destroy them. […] So we can see in this short story how Greene tells the story of a crime which is not that bad after all, because the house was old and the boys didn’t kill anyone.’
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AM Examiners Report - May 2005
Apart from the superficial way in which many essays dealt with the tales, the essays were full of simplification, particularly in the way they traced Greene’s stories to his life experiences, a characteristic of even some of the best essays. The following are two examples: (viii)‘Greene himself was as ease, exploring world of violence, crime, fear and so on. In fact the stories symbolise some event in Greene’s life, for instance the destruction of the house in ‘the Destructors’ is similar to his broken marriage.’ (ix) ‘From what I’ve learnt about Graham Greene, he was quite twisted himself, just like so many of his characters.’ Also notable is the fact that many of the candidates who chose to write on Greene discussed ‘The Destructors’, ‘The Basement Room’ and ‘The Hint of an Explanation’, not always relevantly, considering the questions set. Many essays gave the impression of being rehearsed, as the candidates tried to engage with the question only in the introduction and the conclusion while devoting a large part of the rest to the reproduction of notes. Like Greene, Steinbeck was a very popular choice. A minority of candidates opted to answer the question in which they were asked to discuss Steinbeck’s treatment of destiny. While most of the best essays on Steinbeck were written as an answer to this question, there were also numerous candidates who lacked the necessary critical poise and analytical depth to deal with such a theme. In fact, several candidates limited themselves to recounting what happens to each character in Of Mice and Men. On the other hand, those who did well wrote about issues like the inevitability of tragedy, foreshadowing and the problem of character versus destiny in the novel. However, most candidates chose to write on Steinbeck’s treatment of companionship. Unfortunately, these essays were characterised by superficiality and excessive simplification. While perhaps it must be said that it is not easy to avoid writing in a simplistic way about a deceptively simple novel like Of Mice and Men, many candidates took this to the extreme as typified by an ‘English’ proverb invented by one candidate: ‘Who finds a friend have found a treasure.’ Inexplicably, many of the candidates also gave an extensive description of Lennie’s and George’s physical appearance. A significant number of candidates also included obviously rehearsed notes which were irrelevant to the question set. The following is such a passage: (x)‘After a while, George too starts believing the dream and gets immersed in it like a warm bath. George therefore signifies Moses, and Lennie the followers, Jews who are suffering to finally arrive at Canaan. Georges’ and Lennies;
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AM Examiners Report - May 2005
Canaan is not the promised and but a small plot of land[…] All the other characters are Pagan, they do not suffer for a better future each day’. Relatively few candidates chose to answer the question on Hardy’s novel. Once again, the essays on the male characters in Tess of the D’Urbervilles were characterised by excessive simplification and a lack of critical depth. Several candidates simplistically equated Alec with ‘evil’ and Angel with ‘good’, failing to grasp the complexity of the two characters. Many candidates relied heavily on paraphrasing as they showed how the male characters in the novel bring about Tess’s downfall. While this was undoubtedly a relevant point, too many candidates made only that point in their essay. The examiners can unambiguously state that, in the main, scripts which answered the questions on Margaret Atwood The Handmaid’s Tale scored higher marks than average, and this applies both for those candidates who answered the question on passivity as well as for those who answered the question on motherhood. Candidates seemed quite well prepared on Atwood, and there was less of the tendency, strongly in evidence elsewhere, to adapt the terms of the question to rehearsed material. It was noticeable that many of the candidates who answered on Atwood knew the text well and were able to write at length and cogently, bringing to bear a gratifying amount of relevant material in response to the question and also managing to range over diverse aspects of the text during their argument. Quotation here was generally used more aptly and accurately, the argument of the essays was generally pitched strategically and cogently, and the handling of structure, spelling and usage was by and large accurate. A few candidates referred to other novels by Atwood and by other writers of dystopian fiction—the mention of Orwell and Huxley was quite common—but even here, in a section of the examination where marks were discernibly higher than average, very few essays indeed invoked any critical commentaries on the novel. That is surely not an unreasonable demand to make of candidates writing about a novelist at Advanced Level. As regards literary criticism (prose), a feature of this year’s Advanced Level examination in