re checks

spurious

Papillon87 wrote:

My Head Of Dept. said a lot of English examiners don't read through the essays. They scan them for key words relating to the question. Yeah, great system.:rolleyes:

Your Head of Department is making quite an allegation there.
Does he care to put his name publicly to that allegation?

There are lots of teachers all over the country make all sorts of claims about what 'they know' goes on in the examination process. If they were all involved in correcting we would not have the situation where people who have never taught or had any involvement with teaching are correcting exams.

Papillon87

Rockerette wrote:

Jee.... heaven forbid maybe its your own fault you got a C...?
Maybe a bad set of essays or something? Dont try blame "the system" for that one

There's no need to be so nasty. I didn't get either of my English papers finished but I was still expecting a B2. The system lacks in consistency.

Papillon87

spurious wrote:

Your Head of Department is making quite an allegation there.
Does he care to put his name publicly to that allegation?

There are lots of teachers all over the country make all sorts of claims about what 'they know' goes on in the examination process. If they were all involved in correcting we would not have the situation where people who have never taught or had any involvement with teaching are correcting exams.

This man HAS corrected and DOES correct Leaving Cert. English papers. I'm not going to publicly state his name without his permission or consent. He has years of experience in English at Leaving Cert. level and how scripts are corrected by lazy examiners. He knows what he is talking about.

I really don't like the fact that a couple of people on this board are being vindictive and rude in their posts, with the sentiments directed towards myself.

Rockerette

Papillon87 wrote:

There's no need to be so nasty. I didn't get either of my English papers finished but I was still expecting a B2. The system lacks in consistency.

sorry i didnt mean to come off as nasty, seriosuly i didnt.


But just, i hate it when people try to "blame the system".






And lets not turn this into a battle of the English teachers... (cos trust me, mine would win )

Papillon87

Rockerette wrote:

sorry i didnt mean to come off as nasty, seriosuly i didnt.


But just, i hate it when people try to "blame the system".






And lets not turn this into a battle of the English teachers... (cos trust me, mine would win )

We shall agree to disagree.......cos everyone within a ten mile radius of my school knows of this guy's greatness!

spurious

Your 'great guy' if indeed he works for the SEC should read some of the conditions of the contract he signed - particularly certain sections relating to the process of correcting. I'd say he'll know what I'm referring to.

It is a nonsense to suggest examiners scan answers and if he has the slightest shred of proof, (though how he could know for sure what any examiner other than himself does, I don't know) he should immediately report it to his Chief Advising Examiner.

Others here have correctly suggested there are sometimes problems with totting marks, or a difference in opinion as to the number of marks an answer should be given, but to suggest that there are numbers of examiners not even bothering to read scripts properly is outrageous, an insult to the people who examine and an insult to any candidate taking the exam.

Funkstard

I think I regret not getting Geography rechecked. I thought, and so did my teacher, that I was on the way to an A. I scraped a B1 in the end, 80.4% which is why I'm not risking it. But like, 44/80 in the option (culture & identity), and at least 73/80 in the other questions. What the hell like.

R0C0

All I'm gonna say in relation to the above posts is, Spurious and Papillion, neither one of you as students are in a position to say, definitively, how the exams are corrected. Your just basing your opinion on what your respective teachers have told you, fair enough I suppose!

IMHO, I think its naive to say that every essay is read word for word with maximum concentration.. when you consider how many exams have to be graded and the time constraints, its just not feasible. Having said that it must also be acknowledged that every examiner will have his/her own way of doing it, so best not to generalise!

spurious

R0C0, I am a teacher who has corrected exams. I joined this thread because someone had a specific query about rechecks.
I know what the procedure is.

Examiners correct every page of a script, they do not 'scan' to get the general gist. If Papillon's teacher has evidence that someone is not doing their job correctly, he should report them to the SEC and they will be glad to never employ them again. If there is no proof, allegations need to stop.

What Papillon is passing on (hearsay) casts aspersions on the work of all examiners and is an extremely serious allegation. Unless there is proof it should be withdrawn.

Attractive Nun

Maybe the marking scheme is somewhat to blame. You get 30% for clarity, which is fair enough. But, for example, when my teacher read a paragraph of one of my essays, she had to reread it to fully understand it. Immediately, you would expect this to mean that the piece was unclear and you might expect to get marked down for that. But, in reality, the reread was necessary simply because that particular paragraph was very wordy and concentrated. Now maybe you could argue that such writing is poor form, but most academic/literary writing will have passages of such a nature, and if that were to be marked down it would be rather unfair on more accomplished writers.

Obviously it's difficult to tell with English, but practices such as the above - if they happen - aren't fair.

R0C0

Spurious, Is the fact that 10% of re checked papers get graded up not evidence that some people aren't doing their jobs right?
And thats only from the people that can be bothered/afford to send their papers back!

