April 7, 2009

• Test Marking One-Uh-Oh-One

  If you're a student in Japan, whenever you go on vacation and come back to school, the school greets you with a test. This is to make sure you have been studying over the vacation(nice try), and to get your brains working again for the new semester(nice try#2).

  Way to get everyone down to work from the start, Japan. The teachers are drowned with marking. Thus, me, the ALT who is not supposed to take part in any marking activity, was asked by my faculty to help draw circles on test papers. ie, mark, Canadian monkey.

  OK, they were nice to me, so they let me mark the A course kids. In other words the smart ones. My current school is wonderful and the students study hard. So most of them are doing a good job. I did, however, run into some answers that cracked me up. Not as much as the year before, but there were a few.

  Question: Fill in the blank. Japanese: もっとゆっくりと話してください。
  ________ slowly, ________ .
  Correct answer: Speak slowly, please.

  About 85% of the kids didn't have any problems with this question. One of them, however, came up with

  Be slowly, please.

  Okay, you did NOT just ask me to be slow.

  Question: Fill in the blank. Japanese: もう一度言ってください。
  _______ me.
  Correct answer: Excuse me.

  This one is tricky, and actually not that well made because the Japanese does not directly link to the English. The students' answers are very creative and all over the place.

  Repeat me. <--- close.

  Tell me.  <--- You're demanding.

  Call me. <--- Give me your number first.

  Please me. <--- The kid obviously doesnt know what please can mean, but this one knocked me out.

  • 2:56 pm
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