English was the dispiritingly high number of very weak scripts, which in turn led to a high number of failures. Scripts which fell into this category were characterised by an obvious lack of preparation for the rigours of studying English at this level, by a cavalier disregard for the basics of English grammar and usage, by shallow argumentation and ineptitude in phrasing, by an inability to engage with the terms of the essay questions, and by the seeming conviction that a standard of English which would surely have been severely frowned upon at SEC Level would somehow make the grade at Advanced Level. The declining standards remarked upon above were reflected in the essays written in response to the Literary Criticism question devoted to analysis of the prose passage, which this year was taken from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. Many of the essays were feeble. Short essays were common, as were
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AM Examiners Report - May 2005
desperately poor handling of language and a practically inexistent understanding of the distinction between paraphrasing the passage and critiquing it. On a more positive note, there were a number of very good essays. Scripts in this group distinguished themselves by the ability to merge cogent paraphrase with incisive and thoughtful commentary, and by the ability to bring to bear wellchosen critical terminology and a sustained and well-judged deployment of close reading skills. There was one particularly strong essay which scored 29/33—a commendable performance indeed at this level. The essays which fell between the two extremes identified are of course the ones which might arouse greatest curiosity about the examiners’ comments. The examiners would here remark that a good number of candidates were able to come up with some quite sharp insights and some very pertinent observations about the passage. The poignancy of Pecola Breedlove’s predicament was registered and captured by a good number of candidates, and that holds as well for the stylistic peculiarities of the second paragraph and the teasing indeterminacy of the precise nature of the source of Pecola’s troubles. It was therefore an even greater pity that the capacity for perceptive reading that was demonstrated by a number of candidates was not always accompanied by the kind of competence in the writing of English that can reasonably be expected at this level. Thus, for instance, two-line introductions and conclusions, poor skills in the management of quotations, frequent avoidable mistakes in spelling, syntax, and punctuation, and tokenistic use of critical terminology and of the skills associated with close reading, all meant that essays which were potentially adequate or deserving ended up being marked down. Perhaps the most disappointing weakness of those listed in the previous sentence is the inability of many candidates to quote properly. Far too many candidates do not pay any attention to harmonizing the syntax of the phrases quoted with that of the embedding sentence, and a good many just copy down (often inaccurately) the phrase they wish to quote, positioning it in ways which bear no relation to the conventions of English syntax. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about all this is that it appears that the notion that what should be marked, in the Advanced Level examination in English, is candidates’ capacity to argue cogently, to write accurately, and to think critically — surely a not unreasonable requirement to impose on candidates about to enter university — is fast becoming almost quaint. In this situation, it appears to be almost incongruous to ask candidates to critically comment on the use of literary language when they themselves cannot always write correctly, let alone stylishly — and that, of course, is a profoundly worrying comment to have to make. Paper III – Essay; Comprehension: Now you take “Bambi” or “Snow White” That’s Scary; Linguistics: Sciriha and Vassallo’s Malta – a linguistic landscape; Crystal’s English as a Global Language;
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AM Examiners Report - May 2005
As in previous years, candidates fared best in this paper. Candidates were required to write an essay of not less than 500 words. Particularly striking about the candidates’ essays is the fact that they seem unable to distinguish a comma from a full-stop. For this reason, some essays were rendered incoherent because candidates placed a full stop mid-way in a sentence and then continued the rest of the sentence as if the previous punctuation mark had been nothing but a comma. Thus, the ensuing sentence and the previous one for that matter, made no sense at all. Some essays were full of deviant syntactical structures and this made it difficult for the examiners to understand the main gist of the argument. Literal translations from Maltese were all too frequent. Indeed, at times, one could only understand some essays after employing word for word translation of the sentences from Maltese to English. Candidates who chose to write an essay on ‘Music – a universal language’ generally wrote a good essay by discussing, precisely, the universal nature of music. However, others just focused on the one word ‘music’, without