The Final Exam

The exam was sat by the students on Sunday 22 June. The foreign teachers were not required to attend the exam. Later I would find out why I believe this to be the case.

Monday the 23 June I received the papers to mark in the afternoon. Quite overwhelming when you have 269 Chinglish papers to mark. I set myself the task of marking one class per day. This in itself is a huge task.

The first part of the exam was multiple choice. I learned the letters verbatim. Sometimes the student gave me the choice of answer with the answer being a, b, c, d. Other times you would notice that the answers were marked originally in blue pen, however they were corrected in black pen. This could only lead one to believe that they paper had been swamped between students to correct.

The next part was simply one word answers. Some students had the right answers but in the wrong place.

The final part of the exam was writing. Some students wrote directly out of their text book. Other students copied information from the exam paper. Others started with information and then continued to copy the question as if to think that you wouldn't read it.

In the end only 3 students failed the final exam. However I don't think any of them failed overall.

It was interesting to find that the students were quite proud of their cheating. One student told me how he was the first to finish and he sent an SMS to the class monitor who then sent the answers to individual students. When I questioned him over this he told me that yes there was a teacher supervising but they just turn a blind eye because they don't want anyone to fail.

Now we know why the foreign teachers were not required to supervise their classes.