h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One of the things I've always found frustrating about exams is that people who have "learning disabilities" e.g. dyslexia are given extra time to complete them. By argument is not with them.

It is the fact that I, who is probably the country's slowest writer has to slog out the answers by hand. With incredibly small, yet precise handwriting (which is why I take so long) I have to hope the examiner will be able to read and understand it.

Give me a computer and I'd be able to type at three times the speed I write, plus I'd be able to reorder my work into neat, understandable paragraphs. I don't even imagine it would be that difficult to produce a simple word-processing package that contains no spell-checking, or grammar checking.

Perhaps even just a typewriter would be good enough for me ... I know that I'd do better than when I wrote solidly for 3 hours the other week and kept having to stop every 10 minutes and massage my arm.

BBS

I disagree with the timings given to students, like myself, for exams.

For some exams at the moment, like the sciences, we are given 2 and a half hours, which even the extra time people don't seem to use.

On the other hand, for english exams, which require a lot of continuous writing, we are only given 2 hours with little or no reading/checking time unless we cut back on the recommended times on the front of the paper, which still don't seem to be enough.

I did a GCSE english paper only today, and not a single person i asked was happy with the length of the exam, apart from the extra time people.

I dont agree with extra time either exams are used to give out qualifacations based on how well you do at a subject.

giving people extra time may mean they can boost there grade. but someone who was just as good who did not receive extra time gets the same grade. both candidates may have the same ability but one gets abetter grade. both go for the same job the one wo had extra time gets it is this fair. no.

agreed. there is a guy in my year doing exams now who is in the top set for every subject. he has a *very* slight form of dyslexia and he took a test to prove it so now he has extra time. this means that he is able to get a better grade than the others in his set which would make it *seem* that he was more intelligent than them. i have even thought of taking this test myself to try and get extra time, because as far as i can see it anyone can qualify, so why not me?

out of interest what is dyslexia officially

I know someone who has dyslexsia and the only difficulty he has is that he writes really slowly and nobody can read it

is there a difference between a really slow writer and someone dyslexic like him

According to a website I just looked at:

"Dyslexic people are visual, multi-dimensional thinkers. We are intuitive and highly creative, and excel at hands-on learning. Because we think in pictures, it is sometimes hard for us to understand letters, numbers, symbols, and written words.

We can learn to read, write and study efficiently when we use methods geared to our unique learning style."

***

As for earlier complaints about exams not giving enough time ... the examiners are looking for a certain level of learning. If you have 8 questions in 2 hours - you can only write basic 15-minute answers; whereas if like me at AS level you had 2 questions in 90mins they want more. At degree level I had 1 question to answer in 2 hours - they're looking for something quite sophisticated then.

One of the skills you have to acquire for your exam is knowing how much and at what level you need to write.

BBS

but surely if an entire year group found that the exam time was too short then it's more the timings and less the students' skills and abilities to structure their answers.

in the english paper i was talking about we had a timings plan given on the front which recommended we use 10 minutes each to do the first 4 10 mark questions, whereas in our english literature paper we had 20 minutes for the 10 mark questions and longer for the 20 markers. surely they should be the same in all the english exams?

marking on different stuff

Having made my earlyer comment point. I am now starting to feel sorry for those people who had extra time look at my As computing exams we had an hour and a half do do both exams and they were back to back. you really only need 45mins to do this exam. most people I spoke to said they did it in half an hour like me followed by 15mins checking it over in my case.

Due to the complicated stucture of the exam hall (multiple exams were taking place) people awarded extra time had to take it.

at least it gave me chance to try out fly though meditaion in the exam hall.

what's fly through meditation?

in exams i sometimes think that we should be allowed to walk out when we finish because loads of people finish with ages to go, but i know that this would distract the slower people and annoy the teachers. still it could work.

We used to be allow to leave exams early. There were restricitons depending on the length of exam ... something like, "you can't leave in the first 30 mins" and you can't leave in the last 10.

BBS

that's a good system.