Right. Don't pat yourselves on the back too hard. Might pull a muscle : )
>From what I see in taiwan, the asian obsession with
study is all asbout passing standardized tests.
Incredibly arbitrary, nitpicking standardized tests
that contain innaccurate or irrelevant material
because the examiners dont know what the hell they are
doing.
When I am teaching students often catch me after class to get the answers to some tricky questions copied from an old english proficiency exam. I am supposed to settle a dispute over the correct answer or explain why A is false and B is correct, but 9 times out of 10 either there is no correct answer or the test form provides more than one correct answer and I cannot for any price decide which is the 'best' response. Or it's a 'gotcha' question that has nothing to do with ones ability to actually speak english and that i am able to answer correctly only because i'm a total obsessive geek about grammar and usage.
"don't worry about this, xiao feng. it's totally useless to you."
"but teacher, the test!"
Faced with a situation where these demented examinations will decide their futures what can the poor little bastards do but set about trying to crack the code. Get into the examiners' heads! Predict the content of the exam. Skills and knowledge become an afterthought. xiao feng can't get past 'I am velly like amellican basketaball', doesn't know how to construct a proper essay in her own bloody language, but she wields a mean ass number 2 pencil!
Anyone who speaks good english in asia learned it outside of school. No kidding.
and its not just english either it's biology, math, geography...I mean what the fsck are these kids doing in school for 10 a hours a day if they can't identify the sun as a star, find africa on a map, write a story for class that isn't obvious plagiariism, or calculate my change at the internet cafe without counting on their fingers.
What the hell, people.
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