I went to the bookshop to look for English assessement books after work. After seeing my student's essay yesterday, I really wanted to find out the standard of a essay of a Normal Technical student. Guess what I discovered? A standard N Level essay requires a word range of 250 to 400 words. I My best bet is that it's is about 2 pages worth of writing without leaving a line on an A4 piece of paper.
The essay handed in to me is terribly short. 2 paragraphs, each made up of 2 or 3 poorly-constructed and grammatically-erroneous sentences. At the bookshop just now, a book entitled "Model Composition" caught my eye. It was a book consisting model compositions meant for Primary 1 students. Guess the standard? At least 5 sentences. Coherent ones. Does that mean that my student's English standard is only comparable to that of a Primary 1 student's? 7 years fo difference in age and yet the standard is the almost equivalent? To think he actually calimed that he could score 60 marks for the work he handed to me. Fair enough, 60 out of a million perhaps.
I guessed the solution for him is to read more widely and attempt to write more. I attribute my competency in English to the time I spent writing than reading. It's true I read a fair bit during my younger days. Bookworm short stories, encylopedias, and Reader's Digest. However, it is only through my writing that I get the chance to use the new words that I picked up. My tuition teacher made it mandatory for me to hand in an essay to her for every lesson but was liberal with me regarding the topic I wrote about. As such, I wrote almost anything under the sun.
As I had no siblings, I had no one to talk to when I felt down. Writing became an avenue for me to vent my frustrations. More often than not, my essays will revolve around a maniac with a murderous intent to kill and multilate anything that stood in his way. Only in the essays can I seek revenge on those who crossed my path and be a vigilante of my own. I guess my imaginative traits played a big role in moulding the contents. Despite gory scenes of limbs strewn around the place, my tuition teacher did not condemn any of my writings. She always read them with an approving nod and only corrected the spelling/grammatical errors, not censor the content. Perhaps she knew I wasn't the one going around terrorizing others. Perhaps she liked my way of expressions. And because of her approval, I wrote without fear and the limits of my content were endless.
As I grow up, I took a liking for fantasy stories and my characters would be battling mammoth-sized monsters which are armed with razor-sharp fangs. It's a real pain but I often choose one unlucky guy to die. Makes the story more emotional and dramatic, don't you think so? When we were taught to write argumentative essays, I was equally interested. I like to debate over issues with logic and reasoning but my flair for gathering facts is not as good as imagination. Facts are facts, either it's true or it's false. You cannot bend it to your will.
A change of subject now. I think I had one too many piece of BBQ pork as my throat is somewhat sore. Rats, I hate sore throats. I feel a little unwell too. Must be the weather. Rain and sun, cold and hot. Doesn't make the best combination for the immune system. Looks like I must rest more and work less. By the way, the EPH bookstore has wound up its operations in Heartland Mall. Sad. I'll miss those spacious aisles, wide collection of books and the few numbers of shopppers that make the place look a lot more bigger than it looks. Maybe it's precisely that lack of patronae that they decide to close down the outlet.
The essay handed in to me is terribly short. 2 paragraphs, each made up of 2 or 3 poorly-constructed and grammatically-erroneous sentences. At the bookshop just now, a book entitled "Model Composition" caught my eye. It was a book consisting model compositions meant for Primary 1 students. Guess the standard? At least 5 sentences. Coherent ones. Does that mean that my student's English standard is only comparable to that of a Primary 1 student's? 7 years fo difference in age and yet the standard is the almost equivalent? To think he actually calimed that he could score 60 marks for the work he handed to me. Fair enough, 60 out of a million perhaps.
I guessed the solution for him is to read more widely and attempt to write more. I attribute my competency in English to the time I spent writing than reading. It's true I read a fair bit during my younger days. Bookworm short stories, encylopedias, and Reader's Digest. However, it is only through my writing that I get the chance to use the new words that I picked up. My tuition teacher made it mandatory for me to hand in an essay to her for every lesson but was liberal with me regarding the topic I wrote about. As such, I wrote almost anything under the sun.
As I had no siblings, I had no one to talk to when I felt down. Writing became an avenue for me to vent my frustrations. More often than not, my essays will revolve around a maniac with a murderous intent to kill and multilate anything that stood in his way. Only in the essays can I seek revenge on those who crossed my path and be a vigilante of my own. I guess my imaginative traits played a big role in moulding the contents. Despite gory scenes of limbs strewn around the place, my tuition teacher did not condemn any of my writings. She always read them with an approving nod and only corrected the spelling/grammatical errors, not censor the content. Perhaps she knew I wasn't the one going around terrorizing others. Perhaps she liked my way of expressions. And because of her approval, I wrote without fear and the limits of my content were endless.
As I grow up, I took a liking for fantasy stories and my characters would be battling mammoth-sized monsters which are armed with razor-sharp fangs. It's a real pain but I often choose one unlucky guy to die. Makes the story more emotional and dramatic, don't you think so? When we were taught to write argumentative essays, I was equally interested. I like to debate over issues with logic and reasoning but my flair for gathering facts is not as good as imagination. Facts are facts, either it's true or it's false. You cannot bend it to your will.
A change of subject now. I think I had one too many piece of BBQ pork as my throat is somewhat sore. Rats, I hate sore throats. I feel a little unwell too. Must be the weather. Rain and sun, cold and hot. Doesn't make the best combination for the immune system. Looks like I must rest more and work less. By the way, the EPH bookstore has wound up its operations in Heartland Mall. Sad. I'll miss those spacious aisles, wide collection of books and the few numbers of shopppers that make the place look a lot more bigger than it looks. Maybe it's precisely that lack of patronae that they decide to close down the outlet.
posted by hg @ 20:40
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