Rockerette

i was talking to my english teacher the other night, and he told me he looked at my papers, and apparently i got 378/400, which worked out at about 94%.. i couldnt believe it like.. an A1 surprised the be-jesus outta me, but i assumed i had just scraped it..


he was talking to other teachers and everything, and he said they they all thought their students had been marked fairly



And i know that i can only speak for my own teacher, but as i said before, he would never ever just skim through an essay. whether it was our mock exams, or just a test in class, he always went through them all properly, and i dont see why he would be any different when he was marking the state exams..

each centre is going to have its own marker, so while rockerette's school will be marked fairly, that could have been just one person, who read the marking scheme perfectly, and this was reflected in the marks.

My school had haphazard English marks, 2 people who were told to do pass got A's, and some of the supposedly better students in the year were getting low Bs and Cs.

Its not fair to say "english was marked unfairly" and its not fair to say "english was marked fairly". It was a local phenomenon, this means your examiner was a fair examiner.

I am getting mine checked again because i was annoyed with it, I really thought it was one of the best exams i had done, and only got a B3. My essay earned 71 while my teacher suggested 85/90 would've been more appropriate.

And this marking was wrong in a lot of cases in my school, one guy, was docked 3 out of the 5 spelling marks for one spelling error! he lost 60% of the marks available for spelling, for making one mistake.

There were many oddities in the papers that were reviewed, but many people were of the mindset "i've got my course, no need to upset the balance", so not many are getting them checked.

Kwekubo

Is it just me or was the Geography wide open to interpretation this year? The marking scheme seemed extremely vague.

Papillon87

spurious wrote:

R0C0, I am a teacher who has corrected exams. I joined this thread because someone had a specific query about rechecks.
I know what the procedure is.

Examiners correct every page of a script, they do not 'scan' to get the general gist. If Papillon's teacher has evidence that someone is not doing their job correctly, he should report them to the SEC and they will be glad to never employ them again. If there is no proof, allegations need to stop.

What Papillon is passing on (hearsay) casts aspersions on the work of all examiners and is an extremely serious allegation. Unless there is proof it should be withdrawn.

:rolleyes: My God. A complaint has been forwarded to the relevant authorities and an investigation into the whole issue has already begun. With all due respect Spurious, you and my Head of Department are two English teachers out of thousands. Two examiners out of thousands. You are extremely naive if you believe that every single examiner is going to exercise the same diligence as yourself and my HOD when it comes to correcting. This should be the case, but this is not an ideal world.

Papillon87

Se&#225 wrote: »

Hmm.. not really. It costs an amazing 37 euro to get a re-check. If someone can afford paying for the Leaving Cert exams they can well afford a recheck. Besides , if the paper is upgraded the money is refunded in full.


You're not paying anyone to get a better grade. You're paying to register your exam in an appeal based on any given reason regarding the grading on your paper.

I'm studying English and got a B3 in my exam. It was the highest grade in the Year and my teacher wanted all of us to appeal as there was many inconsistencies in the exam. My essay was given 100% by my teacher but got a mere 50% in the exam.

The essay, by nature, should include personal vocabulary. This is to say that the examiner should be able to get to know the student through their use of language. At one point in my essay i wrote how the government had given themselves a "boo-boo" (by using such a childish phrase I was attempting to be patronising to the evident mistakes perpetrated by the United States), a line was written over the word and "expression" was written beside it, docking marks. Incredible. Other things such as the word "ethos" and "pathos" were underlined for supposed misuse of vocabulary when in fact they were used tersely and not to just use big words.. My teacher went nuts when she saw that.

An appeal will not affect my place in college, it will only keep my mind at ease as I am dedicating the next three years of my life studying the damned subject!

Here, here! Well said.I'm also studying English so getting it rechecked is for my own piece of mind, as I have my first choice in the bag.

Dagnir Glaurung

Papillon87 wrote:

:rolleyes: My God. A complaint has been forwarded to the relevant authorities and an investigation into the whole issue has already begun. With all due respect Spurious, you and my Head of Department are two English teachers out of thousands. Two examiners out of thousands. You are extremely naive if you believe that every single examiner is going to exercise the same diligence as yourself and my HOD when it comes to correcting. This should be the case, but this is not an ideal world.

Maybe Spurius could correct me if I'm wrong but every examiner has their work constantly checked by a superior examiner and if correcting isn't up to standard they have to correct them again. Plus I belive that you have to correct JC and be competent at that before you correct LC. It isn't simply a case of a teacher turning up, getting a bag and correcting them. Every examiner is constantly monitored to ensure that everyone is marked fairly. Not that mistakes can't be made but it is very unlikely that an examiner could correct a large batch poorly.

Papillon87

Dagnir Glaurung wrote:

Maybe Spurius could correct me if I'm wrong but every examiner has their work constantly checked by a superior examiner and if correcting isn't up to standard they have to correct them again. Plus I belive that you have to correct JC and be competent at that before you correct LC. It isn't simply a case of a teacher turning up, getting a bag and correcting them. Every examiner is constantly monitored to ensure that everyone is marked fairly. Not that mistakes can't be made but it is very unlikely that an examiner could correct a large batch poorly.

No, they are not "constanly checked". They submit a couple of pieces of corrected work upon request from an examining superintendent.