Thursday, November 09, 2006

Apathy Jack, you're in the know...

Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling writes:

Apathy Jack, no doubt you would have seen this story about allowing txt speak in NCEA exams. Talkback, and bloogers have begun hoarding water, food, and batteries since civilization will now collapse. But I need more information before I can make such a judgement.

So what does this announcement mean exactly? I'll ask you the same question I mooted here:

Does this announcement mean something like:

a) You can write an answer on, for example, Shakespeare, in txt speak and not be marked down.

Which would be apalling, or does this announcement mean something more innocuous like:

b) If you are doing a creative writing piece in an english exam you can use txt speak - e.g. "I picked up cellphone from beside the fruit bowl and texted Cyril 'cul8r m8'" and not be marked down.

Which I don't think anyone can complain about.

3 comments:

Josh said...

Well, the two paragraph summary says:

"However, abbreviations would be penalised in some exams, including English, in which candidates were required to show good language use."

So I don't see that anyone's saying students will be allowed to use TXT speak in a Shakespeare essay, for one thing.

I'd be interested to see the actual report that started all of this - I can't seem to find a link anywhere. I wouldn't be surprised if it said something like "we won't penalise students for poor spelling (e.g. TXT speak) in those exams where spelling doesn't matter", which has passed through the media's Alarm-O-Filters and come out as "TXT speak allowed in exams".

Apathy Jack said...

Keep an eye out - post in a day or so...

Josh said...

Well that could be why I haven't been able to find a link to the report that started all this -- looks like there never was one.