attempting to discuss the essay title. Furthermore, the examiners are bewildered at the fact that a number of candidates were unable to spell the following: (i) ‘delt’ (dealt), ‘sevearly’ (severly), ‘asthough’ (as though), ‘crusial’ (crucial), ‘now days’ (nowadays), ‘doen’t’ (don’t), ‘pritty’ (pretty), ‘bellow’ (below), ‘quiet’ (quite), ‘complecated’ (complicated) Though the comprehension set was a straightforward prose passage, some candidates did not always answer the questions set. The answers to the questions set were characterised by an alarming lack of punctuation marks, which inevitably contributed to a lack of cohesion in the answers. The fact that full-stops were used instead of commas resulted in incomplete or deviant sentence structures. Few candidates went to great pains to ensure that their answers were well structured and that they answered the question set before them. The summary proved to be a quite easy task for some, whereas others got lost in irrelevant details, so that the main points were not aptly summarized. In the linguistics section, the first two questions examined knowledge of the set text, Malta – a linguistic landscape, while the third question focused on David Crystal’s book, English as a Global Language. The first question tested the candidates’ knowledge regarding the use of L1 (Maltese) and L2 (English) in a number of domains, while the second question focused on the proficiency of the Maltese in foreign languages. In the third question candidates were asked to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of English as a global language.
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AM Examiners Report - May 2005
Unfortunately, candidates answering the first question tended to go off at a tangent when mentioning the various domains. Quite often candidates never referred to the set text and just gave an ‘off the cuff’ rendition of what they considered to be the current linguistic scene as in the following: (ii) “I don’t see it fair that some people don’t talk to their children in English because they say, ‘we are Maltese so we should speak Maltese.’ It is also very offencive that some children know how to speak Maltese. Even in some school, not the state schools, they have to do the Maltese lesson in English because the children don’t know Maltese. Personally, I don’t see nothing wrong with people speaking English unless they are trying to impress…or they speak EnglishMaltese for example ‘ring and cut’ instead of ‘phone and hang up’. What I really don’t like is that English speaking Maltese rarly swear in English. They usually do it in Maltese.” The question on David Crystal’s text simply sought the advantages and disadvantages of English as a global language. It is important to note that candidates who had never read Crystal’s text could have answered this question. Yet even then, a number of candidates wrote anything but plausible answers – some discussed pidgin languages, past battles - but no reference was made to the advantages or disadvantages of English. There were also many candidates who were able to discuss two or three advantages, but who failed to mention the disadvantages. It is important to highlight the fact that there were many well-written essays which revealed the candidates’ in-depth knowledge of the text and also the ability to apply criticism of these same advantages and disadvantages.
Conclusion It is indeed lamentable that the overwhelming majority of the candidates who sat for this examination do not possess the basic grammatical and syntactical abilities that enable them to express themselves coherently and imaginatively. They lack that grip on the language that would help them write with clarity and simplicity. The examiners find it somewhat difficult to believe that a good percentage of these candidates have had two years schooling at sixth-form level. The problems evidenced in these scripts are real and reveal that candidates do not know the simple basics of English. Most candidates were unable to string two unblemished sentences together in English. The examiners strongly feel that there is no point in glossing over gaping wounds. It is really inconceivable to imagine, far less believe, that the standard attained in these scripts is the one required for Advanced Level since the quality of English in a large number of scripts was extremely poor.
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AM Examiners Report - May 2005
In the circumstances, the examiners cannot but express concern at the possibility that the Advanced Level examination in English might be devalued if such high numbers of weak candidates continue to register for it. They feel it is therefore not beyond their remit to advise that manifestly weak candidates be gently, but responsibly advised on the appropriateness or otherwise of the decision to study English at this level. One must seriously take these factors into consideration. The 2005 May session results should indeed show that there are some very serious problems which really require genuine concerted efforts to find out where and why candidates are still making elementary mistakes in language at Advanced Level.
Chairperson Board of Examiners July 2005
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