THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20623, 12 August 1932, Page 16

THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH.

UNIVERSITY ENTRANCE SYLLABUS.

ENGLISH ASSOCIATION'S DISCUSSION.

At a meeting of the English Association held last night at Canterbury College an informal discussion of the University Entrance Examination in English took place. No motions were proposed or passed, but after a great deal of discussion it was decided to call a larger meeting of teachers of English, with a view to obtaining their opinions, and taking the matter further, if possible. Professor F. Sinelaire was in the chair.

Miss Dorothy M. Stewart, lecturer in English at the Christchurch Training College, led the discussion by suggesting how and where improvements could be effected in the existing syllabus and system. She suggested that the professor responsible for the entrance examination in English should act in collaboration with a qualified person in close touch with secondary school work. If the examining body included a professor concerned chiefly with results, and a collaborator familiar with methods of attaining thoso results, a far better test could be devised. It must be remembered that the entrance examination dominated English teaching in a great many secondary schools. Three years of wellset papers, arranged in pursuance of a definite policy, would revolutionise English teaching in many class-rooms, and thus directly raise the standard of English without and within the Universitv.

Qualified Correctois. The second rocommcndatioD offered by Miss Stewart was that the examination papers should be corrected only by qualified persons, that is, by persons who have had at least two full years of teaching experience. There had arisen a regrettable practice of farming out the correction of examination papers among people quite unpractised in correction. This was unfair to the candidates themselves and to the teachers whose reputations depended larguly upon the successes of their pupils. Experienced teachers bitterly resented having their work estimated by undergraduates whose judgment was immature, and who lacked the years of prao;ice necessary to keep their standard uniform over "a large number of papers. In English few questions could be marked right or wrong. Where values must be rapidly assessed and new judgments formed with each succeeding paragraph, the trained examiner was required.

Division of Markings. lu regard to the distribution of papers among examiners, she suggested that 'the question paper bo divided into sections, and that the answers to each section be apportioned to one examiner only, so that only he or she should correct the same answers right through tho 4000 papers. The present system was to divide out the candidates' scripts, so that each examiner received about 1000 complete papers to mark. It was a system long abandoned by the Department of Education and by most English universities. The standards of the examiners who correct the papers in any one subject were so varied that it was quite impossible to regard their judgment as final. All marks were sent to Wellington, where desperate statisticians divided and multiplied and added and then substracted for days in an effort to bring about some sort of uniformity. A paragraph in the Press during January stated that in one subject (not compulsory) where one examiner A marked the North Island papers and another examiner, B, marked the South,lsland papers, A's average mark was 20 per cent, higher than B's, whereas the general standard as estimated by C. a kind of referee, was found to be approximately the same in both Islands. The university certainly endeavoured to arrive finally at a fair estimate of each candidate's "knowledge and ability, but this artificial system of adjustment and readjustment of marks was surely out of date. . ' In the Public Service examination, now abandoned, there were, as in matriculation, two English papers, with about 3500 candidates. Each paper was set by an examining committee of three. Every examiner corrected onethird of the papers right through the 3500 scripts, placing his total mark on the cover.

Revision of Syllabus. The most important point to be considered, however, was nothing less than a recasting of the syllabus, which at present made no mention of literature. An examiner was justified in sotting a paper consisting wholly of questions on grammatical points, paraphrasing- and the like, and an essay. He need not demand any knowledge of literature. Practical teachers know that literature will not be granted its share of honour unless it became an essential part of the most important examination in the postprimary system of education. • At the conclusion of Miss Stewart's address the matter was discussed at length by the meeting.