Reading, Writing, and Multiple Choice

[GulPlum <plumeski@yahoo.com>]

Torsten wrote:

<snip>

> our non-language teachers could decrease our marks if we made too 
> many mistakes in our writing in any test. So if a maths or biology 
> test required a lot of written answers and you totally messed your 
> grammar and spelling up, you could get a worse mark than someone 
> who had the 'facts' just as correct at you but wrote correct 
> German, even if there was no problem understanding your answers 
> despite your mistakes. 

One of the teachers at my secondary school did one better (she taught 
several subjects). Not only would she mark you down for bad language 
use, but she'd have a word with the language teacher to cover a 
particular issue in their class, especially if a few kids continually 
made the same mistake. I always found it a perfectly sensible 
approach. It wasn't about one teacher telling another that they were 
doing a bad job, it was just pointing out to them that there was a 
specific problem that they might want to address. 

I do recall one situation after a French translation test, we went 
off on a huge tangent all about gerunds in English. I found it 
absolutely fascinating. I don't think anyone else did, though. :-)

--
GulPlum AKA Richard, whose school was a really, really crap place by 
anyone's standards (with the exception of one full-time and one part-
time teacher), and likes to think that anything he ever learned, he 
learned despite that place rather than because of it.